Spin wheel guides: fair draws, classrooms, giveaways
Practical guides on running fair draws, classroom cold-calling, and getting more out of random pickers.
Tournament mode: turning one spin into a full ranking
A tournament wheel spins to eliminate one name each round until a champion remains — and the elimination order gives you a full 1st-to-last ranking. Here's how it works and when to use it.
· 2 min readCustomizing your spin wheel: colors, fonts, hub, pointer, and background
Make a spin wheel your own: brand colors, label fonts, center-hub text, pointer style, and a solid or gradient background. A quick guide to every style control and how to use them.
· 2 min readDesigning the winner moment — what your spin wheel says when it picks
The reveal is the whole point of a spin. A six-second slowdown deserves more than 'The winner is…'. Here's how to compose a winner message that matches your event.
· 5 min readWhen a decision wheel actually helps — and three traps to avoid
Random decision tools work brilliantly for low-stakes choices and dangerously badly for important ones. Here's the line between the two, plus the coin-flip trick that turns a wheel into a preference-revealer.
· 3 min readSplitting a group into balanced teams: random, seeded, and snake
Three patterns for splitting groups into teams, ordered by how much you care about balance. When pure random is right, when seeding wins, and when to run a snake draft instead.
· 3 min readSpin-the-wheel game ideas: 12 ways to use a wheel beyond name picking
A practical catalog of spin-the-wheel game ideas for parties, classrooms, team meetings, and dinner-time stalemates — with setup notes for each.
· 2 min readRunning a draw with remote viewers: multiplayer mode vs screen-sharing
Why a shared multiplayer wheel beats screen-sharing for raffles and giveaways with remote viewers — covering latency, verifiability, and what to do when the host's internet is the bottleneck.
· 2 min readAdding a logo to your spin wheel — when, why, and how
A branded spin wheel — your logo in the centre hub — signals 'this is our giveaway, not a borrowed tool'. Here's when it matters, image specs that look right, and the 30-second setup.
· 3 min readWeighted spinners explained — when uniform odds are wrong
Most spin wheels give every entry equal odds. That's fine for picking the next presenter — and dishonest for multi-ticket raffles. Here's when weighted spinners are the right tool and how to set them up.
· 3 min readHow random name pickers work — and why most of them are unfair
Most online wheel-of-names tools use Math.random(), which is statistically uniform but predictable. Here's why that matters, what crypto.getRandomValues() does differently, and how to verify a name picker is actually fair.
· 3 min readCold-calling fairly: why a random student picker beats memory
Teachers who 'randomly' call on students from memory inevitably bias toward attentiveness, eye contact, and the alphabet. Here's the research, the mechanism, and how a random student picker fixes it.
· 2 min readRunning a fair online giveaway: a practitioner's guide
A practical guide for streamers, creators, and brand managers running giveaways online. Covers verifiability, weight rules, multi-prize patterns, and OBS integration.
· 2 min read