Tournament mode: turning one spin into a full ranking

A normal spin wheel answers one question — who wins — and it's over in a few seconds. Sometimes that's exactly what you want. But plenty of decisions aren't 'pick a winner', they're 'put these in order': who presents first, who's out, what the prize tiers are. For those, a single spin is the wrong shape. A tournament is the right one.

What a tournament wheel does

A tournament spins to eliminate. Each round, the wheel lands on a name and knocks it out; the eliminated name disappears from the wheel and the next round spins among whoever's left. It keeps going until exactly one name remains — the champion. Because that last name is never eliminated, the survivor wins, and everyone else is ordered by how long they lasted.

How elimination order becomes a ranking

This is the part that makes a tournament more useful than it first looks. You don't have to rank anyone manually — the knockout produces the standings as a side effect. The order names are eliminated, reversed, is the finishing order:

1. The one name never eliminated is the champion (1st).
2. The last name eliminated is the runner-up (2nd).
3. Working backward through the eliminations gives 3rd, 4th, and so on.
4. The very first name knocked out places last.

So a single run gives you the complete standings, first to last. The results screen shows the champion in big letters, then the full ranking with medals for the top three.

When a tournament is the right tool

• Presentation or turn order — the elimination order becomes the running order, with no arguments about who goes first or last.
• Knockout game night — put everyone on the wheel and let it run; the last name standing wins the round.
• Last-one-standing giveaways — the round-by-round eliminations keep a stream watching far longer than a single spin.
• Prize tiers — the final standings map straight onto 1st, 2nd, and 3rd-place prizes.

How to run one

1. Add at least three names to the entries list.
2. Click the 🏆 tournament button in the toolbar.
3. Watch the eliminations — each spin knocks one name out, then pauses so you can read it.
4. When one name is left, the champion and full standings appear. Share them as an image, or play again.

A note on fairness and weights

Every round is a real spin decided by cryptographically secure randomness, so nothing is pre-chosen — the champion is whoever the eliminations leave standing. That makes a tournament safe to run in public: there's no hidden outcome to question.

One caveat: tournaments work best with plain, unique names — one slice each. Weighted entries (the Name*N syntax) put a name on multiple slices, so it can be eliminated more than once, which muddies the ranking. For a clean knockout, give every entrant a single slice.