Marble Race Picker

How the marble race works

The Marble Race Picker turns a list of names into a race. Every name becomes a coloured marble, the marbles drop through a tall pinball board full of pegs, spinning paddles, bumpers, flip-flops, trapdoors, a lift, a roulette drum, warp holes and boost pads, and the first one to cross the finish line wins. It's a random picker that people actually want to watch.

1. Type or paste the names in the box. One per line works, and so does a list separated by commas, 、, semicolons or tabs, and a numbered or bulleted list loses its 1. and • markers, so a list copied from chat or a spreadsheet goes straight in (a single space never splits, so "Kim Min" stays one name). For a numbered draw, write 1-30 or type a number next to Fill with numbers. It starts with eight sample names so you can try it straight away.
2. Choose the rule: First to finish wins or Last to finish wins.
3. Press Drop the marbles (or Space or Enter). After a 3-2-1 countdown the gate opens.
4. The camera follows the leader (or the straggler when the last one wins). A live top 3 (or bottom 3) sits in the top corner, and the strip on the right shows where every marble is on the board.
5. When everyone is in, the result card shows the winner and the full finishing order, ready to Share or Race again.

Nobody is safe in front

A race where one marble leads from start to finish is no fun to watch, so the board is built to turn things around:

• Warp holes — three swirling holes in the middle of the board. A marble that falls in is sucked down and spat out much higher up. Each marble can warp at most twice per race.
• Flip-flop junctions — a flap splits the stream in two. Every marble that goes past pushes it over, so the next one is sent the other way.
• Trapdoors and the lift — one lane ends in a trapdoor that opens every couple of seconds. Catch it open and you drop through to a shortcut; catch it shut and you roll into a paddle lift that carries you back up to the top of the section. Each marble rides the lift at most twice per race.
• Reversing belts — conveyor belts at the bottom of each junction switch direction every second and a half.
• The roulette drum — a spinning ring with three holes. A marble that falls in rides round and round until a hole lines up again.
• Boost rails and pads — the green arrows fling marbles sideways or downward.
• The last gate — right before the line the marbles pile up behind a gate that only opens once four are waiting (or after five seconds). Under it, a stack of flip-flops deals them out into four different lanes.

None of this looks at names or at who is in front: the doors, belts, lift and drum run on the clock, and the flip-flops only care about who went through last.

A lead change brings up a "Lead change!" banner with a sting. When the deciding marble reaches the last 15% of the course you get a "Final stretch!" banner, a heartbeat and a slight zoom, and if the top two are neck and neck the finish plays in slow motion. Start positions are shuffled, so all of this treats every name the same.

Ideas for using it

• Giveaways on stream — paste your entrants, go fullscreen and let chat watch the marbles fight it out.
• Who pays, who cleans — switch to "Last to finish wins" and the slowest marble picks up the bill.
• Classroom turns — presentation order straight from the finishing order, with no arguing about who was picked by hand.
• Team draws — run a race and split the finishing order into teams: odd places on one side, even on the other.

Is it fair?

The race is physics, but the setup is randomised so no name and no position has an edge:

• Every race gets a fresh seed from your browser's cryptographic random number generator (crypto.getRandomValues).
• That seed shuffles the start positions, so where a name sits in your list says nothing about where its marble starts.
• Half of the races run on a mirrored board, so neither side of the start row is favoured.
• The seed also adds a tiny jitter to each start, and the peg fields near the top mix the marbles thoroughly. Over thousands of test races every start slot wins about equally often.

Want to weight the odds on purpose? Write Name*3 to give someone three marbles. They share a colour, and the name wins if any one of them does. Nothing is sent to a server; the whole race runs in your browser.

Features at a glance

Feature	What it does
Marbles	2 to 50 per race, names up to 20 characters
Copies	Name*3 gives a name three marbles
Numbers	1-30 (or 1~30) adds the numbers 1 to 30 as names
List link	Copy list link copies a link with the names built in; opening it fills the list
Winner rule	First to finish, or last to finish
Speed	1× or 2×, and "Skip to the result" to jump straight to the end
Standings	Live finishing order next to the board, full ranking on the result card
Sound	A soft music bed, clicks off the pegs, a boing from the bumpers, a sting on every lead change, a heartbeat in the final stretch and a fanfare for the winner; mute with the speaker button
Drama	Lead-change banners, warp, trapdoor, lift and drum effects, a live top 3, a final-stretch zoom and photo-finish slow motion (no zoom or flashes with reduced motion)
Fullscreen	Fills the screen for streams and projectors

Your list, rule, speed and sound setting are saved in this browser, so they're still there next time. To move a list to another device or hand it to a co-host, use Copy list link: the names travel inside the link itself.

Tips

• The first marble usually crosses the line after 15 to 20 seconds, and the whole field is in after 35 to 40 seconds, whether there are 8 marbles or 50. Use 2× if the room is impatient.
• If a marble gets stuck behind an obstacle it gets a nudge, and if that isn't enough it briefly turns see-through and slips past, so every race finishes.
• Agree on the rule before you press the button. The race is fair, but "best of three" has to be decided by people.

Try something else

Prefer a classic? The spin wheel picks one entry from up to 100 with a single spin, and the ladder game pairs names with prizes by following lines down a ladder.

Marble Race Picker FAQ

Is the marble race a fair way to pick someone?

Yes. Every race draws a seed from your browser's cryptographic random number generator (crypto.getRandomValues), shuffles the start positions with it and mirrors the board half of the time. After that the marbles just follow the physics, so the order of your list and the names themselves have no say. Test runs over thousands of races show every start slot winning about equally often.

The lead keeps changing. Is it still fair?

Yes. The course itself is built so that no marble can cruise from start to finish: flip-flop junctions that switch sides after every marble, trapdoors that open every couple of seconds onto a shortcut, a lift that carries marbles back up a section (at most twice per marble), belts that change direction, a spinning roulette drum, warp holes (at most twice per marble) and a last gate that only opens once four marbles are waiting. They run on the clock and on which marble went through last, never on names or on who is in front, and the start positions are shuffled every race, so every name keeps exactly the same chance.

Do I have to type one name per line?

No. Paste a list separated by commas, '、', semicolons or tabs, or a numbered or bulleted list, and every name becomes a marble; a single space never splits, so 'Kim Min' stays one name. For a numbered draw, write '1-30' or use Fill with numbers to add the numbers 1 to 30. Copy list link copies a link with the names built in, so another device or a co-host opens the page with the same list already filled in.

Can one person have more than one marble?

Add a star and a number after the name. Writing 'Alex*3' gives Alex three marbles of the same colour, and Alex wins if any one of them comes in first, so three marbles means three times the chance.

Can the last marble win instead of the first?

Pick 'Last to finish wins' under the name list. The camera then follows whichever marble is furthest behind, so the suspense lasts to the very end. It's the popular choice for deciding who pays or who does the forfeit.

How many marbles can race at once?

From 2 to 50. Names show up to 20 characters, and if you list more than 50 marbles only the first 50 start. A full field of 50 usually takes a little over half a minute to come in; 2× speed or 'Skip to the result' gets you there faster.

What if a marble gets stuck?

A marble that stops making its way down gets a small nudge, and if that doesn't free it, it turns see-through for a moment and drops through the obstacle. Every race is guaranteed to finish, and the nudges come from the same seed as everything else.

Can I use it on a stream or a projector?

Press fullscreen and the board fills the screen, which works well for a stream overlay, a classroom projector or a group round one phone. Your list is kept only in this browser and never sent to a server, and Share sends the result straight to a chat.