Table Rotation Schedule Generator
Moving a group between tables so people meet new company each round is a genuinely hard combinatorial problem — it is the social golfer problem, and it has no easy solution. This searches for a good seating, retrying each round and keeping the best, then lists every pair who do end up together more than once. That listing is the honest part: with enough rounds, repeats become unavoidable.
What this generator does
For each round it seats people one at a time at whichever table costs the fewest repeats, retries the whole round a dozen times and keeps the best, then counts every pairing across all rounds to report which have happened more than once.
How to use this tool
- Enter everyone's name, one per line.
- Set how many sit at each table and how many rounds.
- Read the seating round by round.
- Check the repeated pairs at the bottom, if there are any.
Understanding the controls
- Names
- Between 4 and 40 people, one per line. They never leave your browser.
- People per table
- Between 2 and 10. The number of tables follows, and an uneven division puts the extra people at the earlier tables.
- Rounds
- How many times everyone moves. Repeats grow rapidly with the rounds — there are only so many distinct seatings.
- Seed
- Reproduces the same schedule, which is useful when the plan needs to be printed and reprinted.
Common use cases
- Planning a whist drive or a quiz night with moving tables
- Arranging a supper club so guests meet new people each course
- Rotating groups through workshop tables
- Setting up a networking event with several rounds
- Seeing which pairs have already sat together
How this generator works
Each round seats people one at a time, choosing for each the table where they have met the fewest of the people already sitting there. Because the order matters, the whole round is retried a dozen times from different orders and the seating with the fewest repeats is kept. Before display every round is checked so that everyone is seated exactly once and no table is over its size, and every pairing across the whole schedule is recounted so the repeats reported are exactly the repeats that happened.
Randomness and fairness
Uses your browser's cryptographic random source to vary the seating order by default. A seed switches to a reproducible sequence, which is deterministic and not cryptographically secure.
For how randomness is produced across the whole site, see how Generate Random works.
Limitations and good to know
- Finding a seating with no repeats at all is the social golfer problem, which is unsolved in general — this searches for a good arrangement rather than a provably best one.
- Repeats become unavoidable once the rounds outnumber the distinct seatings available, and the tool reports them rather than pretending otherwise.
- Nobody can be pinned to a table or kept apart from anyone specific.
- Tables are all the same size, apart from the remainder when the numbers do not divide evenly.
Privacy and your data
Names stay in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, no schedule is stored, and no name is ever included in analytics — only the number of people.
Related generators
- Social Mixer Rotation GeneratorRounds of pairings where no two people ever meet twice, verified by counting every meeting across every round.
- Random Team GeneratorSplit a list of names into a chosen number of random, evenly sized teams.
- Table Rotation GeneratorMoves guests between tables each course so they sit with new people — and tells you how many pairs have met.
- Classroom Seating Chart GeneratorRandomise a classroom seating chart while keeping your own rules — front seats, pairs kept apart, pairs kept together and pinned seats.