Open Pairing Options

Yes, if there is an uneven number of people (like 5 or 6) then there is often rotating out (usually winners stay, losing player or losing team gets up).  However, I've played many situations where we have an even number of people -- or at least so many people that we can have a few stable boards.  When you have 18 people playing, in general you would have 2-3 stable bughouse games playing a series and 1-2 unstable bughouse games with people rotating in either every game or after a best of 3 match.  And sometimes even with 5 or 6 people, the odd people out decide to take a break and watch for a while or go get a snack, leaving the 4 people at the board to play a longer series of 10-20 games.  Most people prefer a series where they can get a feel for their partners and opponents to constantly switching.

I agree we should offer some options for switching easily. The hard part is - who gets to decide? 

- Switch colors

- Switch partners

- Switch opponents

So many possibilities....

#1

Maybe have four rematch buttons?

#1 rematch as-is
#2 rematch switch colours
#3 rematch switch partners
#4 rematch switch opponents

I'm not sure what to do if different people hit different re-match buttons, though.  Maybe count it as votes so whichever gets more votes wins, and if it's a 2-2 (or 1-1-1-1) tie, pick randomly?

Yeah, that's the challenge.... getting people to vote/agree.... extremely complex. Then what if 3 people DO agree, but then the 4th doesn't.... What if we just put top-rated player in charge?

Yeah, MGleason is making it overly complicated.

Still, there should be a distinction between manual matches and pooled matches.  If I manually match someone, it makes no sense for the game to start with me playing his partner.

I think it could be like so:

#1:45%

#2:0% (seriously, what about 2000s vs 1400s?)

#3:20%

#4:25%

It's fair. Also high vs. low could also happen  with #3. Great idea, basically the highs race against each other.