Guides
Practical guides for creators, streamers, teachers and anyone who needs a random result that other people will accept.
Every guide here is written around a real job: picking a giveaway winner without complaints, calling on students without favourites, settling who goes first. Each one explains the rules or the maths first and then shows the steps in one of our free tools, so you can follow along in another tab. Where a platform has its own promotion rules, we read the official text and quote the parts that matter.
Not sure where to start?
| You want to | Start with |
|---|---|
| Run your first giveaway, on any platform | How to run a fair giveaway |
| Draw a winner and a prize together, live | Giveaway wheel with prizes |
| Pick a winner from YouTube comments | YouTube comment picker |
| Call on students or make groups fairly | Random name picker for teachers |
| Understand a roll like 4d6 or 2d6+3 | Dice notation explained |
Giveaways for creators and businesses
A giveaway is only as good as the trust behind it. These guides cover the part most people skip: written rules, entries you can check, a draw your audience can watch, and backup winners chosen in advance. Start with the general guide, then read the one for your platform, because Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitch and YouTube each have their own requirements.
Tools for this: the double giveaway wheel, Instant Draw for large lists, and the YouTube Comment Picker.
In the classroom
Students notice quickly when the same hands always get picked. A visible random picker takes the teacher out of the decision, which is often the whole point. These guides come from the questions teachers actually ask: how big groups should be for each kind of activity, what to do when someone is absent, how to rotate partners over a term, and how to turn a wheel into a review game.
Tools for this: the Random Team Generator and the spinning wheel.
Chance, decisions and games
Random tools are also good teachers. A yes or no wheel spun thirty times shows how results wander around 50/50 without settling on it, and a page of dice notation explains why 3d6 lands on 10 or 11 far more often than on 3 or 18. These guides give the numbers behind the tools, worked out properly, so you can use them for a decision, a lesson or a tabletop game.
Tools for this: the Yes or No Wheel, the Coin Flip (with a table of how often streaks happen) and the Dice Roller.
How we write these guides
The guides are written and kept up to date by the people who build the tools. When a platform changes its rules we update the guide and the date at the top of it. We do not take payment for recommendations, and nothing here is legal advice: for large or paid prize draws, check the law where you and your entrants live.
Want to know exactly how our tools choose a winner? Read How GoPickaro Picks Winners. Questions or a guide you would like to see? Write to us.