Assembling teams

Whenever you get together for fun games with random teams there's the question: Who plays with who, versus who and - if you're a bunch and have several courts - on what court.
Traditional ways are:
- take one boule from each player, toss them in the air and line them up, or
- have all players toss one boule towards the target ball at the same time
and then pick from the result. 1+2+3 vs 4+5+6, or 1+3+5 vs 2+4+6, etc...

Our ever inventive Gary came up with a simpler, faster way. He takes as many cards from a deck as there are players, and says - for example: "7 plays vs 8 on court 1" and "Aces play against Kings on court 2". Everyone picks an unseen card and within seconds the teams are made. Totally random. And he does it in a breeze while some of us are still shooting it ;-)


Another possibility: say you have some advanced players and you want to avoid they end up in the same team. Give each of them a card of one suit (say, spades) and let the other players pick cards from the other suits.