How it works
Call your round before you play it. Settle up at the bar.
On the first tee
One person starts the round and reads out the code. Everyone joins on their own phone, and the board goes up — a list of things worth counting over the round. Fairways hit. Greens in regulation. One-putts. Holes where you beat your handicap.
Each of you picks the ones you fancy and commits to a number. Nine fairways. Three birdies. Whatever you think you're good for.
Then everyone else calls your number over or under — and you do the same to theirs. That is the whole setup, and it takes about as long as waiting for the group ahead.
Then you play golf
Nothing to do. No phones out between shots, no scores to enter, nobody asked to perform anything in front of anybody. The board is locked and it stays locked until you sit down.
At the bar
Everyone puts in what they actually managed, and the board settles all of it at once.
It's self-reported, which is fine: nobody plays a round alone, and the people you played with were standing there for all of it.
The rule the whole game rests on
You score off your doubters. Not off the number, not off how well you played — off the people who didn't believe you.
So a number nobody argues with is worth nothing, however comfortably you make it. Say four fairways when you know you'll hit nine and you'll stroll it, in front of a group who all backed you, and earn zero. The points are in the argument.
The numbers
Everyone starts on 0, and goes up or down from there. It's a tab, not a scoreboard — by the bar you're either up or you're down, and somebody is buying.
On your own bets:
- make your number — +5 for every doubter
- miss it — −5 for every believer
Both are head-counts and they point in opposite directions. You're paid by the people who doubted you and charged for the people you let down — so missing a number nobody believed in costs you nothing at all.
On everyone else's: ±10, flat. Right or wrong, same stake, so the only decision that matters is which way you call it.
Most points when the board settles wins.
Writing your own
The golf board covers the usual things, but the good bets are the ones about your group — longest drive on 7, holes without losing a ball, times Rob blames the wind. Whoever sets the board can write those on before you tee off, and everyone can put a number against them like any other card.
Anything countable works. Anything that comes down to an argument at the bar doesn't, so keep it to things the group can agree on.
Group games
Not every golf bet is one person's brag. Closest to the pin on the 10th has no number to beat and nobody to doubt — there is just a winner. Those go on the board as group games, agreed on the first tee with everything else.
Whoever sets one names what is being won and what it costs a head. Everyone else is in or out, and the pot is whatever the people who are in have put up: four players at 5 makes 20 for whoever takes it. Ties split it. If nobody wins it — a wet 10th where nobody found the green — everyone gets their stake back.
Sitting one out costs you nothing. A group game only ever moves points between the people who entered it, so a pot you declined cannot reach you, and it cannot move what you owe at the bar.
It isn't only golf
The same board runs a ski day, a fishing trip, a darts night, a race day, a pub crawl — any day long enough that nobody's keeping score, and everybody has an opinion about how it'll go.
How many players
Anything from two up to about sixteen — a fourball, or a society going out in four groups who settle it all together at the bar. Everyone needs their own phone, but only whoever sets the board ever pays.
The bigger the group, the more the board is worth: you're calling numbers on people you only see twice a year, which is exactly when nobody knows what anybody can really do.