Game Formats A–Z: Every Betting Game Your Group Hasn't Tried Yet

Every regular game eventually gets here: Nassau on the front, Skins on the back, maybe a two-dollar Wolf bet if somebody in the group actually remembers how it works. Six months into a weekly game, someone finally says "can we play something else for once," and the cart goes quiet — because nobody actually knows another format well enough to explain it standing on the first tee.

Beyond Nassau, Skins, and Wolf, golf has dozens of playable betting formats. Team games like Chicago and Vegas reward point totals instead of raw strokes. Three-player formats like Nine Point exist for the exact Saturday your fourth cancels. Side bets like Snake and Aces and Deuces turn one ugly hole into real money changing hands at the cart barn. The right one for your group depends on group size, handicap spread, and how much arithmetic everyone's actually willing to do mid-round.

That's the honest answer to "what else is there." The rest of this page is the how — what each format actually is, what kind of group it's built for, and the argument it always causes by about hole 14.

Knowing one of these cold, and being the guy who can explain it in a sentence before anyone tees off, is its own kind of currency in a regular group. It's a small thing. It's also exactly the kind of small thing that makes people want you in their foursome.

So Which Format Should You Actually Learn First?

The mistake our group made the first summer we went looking for new games was trying to learn three of them at once. We came back from a work trip where a client had mentioned Vegas, somebody's brother-in-law swore by Chicago, and by the second Saturday nobody could remember whose birdie flipped whose score or why Mike owed everybody money.

What actually works is picking one format to fix one specific problem. If your group's biggest headache is a 25-handicap and a 6-handicap trying to play the same Nassau, that's a different problem than "we're bored by hole 11" or "we're down to three guys again."

Here's the thing nobody talks about: the format doesn't need to be perfect. It needs to solve the actual complaint your group has been making for months. Bringing the right game at the right time is a bigger deal for a group's Saturday than most people give it credit for — it's the difference between a round that drags and one where every hole still matters on 18.

The Points Games That Level a Mixed-Handicap Group

The best argument for a points game is the group where a 9-handicap and a 24-handicap play together every week. Straight Nassau or Skins tends to just hand the round to whoever's better, and after enough Saturdays of that, the higher handicapper stops wanting to play for anything at all.

Chicago (also called Quota, or "39s" in some groups) fixes this by giving every player a personal target before the round starts. The standard formula is 39 minus your course handicap — a scratch player's target is 39, a 15-handicapper's is 24, and anyone above a 36 handicap starts at a flat 3. From there, every hole earns points off a fixed scale: double bogey or worse scores zero, bogey earns one, par earns two, birdie earns four, and eagle earns eight. Add up your points across 18 holes, subtract your starting target, and the highest number wins.

The reason this works for a mixed group is that a blow-up hole costs you nothing extra — a triple and a ten score exactly the same, zero. That single rule takes the sting out of a bad hole and keeps a 20-plus handicapper in the money race until the 18th green, instead of mentally checking out on the back nine. Some groups run the same game as "Quota" with a 36-based target instead of 39 — worth settling on the first tee, because a three-point gap in everyone's number changes who's actually leading at the turn.

Could be luck, but our group has noticed that Chicago is the one format that gets the worst player in our four actually trying on 18, instead of picking up and heading for the cart. Dave asked what changed about our Saturdays once we started playing it, and the honest answer is nothing changed except who had a reason to care on the back nine.

For a group of exactly three, the points format that actually matters is different. Nine Point exists for the Saturday your regular fourth cancels and nobody wants to play a two-versus-one match all day. Every hole carries nine points, split by finishing position: low score on the hole takes five, the middle score takes three, and the high score still walks away with one. Add up the points across 18 holes and the highest total wins.

The appeal is that even the worst hole of your round earns you something — you're never fully out of it the way you can be in a straight Nassau where one team just runs away. Ties get split evenly between whichever positions tied, so a group that's fuzzy on math can still run this one without an argument. If your Saturday regularly turns into a threesome, this is worth learning before you actually need it — it pairs naturally with our page on games built for exactly three players.

The Team Formats That Change Who You're Actually Playing For

Some groups don't want individual stroke play at all — they want to feel like they're playing for somebody, not just against the field. That's the appeal of the team formats, and they solve a different problem than the points games above: they make partnership, not handicap, the thing that decides the day.

Vegas is the volatile one. Two two-person teams combine their scores into a two-digit number each hole — the lower individual score goes first, so a 4 and a 5 become 45, not 54 or 9. Compare that number to the other team's, and the difference is the point swing for the hole. Make a birdie and you get to flip the opposing team's number, turning their 46 into 64 and blowing the gap wide open. One good hole can be worth more than the rest of the round combined, which is exactly why groups either love this format or ban it after one round.

Wolf solves a related but different itch — rotating partner selection hole by hole, which we've already covered in detail on its own page. If your group likes the idea of shifting alliances but wants something with fixed math instead of Wolf's on-the-fly captain calls, Hollywood (also called Sixes or Round Robin) is the format to bring instead. Four players split into three separate six-hole matches, with everyone partnering with everyone else exactly once across the round. Each six-hole segment is scored as a best-ball match — lowest combined net score between partners wins each hole in that segment, and the segment's bet gets settled before you rotate again.

The honest upside of Hollywood is that a lopsided matchup only lasts six holes instead of eighteen. From what I've noticed playing this with our group, the guys who normally check out mentally by hole 12 stay locked in, because they know a fresh partner and a fresh six-hole bet are coming no matter how the first segment went.

For groups that want teamwork built into every single shot instead of just the scoring, the alternate-shot formats are worth knowing. Scotch (also called Foursomes) has partners hit one ball, alternating every stroke — whoever tees off on odd holes keeps teeing off on odd holes, and there's no shared decision-making at any point. Chapman (sometimes called Pinehurst) softens that: both partners tee off, then the team picks the better drive, switches to the other player's ball for the second shot, picks the better result again, and plays alternate shot the rest of the way in. It rewards a team that actually communicates, and it punishes a team that doesn't — which, depending on who you're playing with, is either the fun part or the reason to skip it.

Then there's the argument almost every group has at some point without realizing it's an argument: best ball versus four ball. The honest answer is that they're the same format wearing two names. Every player plays their own ball the entire hole, and the team's score is whichever partner shot lower. "Better ball" tends to get used for two-person teams and "four ball" is the official USGA name for the same setup — the confusion is real, but the rules aren't actually in dispute. A shamble is the format worth knowing if your group likes best ball's individual accountability but wants a forgiving tee shot: everybody drives, the team picks the best one, and then every player plays their own ball in from that spot for the rest of the hole.

The One-Against-Everybody Formats

Some Saturdays, somebody just wants to feel like the whole group is coming for them — and a few formats are built exactly for that.

Banker rotates a single player into the role of "the house" each hole, playing their ball against the field instead of a partner. Before teeing off, the other players each decide how much to wager against the banker within an agreed range, and the banker can press to double the action once everyone's committed. It's simple to explain and it keeps every player engaged on every hole, because there's always a personal bet riding even if the group score doesn't matter to you that day.

Rabbit works on possession instead of points. The first player to win a hole outright — no ties — captures the rabbit and holds it until somebody else wins a hole outright. Whoever's holding the rabbit at the turn wins half the pot, and whoever's holding it on 18 wins the rest. It rewards aggressive play late in each nine, since you genuinely want to be the one who wins hole 9 or hole 18 outright, not just play it safe.

Aces and Deuces (sometimes called Acey-Deucey) is the bluntest of the bunch. On every hole, the low score — the "ace" — collects an agreed amount from each of the other players, and the high score — the "deuce" — pays that same amount to everyone else. Everyone in the middle is unaffected. It's a format built for a group that wants stakes attached to literally every hole without any running totals or point conversions to argue about at the 19th.

My guess is these formats work best with a group that already trusts each other with money, since the whole appeal is that somebody's paying somebody else after almost every hole. Jim said "where'd that come from" the first time we tried Banker, mostly because he'd lost four holes in a row and hadn't expected to be carrying cash to the turn.

The Side Bets That Turn One Bad Hole Into a Story

Not every format needs to run the whole round. Some of the best games in golf are layered on top of whatever you're already playing, and they exist purely to make one specific moment — a three-putt, a snap decision, a declared bet — worth something.

Snake punishes three-putts specifically. The first player to three-putt in the round "holds the snake" and stays stuck with it until somebody else three-putts, at which point it passes. Whoever's holding the snake when the round ends owes the agreed amount to everyone else. It's the rare golf bet that has nothing to do with your score and everything to do with one skill — and it makes a group genuinely nervous about lag putts they'd otherwise breeze through.

Money Ball works differently — a player declares a money ball before teeing off on a specific hole, and if that ball makes birdie, everyone else in the group pays out; if it makes double bogey or worse, the declaring player pays everyone else instead. Lose the ball entirely and the payout doubles. It's a format that rewards knowing when to be bold and when to sit a hole out.

Then there's the whole category our group just calls "trash" or "junk" — Sandies (par or better after being in a bunker), Barkies (par or better after hitting a tree), Greenies (closest to the pin on a par 3 that also makes par), and Arnies (making par without ever touching the fairway). Each is worth a small, agreed amount, and none of them require you to be winning the actual round to cash in. Between work and the kids, most of us can't guarantee a good scorecard on a Saturday morning, but almost everybody can point to one Arnie or Sandie from a round that would've otherwise been forgettable — and that's really the whole appeal of trash bets. They give the worst round of the month a moment worth remembering.

What We Actually Play Most Saturdays

Honestly, our regular group still plays a version of Nassau and Skins most weeks — Nassau explained properly and Skins done right are still the default for a reason: everybody already knows them, and low effort is sometimes exactly what a Saturday morning needs. But every few months, somebody brings something from this list, and it's usually because the usual way we settle bets was starting to feel stale, not because Nassau stopped working.

Chicago comes out whenever we've got a wide handicap spread for the day. Hollywood shows up on the Saturdays where somebody's clearly having an off day and we don't want them stuck playing the same partner for 18 holes of a bad round. And Snake gets added onto almost anything when we want an extra reason to actually hole out those four-footers instead of picking up.

That's really the whole point of learning more than three games. It's not about being the guy with the most golf trivia — it's that a group with more than one format in its back pocket can fix a boring round in real time instead of just grinding through it. How we handicap our weekend game so it's actually fair covers the bigger version of this same idea: the format is a tool, and a group that knows more than one tool tends to have more fun, more often, for longer.

If you're the guy who shows up with a new game exactly when the current one's gotten stale, you become the reason people want you in the group — not because you're the best player, but because you made the round better. That's worth more over a few years than a low handicap ever will be.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the easiest new golf betting game to introduce to a set group? Nine Point and Chicago are the two easiest to explain in under a minute, because both come down to a single number per hole with no exceptions to memorize. Aces and Deuces is even simpler mechanically, but it moves money on every single hole, so it suits a group that's already comfortable betting heavily.

Do you need exactly four players for most of these formats? Most of the team formats — Vegas, Hollywood, Scotch, Chapman, Best Ball — are built around two two-person teams, so yes, four is standard. Nine Point exists specifically for three players, and formats like Chicago, Banker, Snake, and Money Ball work fine with any group size since they're scored individually rather than by team.

How does a points game like Chicago actually handle a big handicap gap fairly? Because every player's target is set from their own course handicap before the round, a 24-handicapper and a 6-handicapper are both trying to beat their own number, not each other's raw score. A blow-up hole also costs nothing beyond zero points, which keeps a higher handicapper competitive deep into the back nine instead of falling out of contention by hole 6.

What's the actual difference between best ball and four ball? There isn't one — they're the same format under two names. "Four ball" is the official term used in the Rules of Golf, while "best ball" and "better ball" are the casual names most weekend groups use for the identical setup: everyone plays their own ball, and the lower score on the team counts.

Can you play more than one of these games in the same round? Yes, and most groups do without thinking about it — Snake, Money Ball, and the trash bets (Sandies, Barkies, Greenies, Arnies) are all designed to sit on top of whatever main game you're playing. Just agree on all the side bets before the first tee shot so nobody's negotiating stakes mid-round.

More Ways to Make Your Regular Game Better

• How to Introduce Betting to Friends Who've Never Wagered on Golf
• What to Do When Someone Welshes on a Golf Bet
• Settling Up Without Killing the Vibe
• The Unwritten Rules of Betting on Golf

What's the One Golf Question You Can't Shake?

I've played the same Saturday group for 25 years, and there's one argument that still comes up almost every single round: gimme distance. Some weeks it's a foot. Some weeks it's "anything inside the leash." Nobody's ever agreed, and nobody ever will.

Sound familiar?

Here's the thing nobody talks about: most golf advice is written for guys trying to shave strokes off their score. I'd rather write about what actually trips up golfers like us — the bet that turned into a real argument on 15, the etiquette question you're too embarrassed to ask your own group, or the thing you've been quietly Googling the night before your Saturday tee time.

So here's where you come in.

Tell me your #1 question — about the games, the group, the trips, the unwritten rules, whatever's actually bugging you — and I'll use it to shape what gets written next on this site. Takes about two minutes, and I read every single submission myself.

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