Aces & Deuces: The Golf Bet That Doesn't Care What You Shot on 17

I have never once collected money at the end of a Nassau. Not because I'm bad — I'm a boring, steady, mid-pack bogey golfer, which turns out to be the single worst profile for winning a match play bet against three other guys who are either much better or much worse than me. By the 18th green I'm usually just handing over a five and pretending I meant to lose that way.

Then one Saturday, Mike suggested we run Aces & Deuces on the back nine as a side game, and by the 15th hole I'd made more money than I had all season — off one par, on one hole, that had nothing to do with how the rest of my round went.

Aces & Deuces (also called Acey-Deucey) is a hole-by-hole golf betting game for a foursome where the lowest score on each hole — the Ace — collects a set amount from the other three players, and the highest score — the Deuce — pays a set amount to the other three. Every hole resets. It doesn't matter what you shot on the last one, and it doesn't matter what you're about to shoot on the next.

That's the whole appeal, and it's why this is the side bet I'd recommend to anyone whose group has a guy like me in it — the guy who's never going to win the round, but might just win the hole.

So What Exactly Is Aces & Deuces?

It's one of the smaller entries in Golfeaser's Games & Bets library, but don't let "smaller" fool you — the setup is simple enough to explain on the first tee and never have to explain again. Four players, one round, and two bets running on every single hole instead of one big bet running over eighteen.

On each hole, whoever posts the lowest score becomes the "Ace" for that hole. Whoever posts the highest score becomes the "Deuce." The two players in the middle are neither — they're just along for the ride on that particular hole, which matters more than it sounds like it should.

Before you start, the group agrees on two numbers: the Ace bet and the Deuce bet. The traditional ratio is 2-to-1 — if the Deuce bet is a dollar, the Ace bet is two. You can run it for pocket change or real money; the mechanics don't change, only how much attention everyone's paying on the 16th tee.

That last point is the one people underestimate. In a Nassau, one bad stretch of holes can put you so far down that the last five holes are just formality. In Aces & Deuces, hole 14 genuinely doesn't care about hole 13.

How the Money Actually Moves on Each Hole

This is the part that trips up a foursome the first time they play it, because there are technically two bets stacking on top of each other on every hole, not one.

Say your group sets the Ace bet at two dollars and the Deuce bet at one dollar — the standard split. On a given hole, you shoot a 4, Dave shoots a 5, Mike shoots a 5, and Jim shoots a 6. You're the low score, so you're the Ace. Jim's the high score, so he's the Deuce.

Here's where it stacks: as the Ace, you collect the two-dollar Ace bet from all three of the others — that's six dollars. But you also collect the one-dollar Deuce bet from Jim, because he owes it to everyone, including you. So your total for the hole is seven dollars.

Jim, as the Deuce, owes the one-dollar Deuce bet to all three other players — three dollars there. But he also owes the two-dollar Ace bet to you, on top of it, because he didn't win the hole either. His total for the hole is five dollars out.

Dave and Mike, stuck in the middle, aren't off the hook completely — they each pay the two-dollar Ace bet to you, but they each collect the one-dollar Deuce bet from Jim. Net, they're down a dollar apiece on a hole where they didn't do anything particularly wrong. That's the part that stings the first time it happens to you — unlike a straight Nassau bet, simply staying out of last place still costs you something.

The running total in that example is the entire pitch for this game. Two quiet middle holes and one bad hole as the Deuce put you down seven dollars — a real hole in your pocket if that were a Nassau press. But one Ace on hole 15 puts you right back to even. You didn't need a good round. You needed one good hole.

Why This Is the Side Bet for the Guy Stuck in the Middle

Every group has a guy like me — not the low handicap who's cashing the Nassau every week, not the high handicap everyone quietly plays down to, just a steady, unremarkable player who finishes third in a foursome of four almost by default. The big-picture bets were never designed to reward that guy. Aces & Deuces is.

The math is the reason why. Over eighteen holes, the best player in your group is probably going to win more Ace holes than anyone else — that part's not a surprise. But Aces & Deuces doesn't require you to be the best player over eighteen holes. It requires you to be the best player on one hole, at one moment, and every hole is a fresh chance at that.

I'm not totally sure why, but there's something about a bet that resets every hole that keeps you locked in even when your round is going sideways. Playing once a week with a group that's gotten a little too comfortable letting the same guy win the big bet every time, this was the first side game in years that had all four of us actually watching each other's putts on the 15th green instead of just walking to our carts.

The rest of the Games Library is full of formats built around a whole round — Wolf, Nassau, Vegas. Aces & Deuces belongs to a smaller family that's built around a single hole, over and over, alongside games like Skins and Money Ball — which is exactly why it's the one that gets the guy who never wins the main event a real shot at walking off 18 up on the day. You're always just one good drive and one clean two-putt away from cashing in — which, if you've read anything else on this site, is basically the whole Golfeaser worldview in miniature.

It's also, quietly, one of the better ways to impress a group that's stopped expecting much from you. Nobody remembers your 94. Everybody remembers the hole where you aced three guys out of their money on a par-3 you usually double-bogey.

Setting Fair Stakes Without Wrecking the Afternoon

The 2-to-1 Ace-to-Deuce ratio is standard for a reason — it makes the Ace worth chasing without making the Deuce catastrophic. Where groups get into trouble is scaling both numbers up before anyone's actually played a round of it.

Start smaller than feels exciting. A one-dollar Deuce bet and a two-dollar Ace bet sounds like nothing, but run it across eighteen holes with four players and the money moves faster than any of you expect — the same way it does in almost every golf betting game once you actually watch it stack up hole after hole instead of just imagining the total.

The other thing worth saying out loud before hole 1: this game is roughest on the group's actual worst player, not the group's unluckiest player. If your foursome has a real skill gap — a low single-digit handicap mixed in with someone who's newer to the game — a game built for a wide handicap range is going to make everyone happier than running Aces & Deuces on gross scores and watching the same guy pay out on every hole.

What Happens When Two Guys Tie?

Ties come up more than you'd think, especially on a par-3 where three of you are staring at the same 15-footer for par. Most groups keep it simple: if two players tie for low score, or two tie for high score, that particular bet just doesn't pay out for the hole. Nobody's the Ace, nobody's the Deuce, everyone shakes hands and moves to the next tee.

Some groups play it with a carryover instead — if nobody claims the Ace this hole, the Ace bet doubles and rolls to the next hole where someone does win outright. That version adds real drama to a round that's gone quiet, but it also means one unlucky stretch of ties can turn into a genuinely expensive hole once it finally breaks. Decide which version you're playing before the round starts, not when the first tie actually happens — that's the moment two guys with different memories of "how we usually play it" start arguing on the tee box.

There's a messier version of the tie that's worth planning for too: what happens when the Ace and Deuce tie with each other, not with a third player. It sounds unlikely until you're standing on a par-3 where the lowest score and the highest score are separated by a single stroke and somebody in the middle just matched one of them. My guess is this comes up more on short par-3s than anywhere else, since a smaller spread of possible scores makes ties naturally more common. Whatever your group decides — no payout, or the whole hole gets scrapped entirely — write it down somewhere everyone can see it, because "we'll figure it out when it happens" is exactly how a friendly side bet turns into a fifteen-minute conversation on the tee box while the group behind you waits. Settling bets without anyone getting mad almost always comes down to deciding the boring stuff before the round, not during it.

Playing With Handicaps So One Guy Isn't Funding the Round

Run this game with gross scores and a group that's all roughly the same handicap, and it plays exactly the way it's supposed to — tense, fast, and fair. Run it with gross scores and a real spread in ability, and you'll find the same guy is the Deuce on hole after hole, which stops being a fun side bet and starts being a slow bleed.

The fix is net scoring. Apply each player's course handicap the way you would in any other format, subtract strokes on the holes where they're due, and rank the net scores instead of the raw ones. It takes an extra thirty seconds of arithmetic per hole and it's the difference between a beginner enjoying the game and a beginner dreading the back nine.

If your group runs a genuine mixed-handicap foursome most Saturdays, it's worth reading up on how other formats handle uneven groups before you assume Aces & Deuces is the right side bet for that particular lineup. Some games are built for a wide spread. This one's better with a tighter one, or with handicaps doing the leveling.

Does It Work With Three Players? Six?

The classic version is a foursome, and honestly, that's where it plays best — four scores on a hole means a real Ace and a real Deuce almost every time, with two guys genuinely stuck in the middle feeling the squeeze. Drop to three players and the "middle" disappears entirely; someone's always either winning or losing the hole outright, which makes the swings bigger and the round more volatile than most groups want on a lazy Saturday.

Stretch it past four and the math still works, but the middle gets crowded — with six players, four guys are just quietly losing a dollar to the Deuce and paying two to the Ace on almost every hole, and the Ace's payday gets big enough that it starts to feel less like a side bet and more like the main event. If your regular group runs five or six deep, it's worth trying this once at low stakes before you commit a whole round's worth of money to it.

The Argument Aces & Deuces Always Causes

Every golf betting game has one dispute it produces more than any other, and for this one it's the "gimme" argument. Someone's got a tap-in for what would be the low score on the hole, someone else picks it up and calls it good before it's actually in the cup, and now there's a real question about whether that score counts as the Ace.

My honest take: settle this before the round, not in the moment. Either you're playing everything holed out for money bets — which is the cleaner, more honest version — or you're allowing reasonable gimmes and trusting the group to be fair about what "reasonable" means. What you can't do is decide it hole-by-hole based on who benefits, because that's exactly the kind of thing the unwritten etiquette around betting on the course exists to prevent. Dave asked me once why I was suddenly so strict about gimmes on the Deuce holes and not the neutral ones — fair question, and the honest answer is I wasn't being strict, I was being consistent, which felt different in the moment and looked identical from the outside.

The second-most-common argument is about pace. This is a game that rewards paying close attention to everyone's score on every hole, and that attention has a way of turning a quick nine into a slow one if you let it. Keep the scoring conversation to the walk between green and next tee, not a standing debate on the green itself, and the game adds tension to your round instead of time to it.

The third one only shows up once a season, but it's the ugliest: someone accuses the group of "gunning for" whoever's currently the Deuce, playing more conservatively around them, or subtly rooting against them on the green. Between work and the kids, our group only plays together once a week, and the last thing any of us wants is a side bet that makes the round feel personal instead of fun. If you notice a group sliding that direction, the fix isn't to stop keeping score — it's to say the quiet part out loud. Remind everyone the Deuce resets next hole, the money's small, and nobody's actually being ganged up on. Jim said it best after a rough stretch a few summers back: "It's a dollar, not a verdict." That's stuck with our group ever since, and it's usually enough to get everyone back to just playing golf.

What You Actually Have When You're Done

You don't need to be the best golfer in your group to walk off eighteen with money in your pocket. You need one hole where you're better than three other guys, and Aces & Deuces gives you eighteen separate chances at that instead of one long one. That's the entire reason this side game earns a permanent spot in the rotation once a group tries it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Aces & Deuces the same thing as Acey-Deucey?

Yes — same game, two different names depending on which part of the country your group learned it in. The rules, the 2-to-1 bet ratio, and the low-score-wins-high-score-pays structure are identical either way.

Can you play Aces & Deuces as your only bet, or is it a side game?

Most groups run it as a side game alongside a Nassau or match play bet, since it adds hole-by-hole tension without replacing the bigger, round-long stakes. There's nothing stopping you from running it as the only bet of the day — it works fine on its own, especially with a group that gets bored waiting for a Nassau to develop.

What happens if someone picks up their ball without finishing the hole?

If a player doesn't hole out, they typically can't be the Ace for that hole since there's no confirmed low score, but they can still end up the Deuce if their score before picking up was already the worst. Decide before the round whether a pickup defaults to "worst score" or removes that player from the hole's bets entirely.

Does Aces & Deuces work for a two-person or three-person group?

Three players works but plays rougher, since there's no middle ground — every hole, someone's winning and someone's losing outright, with no one just paying the small side. It's not really built for two players at all, since with two scores there's always exactly one Ace and one Deuce and the whole "stuck in the middle" dynamic disappears.

How much should a beginner group bet per hole?

Start lower than feels worth it — a fifty-cent Deuce bet and a one-dollar Ace bet is plenty to feel the tension without anyone dreading a bad stretch. You can always raise it once the group's actually played a full round and knows how the money moves.

Keep the Games Library Going

• Wolf vs. Nassau: Which Actually Keeps a Foursome Happy
• The Quiet Joy of a $2 Skins Game
• The Made-Up Bets Our Group Still Plays
• What to Do When Someone Welshes on a Golf Bet
• Money Ball: The Side Bet That Turns One Random Hole Into the Whole Round

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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