Competition formats
Rules and explanation onlyVegas as a competition format
Also called Daytona, Las Vegas golf format, Vegas team competition.
Vegas is a pairs game in which each side's two hole scores are joined into a two-digit number, lower digit first, and the difference between the two sides' numbers on each hole is the points won or lost. It is a bet between two pairs, not a field competition; Parful scores it as a side game only.
- Played as
- Own ball, two fixed pairs in one group
- Side score
- The two hole scores joined, lower digit first: a 4 and a 5 make 45
- Points
- The difference between the two sides' numbers on each hole
- Ranked by
- Biggest accumulated gap over the round
- On Parful
- A side game from the group card, gross or net; no competition format
How Vegas works
Four players in two fixed pairs. Everyone plays their own ball. On each hole a pair takes its two scores and writes them as one two-digit number with the lower score first: a 4 and a 5 is 45, a 3 and a 6 is 36, two 5s is 55. The other pair does the same. The difference between the two numbers is the number of points the lower pair wins on the hole.
The points accumulate across the round and the pair with the bigger total gap wins. Because the digits are placed low first, one bad score is expensive: a 4 and an 8 is 48, but a 3 and an 8 is 38, so the good score and the disaster both matter. Played net, each player's strokes are taken off before the digits are placed.
Why it is not a competition format
Vegas produces a result between two sides, not a score a field can be ranked on. A pair's number on a hole means nothing without the other pair's number on the same hole, and a pair's points total means nothing except against the pair it played. Twelve groups playing Vegas produce twelve separate results with no common scale, which is why no committee ranks a field on it and why the World Handicap System™ has no Vegas allowance.
A club that wants a Vegas day runs it by hand: every group plays its own Vegas, each group reports the winning pair and the margin, and the committee either awards a prize per group or ranks the winning pairs by margin.
What Parful does
Parful scores Vegas as a side game. A member starts it from the group scorecard on any own-ball round, names the two pairs, and the app builds each side's two-digit number on every hole from the scores the group is already keeping, tracks the running gap, and shows who owes whom at the end. Gross or net is chosen when the game is started, and a stake can be attached as a wager that Parful displays and never moves.
Parful does not run Vegas as a competition format: there is no Vegas competition type on Clubs or Events and no Vegas leaderboard across a field. A club that wants a Vegas day runs the competition it is really playing, usually four-ball or best 2 of 4, and lets each group add Vegas from the card.
Worked example
A worked example: six holes between two pairs
Ana and Ben against Cal and Dee, gross scores, no flip rule. Each side's number is its two scores with the lower first; the difference is the points on the hole.
| Hole | Ana | Ben | Ana and Ben | Cal | Dee | Cal and Dee | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4 | 5 | 45 | 5 | 5 | 55 | Ana and Ben 10 |
| 2 | 5 | 6 | 56 | 4 | 6 | 46 | Cal and Dee 10 |
| 3 | 3 | 4 | 34 | 3 | 3 | 33 | Cal and Dee 1 |
| 4 | 4 | 8 | 48 | 5 | 5 | 55 | Ana and Ben 7 |
| 5 | 4 | 4 | 44 | 3 | 6 | 36 | Cal and Dee 8 |
| 6 | 3 | 5 | 35 | 4 | 4 | 44 | Ana and Ben 9 |
- Hole 4 shows why the low digit goes first: Ben's 8 made 48, which still beat two 5s. The bad score sits in the units column where it does the least harm.
Common variants
- Flip on a birdie
- A birdie by one side reverses the other side's digits for the hole. The most common Vegas rule and the one that makes a bad score truly dangerous. Parful scores the plain game; a group playing flips settles them between themselves.
- Capped points
- No hole can swing more than an agreed number of points, often 10 or 20. A variant Parful does not score.