Golf games
Parful runs thisPrivate challenges and club pools
Also called Private challenges, Club pools, Side game pools, Member games.
On Parful a game is either a private challenge or a club pool. A private challenge is created by a member from the scorecard and visible only to the players in it. A club pool is run by a manager across the field, with a buy-in, entrant states and payout lines. Clubs can also let members start shared games.
- Private challenge
- Created by a member from the scorecard; visible to its players only
- Club pool
- Created by a manager across the field; public, participants only, or admin only
- Pool money
- Buy-in per entrant; pot equals paid entrants times the buy-in
- Entrant states
- Unpaid, paid, waived, refunded
- Payout lines
- Pot split in proportion to units won; pending, paid or waived
- Member shared games
- On by default; the club can turn them off
Two kinds of game
Every game on a Parful outing reads the same official scores and writes none. What differs is who runs it and who can see it. A private challenge belongs to the players in it: one member starts it from the group scorecard, invites the others, and only those players can read it. It never appears on a public leaderboard. A club pool belongs to the outing: a manager sets it up for the whole field or a chosen list, and it sits alongside the competition results with a buy-in and a pot.
The arithmetic underneath is shared: Skins between four friends and Skins across sixty players resolve through the same engine.
Private challenges
A challenge is always private. It is created from the scorecard by a member playing in the outing, picks a game from the catalog, and names its participants from the group or, for group games, from other groups. Guests can be in a challenge and are scored from the group's device; a guest cannot accept a wager, so a challenge with a guest runs without one.
A challenge moves through invited, accepted and active as players respond and scores arrive, and lands on resolved when the outing is closed out. Group games freeze their rosters once enough players have accepted, so a late change to the outing's groups does not rewrite a game in progress. The creator can edit the label and safe settings during play; the kind, the participants and anything to do with money are fixed.
Cancelling is undoable while the outing is open: the game keeps its players, settings and result and can be reopened. After close-out the result is frozen; if the outing is reopened for corrections the challenge reactivates and follows the new scores.
Club pools
A pool is a manager's tool. The manager picks the game, Skins, Nassau, Birdie Pool, Greenies, Sandies or Fewest Putts, chooses gross, net or both, sets who is in, and chooses the visibility: public on the outing page, participants only, or admin only. A pool can carry a buy-in. Until anyone is marked paid the pot is an estimate, the buy-in times the number of entrants; once the manager records money the pot is paid entrants times the buy-in and reads zero if every payment is reversed.
Each entrant is unpaid, paid, waived or refunded, and can opt out. Marking an entrant paid writes a line in the club's financial ledger; marking them unpaid voids it. Fewest Putts does not yet take a buy-in, because it ranks ascending and the payout rule assumes the top row won the most.
Settling the pool recomputes the results one last time, freezes them, and generates payout lines from the standings: the pot splits in proportion to units won, floored to whole cents, with the rounding remainder going to the top winner. Each line is pending until the manager marks it paid or waived. If scores change after settling the pool shows drift rather than silently changing; unsettling voids the pending lines, keeps any that were paid, and reopens the game.
How Parful runs it
Every game, private or pooled, recomputes on each score and fact write, so standings are live. A player sees the challenges they are in and nothing else; a manager sees every pool and every member game. Nothing a game does can change an official score, a competition result or a standings table.
Money on a pool is a record of what was collected and what is owed, kept in the club's ledger. Parful does not collect the buy-in or pay the winners; the manager does, and marks it done.
Worked example
A worked example: settling a Skins pool
A club runs a net Skins pool with a $10 buy-in. Twelve players entered; eleven paid and one was waived. The pot is 11 times $10, which is $110. Six skins were won on the day.
| Player | Skins won | Share of 6 | Line (110 x share, floored) | Remainder | Payout line |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ana | 3 | 3 of 6 | $55.00 | +$0.01 | $55.01 pending |
| Ben | 2 | 2 of 6 | $36.66 | $36.66 pending | |
| Cal | 1 | 1 of 6 | $18.33 | $18.33 pending | |
| Nine others | 0 | No line |
- The waived entrant is in the game and can win skins, but does not count toward the pot because only paid entrants do.
- When the manager marks Ana's line paid, it stays paid even if the pool is later unsettled; only the pending lines are voided.
Common variants
- Pool for a chosen list
- A pool can name its entrants instead of taking the whole field, for example a flight or a division. Entrants are drawn from the outing's confirmed players and late joiners can be admitted.
- Custom bet as a private challenge
- The Custom bet game records who is in and nothing else; the players settle it themselves. It is the one game available on scramble formats.
- Admin-only pools
- A pool set to admin visibility never shows on the outing page. Managers use it to run a quiet sweep or to check a game before publishing it.