Golf games
Parful runs thisWagers and settlement
Also called Golf bets, Settling up, Who owes whom, Stakes.
A wager on a Parful game attaches a value to a result the game has already decided: so much per unit, or an ante pot, in units or as a currency reference. Every person financially affected accepts the terms before the wager is live, the ledger is zero-sum, and Parful shows who owes whom without moving any money.
- Denomination
- Units, or a currency reference amount
- Modes
- Per unit on each component, or an ante pot on the overall result
- Components
- Overall, front, back, per hole, presses, depending on the game
- Consent
- Every affected person accepts individually; a guest in the game blocks it
- Ledger
- Zero-sum to the cent, minimal pairwise payments
- Money moved by Parful
- None, ever
What a wager is on Parful
The game decides the golf. The wager decides what the golf is worth. Parful keeps the two apart: a Nassau resolves its three legs identically with no bet, one unit a leg or 50 dollars a leg, and the wager layer then values the components the game already produced. It never recomputes a score.
A wager has a denomination and an amount. Units are the plain version: the result is a count of units won and lost and the group decides afterwards what a unit means. A currency reference states an amount per unit in dollars, for display only, so the ledger reads in money. Both run through the same arithmetic.
Components, modes and presses
Each game exposes the components it can value. A Nassau has front, back and overall; Skins has a per-hole component; a match has an overall; Presses has the main bet and each press. Every component can carry its own amount, or fall back to the wager's base amount.
The overall component can run in one of two modes. Per unit pays the amount for every unit of difference in the result, which is how a Wolf points margin or a match won 3 and 2 turns into money. An ante pot has each participant put in the amount, the pot is the amount times the number of players, and the player or players with the most units split it; each person's net is their share minus their own ante. A pot is available on the overall component only.
Presses are either manual, where a player declares a press from a hole and a new bet runs from there to the finish, or off. A wager can also carry a maximum exposure, a cap on what any one person can win or lose.
Nobody is in a bet they did not accept
A wager is proposed with the challenge and is not live until every financially affected person has accepted it. The affected set is derived on the server: every participant who has not declined. Accepting the game is not accepting the bet; a partner's acceptance is never consent for another person; and a guest in the game blocks the wager entirely, because a guest cannot sign in to accept.
The terms are versioned. If the creator changes the amount, a component or the cap, the version moves on and everyone accepts again. Until the wager is active it produces nothing: no obligations, no ledger, only a note of how many are still to accept.
From result to ledger
When the wager is active, Parful values each component into raw obligations per person, adds them up, applies the cap if there is one, and derives the final obligations. Raw obligations are kept as the explanation; the capped figures are what gets settled. A cap clamps every person's figure to the limit and scales the other side proportionally so the total still sums to zero.
All arithmetic is in whole cents. A pot split three ways gives the remainder cents one each to the first winners in a fixed order, so 20 dollars across three players is 6.67, 6.67 and 6.66 every time. The final step is a minimal pairwise ledger: the largest debtor pays the largest creditor first, so a four-player game rarely needs more than three payments.
How Parful runs it
The ledger is a display. Parful holds no balances, takes no payments, and has no connection between a wager and any club financial record or card processor. It shows the raw component breakdown, the final obligations and the pairwise payments, and the players settle between themselves.
Results freeze at close-out. When the outing is closed the challenge is resolved and its settlement stops recomputing; if the outing is reopened and rescored the challenge reactivates and the ledger follows the corrected scores. A challenge marked settled, meaning the money has changed hands, never reactivates on its own.
Worked example
A worked example: Wolf at one dollar a point, then with a cap
Four players finish a Wolf game on Cal 6 points, Ana 3, Ben 3, Dee 3. Points become zero-sum units by comparing each player against the field: units equal own points times four, minus the total of 15.
| Player | Points | Units (points x 4 minus 15) | At $1 per unit | With a $6 cap | Ledger |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cal | 6 | 24 minus 15 = +9 | +$9.00 | +$6.00 | Receives $2.00 from each of Ana, Ben and Dee |
| Ana | 3 | 12 minus 15 = -3 | -$3.00 | -$2.00 | Pays Cal $2.00 |
| Ben | 3 | 12 minus 15 = -3 | -$3.00 | -$2.00 | Pays Cal $2.00 |
| Dee | 3 | 12 minus 15 = -3 | -$3.00 | -$2.00 | Pays Cal $2.00 |
- Without the cap the ledger is three payments of $3 to Cal. With it, three of $2. The raw figures stay visible as the explanation.
- Had the group chosen an ante pot of $5 instead, the pot would be $20, Cal would net $15 and each of the others would be down $5.
Common variants
- Legacy stakes
- Challenges created before the versioned wager carried a simple per-point or per-game stake without individual acceptance. They still resolve the old way and are shown as legacy.
- Group games settle per person
- In 30/40 Balls and Money Ball the game says which group won and the wager decides the distribution: each loser owes exactly the stake and the total splits across the winners with the same remainder rule.
- No wager at all
- Every game runs without one. Honest John never takes a wager by ruling, and a Custom bet records who is in while the players settle themselves.