Golf Vacation Games - Vegas

The personal favourite of our company President, Vegas is game that keeps all players integrally involved for the duration of the round and has the ever present element of the big payout or better yet, the big payoff!

Vegas is a game or pairings. One twosome against the other so split your foursome into two pairings before teeing off. When you split your teams you can decide how you want to work with your handicaps. Generally it is more interesting and equitable if play off the low man’s handicap. In Vegas, just like skins, whether you shoot a 66 or and 86, your individual score at the end of the round is really inconsequential. It is how your team does on each hole that counts. Each player’s score on the hole, no matter how bad, does count toward the team score though, so you have to make sure you stay in the game the whole way. Here’s how it works.

At the end of each hole, each player’s score becomes a digit in their team’s score. In our first pairing (lets call them Team ‘A’) one player shoots a 4 and the other shoots a 6. Their team score for that hole therefore becomes a 46 (the lowest score always goes first). Their opponents (lets call them Team ‘B’) shoot a 5 and a 7. Their score for that hole therefore becomes a 57. The difference between the two team-scores is 11. Therefore the low team, Team ‘A’ wins 11 points. Straight forward enough right? You continue this scoring method throughout the round, determining which team wins the points on each hole and how many points they have won until the round is completed. When the round is done you total up each team’s points and pay the winning team according to their margin of victory. In our example lets say Team ‘A’ finished with a total of 42 points and Team ‘B’, thanks to few big holes, finished with 74 points. Team ‘A’ therefore owes Team ‘B’ the value of 32 points. If you decided, before the game, to play for a buck a point then Team ‘A’ owes Team ‘B’ $32 bucks (basically they buy lunch on the deck after the round).

What makes Vegas such a great game though is a few scoring rules that make it possible for things to swing quickly. When a player birdies a hole whatever points his/her team may win on that hole are automatically doubled. If a team eagles a hole, their points are tripled. For example if Team ‘A’ scores a 5 and a 6 on a par five and Team ‘B’ score a 3 and a 5. The difference is 21 points. Team ‘B’ got an eagle on that hole though so the difference is tripled and Team ‘B’ actually wins 63 points! This means that no matter whether one team has been beaten five holes in a row, they are never out of the game and every shot, even the two-footers, are crucial. The end result is round of golf with lots of friendly ribbing and clutch shots. And after all, isn’t that what playing with your buddies is all about?

If you want to try a high roller’s version of this Vegas, try a version called Monte Carlo. In this version a team score is calculated by multiplying the numbers together. Therefore in our example from the top Team ‘A’s score of 4 and 6 becomes 24 and Team ‘B’s score becomes 35. The net difference is still 11 but with the multiplicative nature of Monte the point differences can quickly add-up.