Skins Game Rules: How to Play and Settle Up
A skins game is the easiest golf bet to start and the most fun to finish. Every hole is worth a “skin” — and there’s no second place.
The basic rule
Each hole is a separate mini-contest. The lowest score on a hole wins the skin. That’s it. If you make a 4 and everyone else makes 5 or worse, the skin is yours.
You can play skins with any number of players — twosomes, foursomes, the whole outing. Everyone plays for themselves; it’s not teams.
Ties carry over: the “push”
Here’s the wrinkle that makes skins exciting: if two or more players tie for low on a hole, nobody wins it — the skin carries over to the next hole.
So if holes 1 and 2 are tied and you win hole 3 outright, you don’t win one skin — you win three (the carried-over skins from 1 and 2, plus 3). A quiet round can swing on a single birdie when four or five skins are riding on one hole.
How much is a skin worth?
Pick a dollar value per skin — $1, $5, whatever the group’s comfortable with — or play for nothing and just chase bragging rights. At the end, count each player’s skins, multiply by the value, and the math nets out: skin-winners collect from everyone else.
Net skins (with handicaps)
To keep it fair across different abilities, play net skins: each player’s handicap strokes are applied to the holes where they get them, and the lowest net score wins the skin. A 20-handicap getting a stroke on the number-1 handicap hole can win a skin with a net 3.
Settling up
The annoying part of skins is the bookkeeping — tracking carryovers across 18 holes and counting everyone’s skins at the turn and the end. That’s exactly what BirdieBoard does automatically: enter scores hole by hole, and it tallies the skins (carryovers included), net or gross, and tells you who owes who when you walk off the 18th.