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2 hours ago, Groucho Valentine said:

Net skins games are the worst. Do gross only. Even a 30 handicap can drop a birdie or two and win one natural. Nassau's or other match play type side games you can work the handicap in. 

As a 17 HCP I would never agree to play gross skins with a +1 for money - I would not have any type of reasonable chance of coming out on top.  And I would also not play a net skins match with a +1 because there is a chance I would win which in my experience causes too much distress for the better golfer.  Play matches with golfers of similar ability to your game where you can play gross or perhaps a golfer is getting no more than 1 or 2 stokes per side. 

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29 minutes ago, NJpatbee said:

As a 17 HCP I would never agree to play gross skins with a +1 for money - I would not have any type of reasonable chance of coming out on top.  And I would also not play a net skins match with a +1 because there is a chance I would win which in my experience causes too much distress for the better golfer.  Play matches with golfers of similar ability to your game where you can play gross or perhaps a golfer is getting no more than 1 or 2 stokes per side. 

Why not? We're pretty nice people. Most skins i play in are birdies only, sometimes pars are good. Anyone can get a natural birdie on a single hole and possibly win a skin. Ive played skins with guys around your cap that have had some pretty nice days with the junk mixed in. Sandy birdie? Cha-ching! 

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3 hours ago, Groucho Valentine said:

Net skins games are the worst. Do gross only. Even a 30 handicap can drop a birdie or two and win one natural. Nassau's or other match play type side games you can work the handicap in. 

Based on some of the stats from that post, even a 15-handicap player (averaging 89 is about a 15) has about 1 birdie per 10 rounds.  Your 30-handicapper may have one or two per YEAR, if he plays a lot.

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4 minutes ago, DaveP043 said:

Based on some of the stats from that post, even a 15-handicap player (averaging 89 is about a 15) has about 1 birdie per 10 rounds.  Your 30-handicapper may have one or two per YEAR, if he plays a lot.

Hopefully they make that one count! 

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2 hours ago, Groucho Valentine said:

Why not? We're pretty nice people. Most skins i play in are birdies only, sometimes pars are good. Anyone can get a natural birdie on a single hole and possibly win a skin. Ive played skins with guys around your cap that have had some pretty nice days with the junk mixed in. Sandy birdie? Cha-ching! 

You are so typical of the scratch and near scratch golfer... you can't seem to grasp the idea that handicaps are designed to give the weaker player some hope of a modicum of success against the better player. You seem to feel that because you are a better player, you should win no matter what the circumstances.  I don't know how you can get any satisfaction from beating a bogey golfer playing him straight up.  He doesn't have  a prayer of ever coming out on top.  Like Erik said, I might make a birdie once in 5 or more rounds.  They never came easy, and as I get older, it's harder than ever to get one.

Edited by Fourputt
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12 minutes ago, Fourputt said:

Like Erik said, I might make a birdie once in 5 or more rounds.  They never came easy, and as I get older, it's harder than ever to get one.

Dave P said that, but yeah… handicaps are to level the playing field.

It doesn't generally work very well in a skins game, though. The higher handicapper has a good advantage there.

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2 minutes ago, iacas said:

Dave P said that, but yeah… handicaps are to level the playing field.

It doesn't generally work very well in a skins game, though. The higher handicapper has a good advantage there.

That's why you would have to make some sort of percentage adjustments judged on the number of players and the handicap ranges.  You can't play a wide spread of abilities gross because the better players will almost always take the money. 

By the same token, you can't put one scratch player against several bogey golfers.  While he will usually beat most of them, on any given hole one of them will jump up and beat or tie him.  However, it won't be the same bogey golfer that caps him every time, it will be a group effort. 

Saying that handicaps don't work in skins is a misleading simplification.  It may be necessary to make some adjustments to at least achieve some leveling of the playing field.  With a mixed foursome, which is how I've played most of the skins I've been involved in, it still works best to wheel off the low cap just as you would in match play.  In a larger group, it gets a lot more difficult, maybe impossible, to find a middle ground.  My men's club does net skins by flight in our tournaments, generally about 20-25 players per flight.  That way the handicaps of everyone playing for the flight skins are usually within 3 strokes, so even the lowest cap is only giving a couple of strokes to the highest.  It has worked well over the 15 years that the skins game has been a standard with our events.

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7 minutes ago, Fourputt said:

That's why you would have to make some sort of percentage adjustments judged on the number of players and the handicap ranges.  You can't play a wide spread of abilities gross because the better players will almost always take the money. 

By the same token, you can't put one scratch player against several bogey golfers.  While he will usually beat most of them, on any given hole one of them will jump up and beat or tie him.  However, it won't be the same bogey golfer that caps him every time, it will be a group effort. 

Saying that handicaps don't work in skins is a misleading simplification.  It may be necessary to make some adjustments to at least achieve some leveling of the playing field.  With a mixed foursome, which is how I've played most of the skins I've been involved in, it still works best to wheel off the low cap just as you would in match play.  In a larger group, it gets a lot more difficult, maybe impossible, to find a middle ground.  My men's club does net skins by flight in our tournaments, generally about 20-25 players per flight.  That way the handicaps of everyone playing for the flight skins are usually within 3 strokes, so even the lowest cap is only giving a couple of strokes to the highest.  It has worked well over the 15 years that the skins game has been a standard with our events.

Part of the difficulty with handicapping skins games is that not all bogey golfers are the same. Some of them are going to make quite a few pars. My guess would be that an erratic 19 would make substantially more pars than an 8 handicap would make birdies. That guy who's getting pars on his 11 stroke holes is going to wipe the floor with the 8. He needs something to be done to adjust his handicap down. Then there are some bogey golfers who are quite consistent in that they make a lot of bogeys. Maybe they lack the length to make many pars, but they never get themselves in too much trouble. For that reason, I would tend to suggest that skins is a better game to play for a group of similarly handicapped golfers. 

Alternatively, if you play always with the same group and the stakes are not too big, you can start off with some adjustment - maybe 80% of the difference and then adjust stroke allowances over time. Each round there are 18 skins on the table. For every skin you win, maybe you knock half a shot off your allowance in future games (and if the 8 wins one, then everyone adds half a stroke to their allowance in future games). That way you wind up with a skins handicap for each player. Over time everything evens out. The better you do one day, the harder it is to do well the following game. 

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40 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

Part of the difficulty with handicapping skins games is that not all bogey golfers are the same. Some of them are going to make quite a few pars. My guess would be that an erratic 19 would make substantially more pars than an 8 handicap would make birdies. That guy who's getting pars on his 11 stroke holes is going to wipe the floor with the 8. He needs something to be done to adjust his handicap down. Then there are some bogey golfers who are quite consistent in that they make a lot of bogeys. Maybe they lack the length to make many pars, but they never get themselves in too much trouble. For that reason, I would tend to suggest that skins is a better game to play for a group of similarly handicapped golfers. 

Alternatively, if you play always with the same group and the stakes are not too big, you can start off with some adjustment - maybe 80% of the difference and then adjust stroke allowances over time. Each round there are 18 skins on the table. For every skin you win, maybe you knock half a shot off your allowance in future games (and if the 8 wins one, then everyone adds half a stroke to their allowance in future games). That way you wind up with a skins handicap for each player. Over time everything evens out. The better you do one day, the harder it is to do well the following game. 

Handicapping is always going to have those exceptions.  There is no way to account for every possible type of player, so it has to be designed so that it has the most benefit for the most players.  It also has to implemented in the ways recommended by the originators.  Even when using a percentage modifier, there will still be exceptional occurrences.  Hell, even in a scratch game there will be exceptions.  There are simply too many variables for any handicap system to account for every possible scenario.  You have to use the system as recommended by the Handicap Manual in order to have the best chance of keeping all players in the game, but nothing is guaranteed even then.

Edited by Fourputt

Rick

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7 minutes ago, Fourputt said:

Handicapping is always going to have those exceptions.  There is no way to account for every possible type of player, so it has to be designed so that it has the most benefit for the most players.  It also has to implemented in the ways recommended by the originators.  Even when using a percentage modifier, there will still be exceptional occurrences.  Hell, even in a scratch game there will be exceptions.  There are simply too many variables for any handicap system to account for every possible scenario.  You have to use the system as recommended by the Handicap Manual in order to have the best chance of keeping all players in the game, but nothing is guaranteed even then.

No doubt, but I feel like skins is a game much more prone to the issue than say strokeplay or matchplay.

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37 minutes ago, Ty_Webb said:

No doubt, but I feel like skins is a game much more prone to the issue than say strokeplay or matchplay.

Yes.

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9 hours ago, NJpatbee said:

As a 17 HCP I would never agree to play gross skins with a +1 for money - I would not have any type of reasonable chance of coming out on top.  And I would also not play a net skins match with a +1 because there is a chance I would win which in my experience causes too much distress for the better golfer.  Play matches with golfers of similar ability to your game where you can play gross or perhaps a golfer is getting no more than 1 or 2 stokes per side. 

I played as a 16HC and was winning holes left and right against a scratch. I won 6 skins, and if we carried over I could have won 12 skins. Gotta love playing by handicap. . . :-D

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1 hour ago, Lihu said:

I played as a 16HC and was winning holes left and right against a scratch. I won 6 skins, and if we carried over I could have won 12 skins. Gotta love playing by handicap. . . :-D

Then either you were having a career day or he was sucking, or one of you didn't actually have the handicap that he was playing at.  In a one on one contest, a legitimate handicap will level players quite well.  It's only when several high handicaps gang up on a single low handicap that the random factor of the high handicap comes into play most strongly. 

The only thing that could sway the results is one player winning several carry overs.  The thing is that if the handicaps are honest, either player is equally likely to win those carries - who actually does win them is just a timing issue.  

Rick

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1 hour ago, Fourputt said:

Then either you were having a career day or he was sucking, or one of you didn't actually have the handicap that he was playing at.  In a one on one contest, a legitimate handicap will level players quite well.  It's only when several high handicaps gang up on a single low handicap that the random factor of the high handicap comes into play most strongly. 

The only thing that could sway the results is one player winning several carry overs.  The thing is that if the handicaps are honest, either player is equally likely to win those carries - who actually does win them is just a timing issue.  

He's a good friend of mine and the skins were only $1 a piece. I told him it was a HC number given to me by one of the top instructors in the country. He bought it until I he saw I was toying with him playing for bogeys, knowing that's all I needed to keep up with his pars. When I was chipping for an eagle on a par 5, he just kind of looked at me. It was the first time I've ever seen a scratch player struggle so hard on the course. The putting was horrible to boot. It was somewhat satisfying seeing him sweat so much. :-D

Don't worry, we're still friends. . .

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19 hours ago, Fourputt said:

You are so typical of the scratch and near scratch golfer... you can't seem to grasp the idea that handicaps are designed to give the weaker player some hope of a modicum of success against the better player. You seem to feel that because you are a better player, you should win no matter what the circumstances.  I don't know how you can get any satisfaction from beating a bogey golfer playing him straight up.  He doesn't have  a prayer of ever coming out on top.  Like Erik said, I might make a birdie once in 5 or more rounds.  They never came easy, and as I get older, it's harder than ever to get one.

 You kinda lost me at the word modicum.. Why do you hate america man?  Man up and make a birdie or two. You cant challenge the bull and expect to get only one horn! You get the full rack!  Thats liberal-socialist talk right there

Oh believe me I can get plenty of satisfaction of being a bogey golfer strait up if he brings a fat wallet :-$ 

I give double digit handicaps strokes strokes in match play. Never in skins or junk, though. Forget that noise. When money pots are involved, I'm not helping anyone else but me. 

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11 hours ago, Fourputt said:

Then either you were having a career day or he was sucking, or one of you didn't actually have the handicap that he was playing at.  In a one on one contest, a legitimate handicap will level players quite well.  It's only when several high handicaps gang up on a single low handicap that the random factor of the high handicap comes into play most strongly. 

The only thing that could sway the results is one player winning several carry overs.  The thing is that if the handicaps are honest, either player is equally likely to win those carries - who actually does win them is just a timing issue.  

Rick, skins is not really a great game to play with wide ranges of handicaps. Maybe that "Perfect Skins" game or whatever posted above would work, but handicaps weren't designed and generally don't work very well in skins games. Match play? Stroke play? They can do okay. Skins? Nah. Especially with carry-overs. In match play an "odd" result wins a single hole. Skins with carry overs? Could win 10. 18 even.

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Play net and gross skins. Several of the big groups I play in do both. I also occasionally play in a group that plays net skins but adds in low gross score. So basically you pay in $20. There are normally 20 guys so the pot is $400. If there are 5 skins out you divide the pot 6 ways so each skin gets $66 and the low gross score gets $66. You can also do low gross front and back.

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