TILT Golf Game: Pars Build It, Birdies Collect It

By the DeucePot team · · We build the scorecard app that keeps score for this game.

Play this game on DeucePot Free. No account needed to start a round. Works on any phone.

TILT is a golf points game where every hole is worth more than the last one, as long as you keep making pars. Hole one is worth 1 point. Every net par or better makes your next hole worth more. A net birdie pays double whatever the hole has grown to.

Then there is the other side. One bogey costs you the hole and knocks you off Tilt, and you start climbing again from the bottom.

You play it against everybody at once without needing a partner, a team or an opponent, which makes it the easiest game on this list to add to a round that already has bets running.

Play a demo round

Saturday morning · four players · net scores

This is a simulation, not a live round. Tap the gold Sim button on each hole to learn the game and watch this made up match unfold one hole at a time. Watch the Hole column: it is what the next hole is worth to that player, and the column beside it is what a birdie there would pay him.

First tee

Live leaderboard, TILT points

    Through 0 holes

    The scores above are invented, but the scoring is not: this is the same card and the same live leaderboard your group sees on DeucePot while you play.

    Play TILT Now! Switch it on at setup and every man is in. It works on your own too

    What Is the TILT Golf Game

    TILT is a net points game played by every man on his own card. Each hole has a value. It starts at 1 and it grows every time you make a net par or better.

    The whole game turns on one idea. The pars you make are not worth much on their own, but they are what makes your next birdie enormous. Four pars in a row and your next hole is worth 5, so the birdie that follows pays 10 instead of 2. That is why the game is called TILT. A player on a run walks to the next tee with something real to lose.

    Hole One Is the Only Hole Worth 1

    The bottom lifts. Hole one is worth 1 point to everybody, and a player who has not made a net par yet keeps playing for 1 until he does. But the moment he makes his first net par he has been on Tilt, and from then on a bogey only drops him back to 2, never all the way to 1.

    It is a small rule that changes how the back nine feels. A man who blows up on the fourteenth is not starting from scratch on the fifteenth, so nobody spends the last hour playing for nothing.

    How It Differs from Stableford

    Stableford pays the same for a birdie on the first hole as it does for a birdie on the eighteenth. TILT does not. What a birdie is worth depends entirely on what you did in the holes before it, so the same score can be worth 2 or 20 depending on when you made it.

    How to Play TILT

    1. Agree the money before the first tee. A quarter a TILT point is a fair place to start.
    2. Everybody starts on a hole worth 1 point.
    3. Play the hole and take your handicap strokes. TILT is a net game all the way through.
    4. Work out your net score against par on that hole.
    5. The hole pays at the value you walked onto the tee with, never the one you walk off with.
    6. Move the value for the next tee. Up on a par or better, back to the bottom on a bogey. The bottom is 1 until your first net par and 2 after it.
    7. Add the points up after eighteen holes. Most points wins.

    TILT Scoring, With a Worked Example

    Where V is what the hole in front of you is worth:

    The bottom is 1 until you make your first net par, and 2 for the rest of the round after that.

    Take the demo round above. Allen goes to the eighteenth tee playing for 10, built out of nothing more exciting than a long run of pars. He makes a net birdie on the last and that one hole pays him 20, which is more than he made on the entire front nine. Pete makes the same net birdie on the same hole off the same 10 and also collects 20, and it is still not enough, because Allen was 5 in front walking down the fairway.

    The other side of it happened on the thirteenth. Alex was playing for 12, the biggest number on the card at that point. He made a net double bogey. That cost him the 12 and put him back to a 2 point hole, and it took him the whole run in to climb out of it. He still finished second, which is the floor doing its job.

    Neither of those numbers was typed by hand. Both come out of the scoring model this page is generated from, and the model and the page are checked against each other hole by hole before the page ships.

    The One Rule to Agree Before You Play

    What takes a man off Tilt.

    The Beginner Version

    If it is the first time anybody at the table has played it, leave the setting on a bogey, play a quarter a point, and tell everybody one sentence: a par makes your next hole worth more and a birdie pays double it. That is enough to play the whole round. Everything else can be read off the app while you walk.

    How DeucePot scores TILT

    TILT is a side game in the scorecard app, so it runs alongside Skins, Vegas, Junk and anything else you have on:

    Final Thoughts

    TILT is the best game on the card for a group with mixed handicaps, because it is played entirely off net scores and it never asks anybody to partner anybody. The high handicapper making net pars is building exactly the same number as the scratch player, and his stroke holes are where he collects.

    It is also the most fun to watch. There is no other side game where a man standing over a four footer can tell you, to the point, exactly what it is worth to him.

    Keep score automatically and settle up in the app What every hole is worth, on every row, with the maths shown hole by hole

    TILT Golf Game FAQs

    How does the TILT golf game work?

    Every hole has a value that starts at 1. A net par pays you the value of the hole and makes the next hole worth 1 more. A net birdie pays double the hole and adds 2, and a net eagle pays four times it and adds 3. A bogey costs you the value of the hole and knocks you off Tilt. Every hole is paid at the value you walked onto the tee with. Most points after eighteen holes wins.

    What does it mean to be on Tilt in golf?

    It means your hole is worth more than the bottom, because you have strung pars or better together. The higher it climbs, the more a birdie pays you and the more a bogey costs you. The app shows the number on your scoring row all the way round, so you always know what the hole in front of you is worth.

    Is TILT played gross or net?

    Net. Handicap strokes count on every hole, which is what makes it work in a group with mixed handicaps. A gross bogey on a hole where you get a stroke is a net par, and it builds your number exactly like anybody else's par.

    Can you play TILT on your own?

    Yes. TILT is scored entirely off your own card, so it works as a solo game against your own round the same way it works in a fourball. There is nobody to settle with on your own, so it becomes tracking rather than a bet.

    What is a good TILT score?

    There is no benchmark the way 36 points is the benchmark in Stableford, because it depends entirely on how long your runs are. Eighteen net pars in a row without a single bogey comes to 171, which almost nobody will ever do. A round with a few clean runs and a couple of birdies collected at the right moment will usually win it.

    What happens after a bogey in TILT?

    The bogey costs you whatever the hole was worth and knocks you off Tilt. Your next hole is back at the bottom, which is 1 point if you have not made a net par all round and 2 points once you have. Hole one is the only hole anybody plays for 1 in a normal round.

    Does DeucePot score TILT?

    Yes, as a side game in the scorecard app. Switch it on at setup, choose whether a bogey or a double bogey takes you off, and the app keeps every man's number and his floor, shows what the hole in front of him is worth, explains what each hole paid and why, and turns the points into money on the settle up card at the end.

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