Questions worth asking before Saturday
Dogfight Book FAQ
Straight answers about quotas, pots, privacy, and the one thing this app will never touch — your money.
Questions worth asking before Saturday
Straight answers about quotas, pots, privacy, and the one thing this app will never touch — your money.
Every group asks the same handful of questions before it hands its book over to anything new — what a dogfight actually is, whether the old paper history survives the move, whether the numbers can be trusted without a man behind them. Here are the plain answers, no pitch attached.
Dogfight Book is the private ledger for your group's weekly quota game — quotas, points, pot splits, and the side money that rides along with it, kept exactly the way your foursome has always kept it. The difference is nobody has to remember whose turn it is to do the math, and nobody's copy gets left in a golf bag.
The quota game — the dogfight itself — runs start to finish today, along with the side bets most groups run next to it: skins, team games, closest-to-the-pin. Nassau and handicapped match play are being built next, and will roll out once they've been tested with real groups, not shipped half-finished.
Every player starts at 36 minus his handicap. After that first round, quota resets each week to the average of his last three scores in the book — no committee, no rounding in anybody's favor. Shoot 28, 24, and 26 the last three Saturdays, and 26 is what you're chasing this week. The full breakdown, hole by hole, is in the quota game rules.
Yes. When your group moves in, each member types his last few point totals from the old book into the app — three boxes, ten seconds — and his quota picks up exactly where the paper left off. Nothing is re-litigated; the numbers just move from one book to the other.
What each score is worth against par — the arithmetic behind every quota
| Score vs. Par | Result | Points |
|---|---|---|
| −3 | Double eagle | 10 |
| −2 | Eagle | 6 |
| −1 | Birdie | 4 |
| E | Par | 2 |
| +1 | Bogey | 1 |
| +2 or worse | Double bogey or worse | 0 |
Add up eighteen holes of points, compare the total to quota, and the difference is what the pot pays on. Above quota, you're paid; below it, you're not — same as it's always been.
With a six-letter code, but the code by itself doesn't seat you. An existing member has to vouch for you before you're in — the same way somebody has always had to bring a new man into the game. Nobody gets seated unvetted.
Completely. Each group is its own closed book — its own roster, its own rules, its own name — and nobody outside it sees a single number. Play in two different games? You keep two separate books, and neither one knows the other exists.
Any course on earth. Post a round and par fills itself in automatically, whether you're playing the home course or a muni three states away — nobody's typing in par-4s and par-5s by hand, and nobody's guessing at a course they've never keyed in before.
This is the one worth reading closely, because it's the one people ask about first.
No — and this is worth saying plainly. Dogfight Book computes who's owed what; it never touches, holds, or moves a dollar. Settling up happens through one-tap links straight to Venmo, Cash App, or PayPal, player to player. The app does the arithmetic; you and your buddies do the paying.
No. It's a scorekeeping ledger for a game your group already plays with its own money — the same role a scorecard and a notebook have always played. There's no house, no odds set by the app, no cut taken, and no funds held anywhere inside it. It just keeps the numbers straight on a bet you and your friends already made with each other.
Nothing, for now. Dogfight Book is free during private beta — no card on file, no trial clock counting down. It's early days for the app; the group is more interested in getting the book right than in charging for it.
iPhone, for now — that's where the private beta lives, and where every group's rounds are being posted and settled today. An Android version isn't ruled out, but iPhone is where the book is being built and tested first, before it's asked to run on anything else.
Handicaps are entered by hand today. A direct GHIN connection is something being explored, so quotas could eventually seed themselves off an official index instead of a typed-in number.
