User Statistics

Say that you've played a dozen or so golf rounds over the past month. You've used GolfStakes.com to score and record the rounds, but now you're wondering what you hole you made par on or how many rounds you've birdied on. Well now at GolfStakes.com you can see those statistics and more.

Introducing your stats page

As of today on GolfStakes.com you now have the ability to search over the past year for all instances of your golf scoring. You can see the type of scores, how many holes you've played, where you've made those scores at, which round you've scored on the exact date of the score, the exact hole along with the handicap, the par and distance of that hole.

As you can see we also offer and advanced view.

With the advanced view you have the ability to enter a custom date range (start date and end date) and then click on the type of score that you would like to see.

As you can see, that's a lot of information for you to see, but we hope that you can see the benefits of using GolfStakes.com to score your golf rounds.

GolfStakes.com revamp

The backend development has been busy on GolfStakes.com. We've been busy building some management tools for the administration of the site. But we have been able to make some changes for the users of the site that I would like to share with you.

The Home Page

First we've gone and redesigned the home page of GolfStakes.

Gone is the large graphic that dominated the page. In it's place is now a simple area where we have placed information about what GolfStakes is, and short introductory video of the site. Secondly we've change the header of the page to a graphic which we hope demonstrates what we're trying to do here. Making if simple to score your golf games.

A major change came with the ordering of the links in the main and sidebar navigation. All of the links are now public links, which means no more logging in, or wondering why you need to create an account for us. We wanted to make the site very open to the potential user to learn about us, and what we have to offer.

Your Dashboard

The next major thing that we've done with the structure of the site is to make the logged in dashboard a little more user friendly.

What you will see right off the bat is that your statistics, upcoming golf rounds, and your friends list are now in a tabs across the middle of the page. After some thought, we decided that as you accumulated more information about your games, this page would just get too long to manage. So we went with the  tabs. As you can see, the statistics section is now more user friendly also, and you can now see how well you have played in the last 30, 60, 90 days and for the entire year.

The links for access through the rest of the site have also been reorganized. Site Tools contain everything that you will need to create a golf round. No more jumping around from one section to another just to setup a game.

User Tools are now all grouped in the same section, you can view and edit your profile, manage your friends list and change your password.

One last thing, on the dashboard, we have a section called "Do you like this site?" What you can do with this section is to send an email to a friend inviting them to come join GolfStakes. Once they join up, you can then add them as a friend and start creating golf rounds with them.

Hope this is helpful.

Your Frequently Asked Questions Are Answered

I last wrote about having a new section called FAQ's being developed. Well last night we've deployed this new module out to the web site.

The FAQs are broken down by categories such as; General Questions, Course Questions, Group Questions, Side Game Questions, League Questions, Golf Tournament Questions and Scoring Questions.

Under each category you will find a series of questions which will link to a detailed answer page. Some of the answers will describe not only how to use GolfStakes.com but also how to use Mobile.GolfStakes.com (our mobile phone enabled scoring application). Generally we have tried to include a video link on the FAQ answer page so that we can demonstrate how easy it is to use GolfStakes.

Hope this helps.

Frequently Asked Questions

GolfStakes.com is a new site, and since we're new, it would be easy to say that a lot of people have questions about what it is we do, how to use GolfStakes, and what the site can do for them.  Well we're trying to address these Frequently Asked Questions by creating a new section of site just for this type of situation.

Coming soon to a site near you

What we're doing here is giving you, the user, a quick look up area for all of those questions on how to do certain things with GolfStakes. Included with each question is a detailed walk-through of the action being asked about. And usually a short video that can watched to give you some perspective on how that action is done.  Right now we're just presenting the basic information to get someone up and going with GolfStakes. As time goes on, we'll be adding more features such as related topics, and ratings on each of the topics that you are reading about.

Wrap up

So if you have questions about GolfStakes.com or need some help in creating a golf round, setting up a friends list or scoring a round of golf, check out our new Frequently Asked Question section on the site.

Course editing User Interface changes

So the course editing page has always been a large page. Lots of things going on with it, changing the name and address, course details, and most important the tees associated with a course.

Current Look

Here's a screen shot of what the current edit course page looks like.

Now when you're working on this page, you have to do a lot of scrolling and what not. And with our need to start placing even more information on this page, it started to get even longer. So to try and avoid the long pages, we're going to try out using a tabbed approach to this page.

Yeah, we've got tabs

First up is the score card. Everything that you've come to expect on this section is still the same. You will have a listing of all the current tees, and the ability to add a new tee just like before. Nothing has really changed with the functionality of the page, just the look of it.

The second tab is for the name and address of the course.

On this tab, you will have the ability to change the course name, the address, add/remove phone numbers, set the course to private or public and add in it's Ghin number if it's known.

Course Details is the third tab.

Now this tab is where we've really added in a lot more information for you the user to change and modify as needed. From here you can add a contact for the course, specific details about the course like the weekend and weekday rates, when it was built and who designed it, and even to be able to choose which types of grass are found on the greens and fairways.

Last we have a description tab.

We've gone and placed an advanced text box on this tab so that when a description is entered you can have paragraphs, listings, and bold and underline, most everything that you would expect from a simple text editor.

As you can see, at the bottom of tabs, there is a "save course" button displayed. Clicking this button at anytime will save all of your course information and return you back to the course home page.

Hopefully this layout will work out to be much easier for the user to work with and help keep our course database up to date. As always, comments are welcomed and encouraged.

Home Page Updates

Just a quick update about GolfStakes.com. We've created a few more videos to help users learn how to use the site and it's tools. Right now on the home page, we have an introduction video that quickly shows how to score your golf rounds via a mobile phone.

By watching this short video you can get a good idea of what the site can do. You can also click on the link under video to go to a full size version of the video and from there you can watch other video tutorials.

Look for more site updates in the near future.

Updates and Upgrades

Friday has been a busy day for Golfstakes.com. We've just deployed a new version of the web site and we're excited about some of the new features, looks and what not.

First the home page has been changed up some. We've added in our new logo which we will use for all types of branding on both the web and at golf courses where we're at.

Secondly we've adjusted some of our feature descriptions to be somewhat clearer in what we are offering:

•    The ability to track golf side games on your cell phone
•    Fast score entry on your mobile device or computer
•    Multiple side games to choose from
•    Calculate results for your golf league
•    Calculate results for your golf tournament
•    LIVE leader board that automatically updates

As you can see, with the new logo, fewer ads, and a new home page graphic we're trying to get to a much cleaner and friendlier look to the web site.

Now playing videos

To help make it easier for users to learn how to use our tools, we've gone out and created a series of video tutorials. Several of these videos are short introductions into how to do a very specific thing while on GolfStakes, and others are more in depth end to end walk through.

Course Information

Now for sometime we've had the data for nearly all of the golf courses in the United States, but we didn't really have a good way of displaying that data. In this update we've added a lot more information to the courses home page.

Each course now has a full location, phone numbers, address, associated maps and a link to the course web site. Courses can now have a rating for features such as the pace of play, the hospitality and the scenery.

User provided descriptions are displayed with each course to give you a real feel for what the course is like to play, the best holes to look for, and other types of information.

The course details give you quick information about the main contact, how many holes the course has in regulation, the greens fees when and who designed the course.

Last we display our new score card which shows the handicap par and distances for each hole.

As a side note, since players are the most valuable source of informatino about a golf course we've also added in the ability to leave a comment about a golf course.

Your user page

We've adjusted the user's home page. Not only do you see your friends, the latest rounds you've played, articles from Fox Sports and site wide information, we've included an area for you to view your latest statistics.

We show you the number of holes that you've played in the past month, and how many Albatross' , Eagles, Birdies, Par, Bogies, Double Bogies and Triple Bogies that you may have scored during this time frame.  In the future we're looking to add in the percentage of greens and fairways and total strokes for each hole.

Wrap Up

If you have any questions about these new features we've also added the ability to have user created chat sessions with GolfStakes.com repesentives who can walk you through any or all steps of creating an account, setting up a round of golf, creating your side games and getting out on the course to score your game via a cell phone.

Hope to see you all on GolfStakes.com soon.

Upcoming Features

So we're working hard on getting some new features up and running here at GolfStakes.com. First we're looking at opening up all of the course information for users to edit. Currently we have a database with over 17,000 golf courses, but we would like to have our users to be able to edit and add  new courses. This was a problem because we didn't have a way to do this with the new course information. Well now we're developing pages that will allow a user to not only add a new course to our database, but to edit and change our existing data.

Second we're looking to make some more changes to the golf statistics section. Some people have mentioned that they would like to have total count of the number of holes played, along with a percentage of each type of score (par, birdie, bogey, etc).

Third we're looking to add in some Flash animations on the front page to make the home page a little more attractive and interesting when you first visit the site. Let us know what you think of this idea.

Last we're looking at adding a golf bet glossary. Seems like with the number of bets we have, a lot of people just don't know what the bet is, or don't know how to play a round while using the side game. We're looking at having a series of articles explain each bet in some detail and how to GolfStakes.com to score these bets.

That's it for now, look for the updates in the near future.

The Leader Board

So everyone like a good round of golf. But when the round is over and we're all at the Pro Shop, the big question still remains, who won?

Well we here at GolfStakes.com have come up with the idea of a live updated leader board that not only shows who's playing on what hole but displays real time scores.

The first thing you can see is that we give you a short description of the Course, the name of the round, and the date of the game.

Second, we display all of the side games that you've picked to be included in your round of golf. This displays the type of game, how the bets are calculated, and if you're using Net, Gross, Team, or Individual scoring.

Last, the total score for that bet is broken down for that player along with the total number of holes played.

As you can see, you don't have to play an entire round of golf, the calculations are correct even if you play just a few holes of golf.

The Score Card

When playing a round of golf, one of the most vital pieces of equipment that you can have is, a score card. Yes, it's that scrap of printed paper that you will take and scribble on for a the next couple of hours. You will record not only your scores for a hole, but who's up next, who is down, how much someone owes someone, what the next bet is, actually pretty much everything will end up on this piece of paper.

Well as we all know, each course has it's own version of a score card. Different colors for the tees, maps of the course, the layout of each hole, etc. What we try here at GolfStakes is to give you the ability to customize a score card for the courses that you play. Take a look at our up and coming score card found on the Course Home page.

What we've done is changed our display to look more like the score cards you're used to seeing handed out on a course. We hope that you enjoy the new score card and please feedback is always welcomed.

A new logo - a new brand

Since we've started GolfStakes.com, we've always had a hard time trying to brand ourselves. Well we commissioned Rich Paul, (www.richpaul.com) a freelance graphics artist, to create a new logo for us so that we start re-branding GolfStakes. I'm proud to present the new logo below:

We went through several rounds of development on the logo, always wanting to keep several key elements such as the ball dropping in the hole, the flag and the dollar sign as part of stakes. Rich did a great job, and we're happy to have our new logo. Soon we'll not only have the logo on our web site, but also on many other items.

Oh my, videos on GolfStakes.com

You can now view our first video out on YouTube and see how to edit course information on GolfStakes.com. You can watch the video here, or go straight to YouTube. We're working on getting a handful of educational videos posted on the site soon that should over the entire range of setting up a round, setting up your side games, scoring and golf course management.

How to edit golf course information on GolfStakes.com

We're now a community!

I'm excited to tell you that GolfStakes.com is now a community web site. We've just uploaded our newest updates and included is our new forum section.

Everything that you would expect from a forum is here. Threads, replies, categories, etc. There is nothing more for you to do than to sign up for GolfStakes.com. Once you have made an account you will have free access to post to our forums. The forums can be found under the community tab on the main menu bar.

Hope to see you all there!

Our New Course Directory

We've added our new Course Directory to the site over the weekend. You now have access to over 16,000 courses. Using a simple search by course name, GHIN number, city, state or zip code, you can see detailed information about these courses, read users comments and add them as a favorite course to your own account.

As we go forward we will begin to add new features that will allow you adjust the information found in our directory such as the name of tees, the handicaps, the distances and the names.

You can find our new course directory here.

Wagers - how to use the wager wizard.

I last spoke about some of our side games that can be played during a round of golf, but I didn't show you any pictures of what the interface looked like.

Number 1 is the area where you can set up your wagers, pick the handicaps, the point values, what type of pot this wager will be, the low hole and the high hole for the wager. This system allows you to have some flexibility in what type of wager you would like to play.

Number 2 is where you can see the types of wagers setup, who's in the wager and other pertinent information. You can edit the wager, or remove that wager from the round of golf.

The links on the left of the wager allow you to add other items such as the actual games properties, and to how players can be added to the wager.

Clicking on the top or bottom next button will finish up the wager and take you back to main round page.

Good luck and happy golfing!

A little about side games

So far I've been talking about Golfstakes and how to do things on the web site. Today I want take a some time and tell you a little about the side games that you can setup and score with Golfstakes.

Four out of twelve

Golfstakes currently has twelve side games that you can play while scoring a round of golf. Here's a brief description about a handful of them.

- Abilene, a GREAT game. There are 2 variations of Abilene. Some play with long drive for a 5 point game, I only play with 4 points and do not count long drive. You have teams of 2 that play each other. If you and I were partners against Joe and Sam. We win closest to the pin, win single low score, and win low team total, we would get 3 points, but Joe and Sam get low team total putts, so they get 1 point, so we net result 2 points. There are no presses, EXCEPT that the point total can change like with skins. Each point is worth point value * number of points awarded per man/per team based on how they configure it. So if we were playing for a point value of 1 per man, we would be up 2 points after the first hole. If you win ALL of the points, you get a bucket. The bucket can either be worth and extra point, or double points.

- Daytona This game is played between four players, two on each team. On each hole a team's score is a two digit number where the ten's digit is the low score of the two golfers, and the one's digit is the high score. The points earned on a hole is the difference between the two team's scores. For example if team A scored a 4 and 5 and team B scored a 5 and 6, team A wins 11 points (56 - 45). A running total of the points is kept and the winners are paid one unit bet for each point won.

- Sows, Everyone’s favorite bet.  This is a putting game where the goal is to gain as many Sows as possible.  You are awarded a Sow for any putt made that is longer than the flag stick.  You are also awarded a Sow for any birdie putt.  A birdie putt made that is longer than the flag stick is awarded 2 Sows. Scoring: .  This is  a per player only wager. There will never be teams allowed on this bet.  It is per man only at whatever the wager is set at.

- Train wreck. Players play their own ball and accumulate points as follows: bogey=1, par=2, birdie=3, eagle=4, albatross=5, hole in one=10. If at any point during the round, player makes a double bogey or two bogeys in a row, the players points are reset to 0. Players keep separate point values for net and gross. Highest point values win. So you could be high score all the way up to the 17th and 18th hole. You Boggy on the 17th, and then boggy on the last, you are suddenly last with no points. If you've got money riding on this style of game, you're able to either make a whole lot quick or loss everything faster.

The wrap up

As you can see, each of these games start involving a little math on the side and when you start to play with a large group this just gets crazy. When you use Golfstakes to score your rounds and you add in a few side games, all of these calculations take place automatically. This takes a lot of work off of you, and lets you enjoy the actually play of the game instead of trying to figure out who's scored what when.

Golf Course Information

So on GolfStake.com we want the user to have ultimate control over the information on a specific golf course. We believe that you as the user will have better information than anyone else. You will have played the greens, you know where the sand traps are, which club to use on which hole, the distances of the fairways, where the water traps are and the tips that you need to know to score par. And here at GolfStakes.com we want you enter that information.

To accomplish this we've come up with the golf course information page.

1. This is the course's name, location, a description, it's GHIN number, and is this course a public course or a private course. Vital information to know before even looking up the tee information.

2. Phone numbers for the course. We allow you to have as many phone numbers as needed, but generally, you'll be putting down the local number, the fax number and any toll free numbers that course may have.

3. This is the tee information. We allow you to have as many tee colors as needed. We don't limit you to just a handful. You're the one in control of adding the tees here. You enter the rating and slope of the tee, the distance for each hole, the par for each hole and the handicap for each hole. With this information being entered by the user, we can be as accurate as possible when it comes time to score a round of golf.

So there you have it, an easy way to add course information for your favorite course.

New Items on Golfstakes.com

Like I said in my previous post, Golfstakes has gotten quick a few new additions to it in the past couple of months. One I would like to talk about is the way golf rounds are now set up.

This is the page where you as a user can set up and edit a round of golf. Lets go over this a step at a time. First you can have groups, one to many groups, and each group can have many members, but usually a foursome.

As you can see from the screen shot, we have a couple of different ways of adding friends. You have a friends list which is where you can have all of your golf buddies show up for a quick pick option. You have the ability to just type in a users name and have them added to your golf round. Or, if you happen to have a person who doesn't usually play with you, you can add them with the one time golfer option.

After adding the players to your group, you can edit their playing order, their starting tee, add in their golf index, their handicaps and which golf cart they'll be riding in.

Other options include the ability to score this group, remove this group from your round, set a group name, and set the groups starting tee.

Wow, that's a lot of stuff for just one tab. But what this tab does, is give you the fine control needed to setup a golf round just the way that you want to. Not only can you set up this round, but you can set the round up to be played in the future.

Yes, set the round up now. Go to your favorite golf course and pull out your Internet enabled cell phone and now you can start scoring your round of golf while out on the green. This speeds up your ability to get out on the course faster and to play more interesting games with out worrying who's up next, what the last score was. As long as you enter the correct scores into your phone on golfstakes, all of the hard work is done for you.

Enjoy your game.

What is Golfstakes?

Well it's been about three months now since I've started working with the Golfstakes team. A huge number of improvements have been added along with some brand new functionality. But hey, wait you're asking, what in the heck is Golfstakes in first place?

Here is what the site says:

What is golfstakes?
Golfstakes is an extremely unique golf game and scoring system.  It is the ONLY product available that allows you to create golf groups and individual or group side games between the groups with LIVE UPDATING!!

How does it work?

You select the course that you want to play, select your 4 some, 5 some, 10 some, (golfstakes doesn't care how many people are in a group), then create the side games that you want to play, and assign what players are in each side game.

You can create multiple groups, and have side games between the groups!!!
You play in a skins game every Saturday with 20 guys?  No problem!  Set up the 4 somes, create a skins side game, enter scores on your internet enabled cell phone, and voila, golfstakes calculates the results LIVE in REAL TIME!!!

You and Joe also have a 5 point 2 down auto match play?  Again, golfstakes has you covered.  Create another side game between you and Joe, enter the scores one time, and it updates your side game real time!!  JOE DOESN'T EVEN HAVE TO BE IN YOUR 4 SOME AND YOU CAN PRESS HIM WHENEVER YOU WANT IN REAL TIME!!

Golfstakes has all the fun games too.  Best Ball, Birdies, Daytona, Eagles, Match Play, Nassau, Skins, Skins no carry over, Sows, Stableford, Stroke play.  More to come in the following weeks!
Instead of wasting your time calculating the side games, now you can have a beer with the rest of the gang and enjoy the bantering. 

Sounds interesting doesn't it? Well so far it has been. What started out as a tool for one avid golfer has turned into a whole social networking type golf scoring mobile enabled web site.

Stop by and take a look at what we've done so far. Golfstakes.com