Pressures

Pressures are the most alive family of bets on Teezr, and also the most misunderstood. The core idea is simple: instead of one bet running all eighteen holes, new scoreboards keep opening every time somebody pulls ahead. By the end of the round you are not settling one match, you are settling every match that opened along the way.

It is match play with the ledger cut into layers. If you are not clear on how a hole is won, start with the Match Play guide.

One pressure, explained

A pressure is a scoreboard that starts at zero and moves hole by hole with the result of that hole: +1 if you win it, −1 if you lose it, 0 if it is halved. Every open pressure moves at the same time with that same result.

What matters are the two rules that decide when pressures appear:

1. The first pressure does not open on the 1st tee. It opens on the first hole somebody wins. If the 1st is halved, absolutely nothing happens — there is no scoreboard to move yet.
2. The next pressure is born when the last open one reaches two up, and it starts on the following hole, from zero.

That second rule is what makes the bet grow. If the match breaks open, it does not break once: every two holes of lead spawns a fresh scoreboard, and they all keep running in parallel until the close.

A common mistake: assuming a pressure opens every time you lose a hole. It does not. A new pressure is not born from losing a hole, it is born because a pressure already open reached two up.

The two nines

The round plays as two completely independent bets:

Stretch	Holes	What happens at the end
Front	1 to 9	Every front-nine pressure closes
Back	10 to 18	Every back-nine pressure closes

Each stretch has its own configurable amount. On closing, every pressure with a scoreboard other than zero pays its amount; a pressure that closes level pays nothing. It does not matter whether it closed one up or four up: it pays the pressure’s amount, not the margin.

The 10th starts from scratch — the back nine carries nothing over from the front, except the carry itself.

The carry

The carry is the rule that changes the shape of the money the most, and it hangs on one thing: how the first front-nine pressure closed.

If pressure 1 on the front closes level at zero, there is a carry. The effect is direct: every pressure opened on the back nine is worth the three amounts added together — the front amount, the back amount and the match play amount.

Put shortly: nine holes where nobody separated turn the back nine into a bet that can be worth triple.

The match play

On top of the pressures, one more bet runs: the match play, with its own amount.

It is worked out as the direct sum of front pressure 1 plus back pressure 1. If that sum is zero, the match play does not apply and nobody pays.

It has two more conditions:

• It needs all eighteen holes captured and pressures opened on both nines. If the front ended without anybody winning a hole, there is no match play.
• If there was a carry, whether the match play is played at all depends on how the game was configured.

Handicap strokes

Pressures play net. Strokes are handed out from each player’s course handicap against the stroke index of the card for the tee the receiving player is on. In the pairs variants, the stroke goes to the higher course handicap player of the pair receiving it.

The variants

They all share the engine above. What changes is who plays whom and how each hole is decided.

Individual

Everybody against everybody. One match is created for each possible pair of participants, and each match carries its own pressures. With four players that is six matches running at once over the same round.

The hole is decided by the lowest net score: +1, 0 or −1. The threshold to open a new pressure is two up, fixed.

There is also a six-player, everybody-against-everybody setup, for bigger groups that want a single format running across the whole tee time.

Pairs (2v2)

Four players, two teams, a single match. The hole is not decided by one ball — it is decided by both.

Each team orders its two net scores and they are compared separately: the better ball of one team against the better ball of the other, and the worse against the worse. Each comparison is worth a point, so a hole’s result runs from −2 to +2.

That detail changes the strategy entirely: winning the hole with your good ball and losing it with your bad one leaves the hole at zero. To actually separate, both of you have to show up.

In pairs, the threshold to open a new pressure is configurable: two or three up.

Fixed pair

The five-player variant. One pair stays fixed for the whole round and plays three matches, one against each of the three possible combinations of the other three players. All three matches carry their own pressures, in parallel.

Mute

The way to play the pairs format when there are only three of you. A ghost player called the Mute is added: he pars every hole and carries a course handicap of zero.

Each real player takes a turn partnering the Mute against the other two:

Match	Team A	Team B
1	Player 1 + Mute	Players 2 and 3
2	Player 2 + Mute	Players 1 and 3
3	Player 3 + Mute	Players 1 and 2

The Mute never collects and never pays. He is a constant, predictable partner: he will not make you a birdie, but he will not hand you a double bogey either. Your ball is the one that has to make the difference.

Yo-Yo

The other way to play pairs as a threesome, without a ghost in the group: the solo player’s score is used twice. His team is him and himself.

Match	Team A	Team B
1	Player 1 (twice)	Players 2 and 3
2	Player 2 (twice)	Players 1 and 3
3	Player 3 (twice)	Players 1 and 2

Because his better ball and his worse ball are the same ball, the solo player faces two different balls with one flat score. It is harder than the Mute: there is no free par, you have to do it twice.

One fine point worth knowing: if the duplicated player is the one receiving a stroke, the stroke is applied only once. One of his two balls goes net, the other goes gross. Otherwise the stroke would count double.

Strategy

• The 9th and the 18th are where it settles. A pressure sitting one up with one hole to play is worth exactly as much as one sitting four up: halve it and it is void.
• When you go two up, you have already opened a new pressure. That is not the moment to relax — it is the moment another scoreboard starts, and on that one you are level.
• A tight front nine is not a wasted front nine. If pressure 1 finishes level, the back nine is suddenly worth a lot more.