The questions everyone asks before their first round.
Legal & money
Is this legal?
Yes, by design. This is a private club — members betting against other members, invite-only, nobody outside the group involved. The Book never takes a cut of anything. That's not a policy we could change later; it's the line that keeps this a friendly-wager arrangement instead of a regulated betting operation. Zero rake, forever.
Does the Book hold my money?
Never. There's no wallet, no balance, no pot sitting anywhere in the system. The Book computes who owes whom and hands you a Venmo, CashApp, or Zelle link to settle it yourself. Payment happens on your own rails, between you and the other member. The Book just keeps the receipt.
What does it cost?
Nothing. No fees, no percentage, no "processing" charge, ever. A fee would turn this from two members settling a friendly bet into an operator taking a cut of gambling — which is a different, much more regulated thing. Free isn't a promotion. It's the model.
Who can join?
Someone already in the Book — an officer — sends you an invite code. That's the entire process. No public signup, no open link, no way in from outside the group.
Trust & disputes
What if someone doesn't pay?
The Book remembers. Unconfirmed debts age visibly on the settlement sheet and the season ledger — nobody has to keep score in their head or bring up an old bet from memory. Karani sends a reminder at 24 hours and again at 48. Past that, it's a community-trust matter, not a system failure: the whole point of a running ledger is that everyone can see who settles and who doesn't.
What about disputes?
Every score edit is logged old value to new value, who made it, and when. Every settlement line traces back to the holes and strokes that produced it — tap any dollar amount and it expands into the math. If two people disagree about what's owed, the answer is already on the page, not in anyone's memory.
Is my data private?
Your balances and your bets are visible to Book members only — the people you're actually playing and settling with. What's public is aggregate only: total rounds, total members, total volume traded. Nobody outside the club sees your individual line items.
Unknown Golfer
Do I need Unknown Golfer to use this?
No. The Book runs standalone — its own member list, its own handicap entries, its own live scoring. UG isn't a dependency.
What happens when UG connects?
UG becomes the scorer. The moment their feed is live, every league round is instantly visible and bettable on the Book the second it tees off — no separate score entry, no simulator standing in. Handicap indexes sync automatically instead of being entered by hand. Nothing about how bets work changes; where the scores come from just gets better.
Why not just merge with Unknown Golfer?
Because keeping them separate is what makes both of them clean. UG runs the league — registration, handicaps, rosters, the stuff that has to stay above reproach for a golf organization. The Book runs the wagers — private, member-vs-member, zero-rake. The league never has to touch gambling. The betting layer never has to touch league governance. If they were one system, every league decision would carry gambling-adjacent baggage, and every betting decision would need league sign-off. Apart, each one stays exactly what it needs to be — including in front of a lawyer.