Full Swing, the official licensed golf simulator of the PGA Tour, has launched a skill-based gaming platform called ‘Skill Strike‘ that offers the chance to win cash payouts for golf simulator play.
Rather than competing against other golfers, the new feature, which can be used in home or commercial simulator locations, allows participants to pay an entry fee, take a swing, and potentially win money by outperforming their expected shot-making abilities.
Essentially, players are competing against themselves and their algorithm-derived expected shot outcome, so it levels the playing field between scratch players and less-experienced golfers.
“Skill Strike is an unprecedented shift in skill-based gaming,” said Full Swing Chief Operating Officer Jason Fierro. “It essentially creates a real-time dynamic handicap for golfers of any skill level and allows them to win money so long as they perform above their personalized expected outcome.”
The Skill Strike platform is run by patented AI technology from Evenplay that analyses real-time tracking data from Full Swing simulators and uses machine learning to calibrate each challenge to an individual’s skill level.
Target sizes and distances automatically adjust on every attempt, with tiered payouts depending on how close a given shot lands to the hole. Players can win up to eight times their entry fee, which range from $3 to $20. There are also separate prizes available for holes-in-one.
As for possible gaming of the system, the AI technology looks at key swing indicators and can detect if swing mechanics are different from shot-to-shot and adjust the targets for subsequent shots in an accelerated fashion. This will eliminate good golfers being set easy targets.
“We built our AI specifically to solve a problem that’s plagued golf gaming forever: how do you make it fair and fun for everyone?” said Evenplay co-founder and CEO Bryan O’Reilly, whose Las Vegas-based company is pioneering skill-based gaming through AI. “Full Swing’s precision tracking data gives us the perfect foundation to create truly personalized challenges.”