Last one standing

My buddy runs a bar. I told him I'd build him something for Thursdays. He's the one talking here — I just write down what he says and hand it to you.

The game

It's not real pool. Three balls on the table, you shoot until all three are down, and we count how many shots it took you. Low is good. Everybody takes a turn, then we go around again — that's a round.

Twenty bucks to play. You start with five chips. Take more than four shots to clear the table and it costs you a chip. Out of chips and you're out, go back to drinking. Last one with chips left takes the pot.

There's a clock on your turn — a minute, minute and a half, we've never really settled it. Clock runs out and you're not at the table, that's a chip.

The night

It's a Thursday. Nine o'clock, everybody's had a few, the jukebox is loud and half the room is outside smoking. Twelve, sixteen people usually, however many show up. It runs two, three hours and nobody's in a hurry.

Last year I ran the whole thing on a legal pad and it got away from me around round four. Two guys arguing with me about what they shot, me trying to remember whose turn it was, somebody's beer on the pad. Never again.

I'm running this off my phone, one-handed, standing at the table with a beer in the other. There's a TV over the bar and that's the only screen anybody in the room can see — from across the room, in the dark, so it's got to be big. People want to know where they stand without walking over and asking me.

My phone's on 15% by ten. The bar's wifi is the bar's wifi.

The money

Twenty a head, all of it in the pot. Winner takes it — mostly. We kick a little to second. And there's a side thing we do for whoever's shooting best early on, I never wrote that part down properly.

The app doesn't hold the money. I do. But at the end of the night it has to tell me what I owe who, and I'm reading that off my phone with sixteen people standing around the table.

What I want

Two pages.