Keeping Score on Your iPhone

Around the holidays, you probably take vacation and spend plenty of time with family. Chances are good that you sometimes play card games or board games during this time. Whether you play UNO, Spades, Rook, or some versions of dominoes, you'll need to keep score. Typically, with pen and paper in hand, you tally the score and add up each hand or round in your head.  There's a better way.

Using Score Pad, a free app for your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad, you can keep score without doing all the math. I used this recently when I played a game of UNO with the family. You can score up to 7 players and simply touch to add a new score (for a hand in a card game or a round in another type of game). What is really helpful is that you can include simple addition within a score for a single round. Let me explain with an example:

Let's say Bob goes out first in a given hand of the card game he is playing. Bob gets points for the remaining cards in each of the other players hands. Suzy has 12 points worth of cards, Joe has 11 points, and Sally has 7 points. If you are keeping score, instead of adding those up and entering "30" for Bob's score, you can simply enter "12+11+7" as Bob's score. Bob's score will then show as "30" on the score pad.

There are other scoring apps out there but I like this one because it's simple and it's free. Some people will prefer pen and paper but I'd like to keep my mind on the strategy of the game, not adding up scores in my head.