What is Stableford scoring?

Standard Stableford points run from nought to six: nought for a net score of double bogey or worse, one for a net bogey, two for a net par, three for a net birdie, four for a net eagle, five for a net albatross, and a rarely-awarded six for four under. The difference from strict stroke play shows up most on a genuinely bad hole: once you're out of the points, there's no reason to keep hacking away purely for the card, since a nine counts exactly the same as a six. That's part of why it suits club competitions and mixed-ability fields so well: a high handicapper competes on points against low-handicap players. The fixed target on each hole is the score most golfers already know as par: Rule 21.1b(1) of the Rules of Golf puts it exactly that way, awarding points by comparing the player's score to "the fixed target score for the hole, which is par unless the Committee sets a different fixed target score".

Stableford is one of thirteen answers in the game, the stage of this site that explains what happened in a round. The two worth reading next to it are how a handicap is calculated, since the target is handicap-adjusted, and what a bogey is, which is the score that earns a single point.