Minimal projection of a single game’s current state — teams, status, scores, clock. Served from the same in-memory snapshot as the full Game Detail endpoint, just trimmed. Use this when you only need to display a live score and want the smallest possible payload.
curl -s "https://books.polynode.dev/v1/games/40664-16839-2026-04-14/scores?key=pn_live_YOUR_KEY"
Polynode slug or raw game_id. Both work.
Response
{
"game_id": "40664-16839-2026-04-14",
"pn_slug": "lib-gar-est-2026-04-14",
"pn_league_code": "lib",
"home_team": "Club Estudiantes de La Plata",
"away_team": "Cusco FC",
"status": "live",
"scores": {
"status": "Live",
"score_home": 2,
"score_away": 1,
"period": "2H",
"clock": "50",
"is_live": true,
"last_play": null,
"current_down_and_distance": null,
"weather": null,
"weather_temp": null,
"weather_temp_high": null,
"home_starter": null,
"away_starter": null
}
}
Fields
| Field | Type | Description |
|---|
game_id | string | Upstream canonical id. |
pn_slug | string | null | Polynode slug if resolvable. null for non-mapped leagues. |
pn_league_code | string | Polynode league code. |
home_team / away_team | string | Team names, flattened for convenience. |
status | string | unplayed / live / final. |
scores | object | Same Scores shape documented in List Live Games. |
Why use this instead of /v1/games/{id}?
The full game detail endpoint returns the game envelope plus every market snapshot, which can be 100+ KB for a major sport. /scores returns ~400 bytes regardless of how many markets are tracked. Prefer it when:
- You only need to display the live score.
- You are polling frequently and want to minimize bandwidth.
- You are driving a scoreboard UI that doesn’t care about odds.
For live score updates via push instead of polling, use /ws/live.
Latency
Scores for live games are refreshed every ~1 second by the adaptive poller. The round-trip latency from S3 is typically 2-5 ms over the wire. 
