Posted on: 17 July 2017
When you start out, you’re going to miss. Not just the bed you’re aiming for, I mean the board entirely – particularly when you’re practising your doubles. If your board is mounted on the back of a door, you’ll find it’ll quickly start to look like it’s got a bad case of woodworm. At Romida Darts we recommend starting off with a cabinet board set – which also includes a scoreboard – or a rubber surround.
Now that your door / wall is defended, you might want to think about your flooring. No matter how good you are, you will always get bounce-outs, whether off the wire or off other darts.
TOP TIP: if you are getting lots of bounce-outs, consider using your tip sharpener to ‘rough up’ the tips instead, see if that helps them hold.
A rubber mat will help protect your laminate or carpet, and doubles as an oche so you know exactly where to take your shots from. When you’re done just roll up the mat and close the cabinet, all tidy.
Welcome to the wonderful word of darts, you’ve just joined a worldwide community of millions!
How to play darts
First things first, you need to get your board up and your oche measured out. It’s important to get this done right so you are playing and practicing to the same standards as everyone else. The two distances you need to know are as follows:
- Board – the centre of the bullseye needs to be 5ft 8 inches up from the ground level.
- Oche – the throwing distance is 7ft 9.25 inches, along the ground.
Make sure you you’ve got plenty of space around you and that the board is well lit. Don’t play in your house’s main thoroughfare – this will help to avoid any accidents, and interruptions.
A standard dartboard is made up of 20 segments, each with single, double and treble scoring ‘beds’. In the centre is the red bullseye (50) with a green outer (25). All the segments are marked out with metal wire, as is the value of each one.
Scoring: in simple terms, a dart in the single segment of the 20, scores 20. In the treble bed, 60. And three of those and you’ve got the hallowed maximum. In the basic game, both players start on 501 and take turns to score as high as they can. Each score is subtracted from the remaining total, until you reach a point where you can finish. And you can only finish on the bullseye or a double. For instance, if you are on 17, you could go single 1, double 8. If you score higher than 17, or score 17 with singles, then you have bust, your turn is over. On your next go, if you get one, you can retry from the number you were on.
Did you know?
There are 3,944 ways of getting a nine dart finish!
