WHAT ARE THE FIVE BEST GAMES TO PLAY ON A DART BOARD?

Last Updated on November 2, 2020

Darts is a sport that has a huge following at the elite level and it’s played in sports bars, pubs, community centres and in people’s homes all around the world but aside from the traditional 501 checkout what are the best games you can play on your dart board?

TOP FIVE BEST GAMES TO PLAY ON A DART BOARD

5 – ALL THE FIVES

All the fives is a game that rewards high scoring darts – but only if your total from three darts is a multiple of five. If you score 10 on the board then you receive two points because it’s 2×5, likewise a score of 50 would score you 10 points. If a player scores 171, for example, whilst it’s a high score in standard darts they will be awarded zero points. Whatever player gets to 100 points first wins.

4 – TOUCHDOWN

Touchdown is a personal creation which was inspired by my time involved with college football and it caught on amongst my peers. It’s a two-player game and closest to bull throws for a touchdown first. To score a touchdown you have to hit a double (of any kind), however, your opponent can ‘tackle’ and prevent your touchdown by hitting the same double with their next throw.

The throwing order goes player 1 for touchdowns, player 2 defense, player 2 for touchdowns, player 1 defense and so on. The first to 60 points (10 touchdowns) wins. Just like in American Football, if you want to be the NVP, you need to score a touchdown.

3 – KILLER

Killer is the ultimate pub game. Each player takes a single dart with their weak hand, whatever number they hit is ‘their number’. Each person has 10 lives and it’s the job of the other players to eliminate those lives by hitting your number (a single is one life, a double two and a treble is three). It’s straight forward but there is a catch in that you have to hit your own number 10 times before being ‘allowed to kill’. The winner is the last man standing

2 – HARE AND HOUNDS

Who doesn’t love a good old-fashioned game of chase? That’s essentially what this is. Determine who will go first – closest to bull will do the job. The winner is the hare and throws first with the aim of working clockwise from 1 to 20, then outer and bull. The job of the hound is to catch (overtake the hare). The good thing is you can tailor the starting position of the hound for varying ability; standard rules say the hound starts on 5 i.e. two places behind but there’s no reason you can’t increase the gap. The game ends when the hare is caught, or the hare gets to bull.

1 – ROUND THE BOARD

Sometimes it’s the simple things in life that bring us the most pleasure and ‘round the board’ is exactly that. The aim of the game is to go around the board in sequence i.e. 1, 2, 3 all the way to outer bull and then, finally, bull. The perfect game would see you achieve the feat in 22 shots; however, you can vary the difficulty to your standard by changing your goalposts – try hitting only doubles or trebles. Perhaps if you’re a real sharpshooter you can only move on to 2 when you’ve sank three doubles on the same round. It improves your ability to checkout, your consistency and, best of all, you can play it alone or in a race with someone else.

There you have it, five games to keep your darting skills up to scratch. Keep playing, keep practicing and soon enough you’ll be shooting like Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor. Enjoy!