Darts
Darts is a competitive sport in which two or more players bare-handedly throw small sharp-pointed projectiles known as darts at a round target known as a dartboard.
Points can be scored by hitting specific marked areas of the board, though unlike in sports such as archery, these areas are distributed all across the board and do not follow a principle of points increasing toward the board's bullseye. Though a number of similar games using various boards and rules exist, the term "darts" usually now refers to a standardised game involving a specific board design and set of rules.
Darts is both a professional throwing sport and a traditional pub game. Darts is commonly played in the British Isles, and recreationally loved around the world.
History
In 1908, darts was declared to be a game of skill and was thus allowed to be played in pubs. This came about after the landlord of the Adelphi Inn in Leeds was prosecuted for allowing darts to be played in his pub. As darts was considered a game of chance at the time, it was not allowed on licensed premises. The landlord was supported in his case by the best darts player in the region, William 'Bigfoot' Anakin. A dartboard was hung in the court and Anakin proved that darts was not a game of chance by hitting three double 20s in a row.Dartboard
The original target in the game was likely a cross-section of a tree trunk, whose circular shape and natural concentric rings inspired the standard dartboard design used today. An older name for a dartboard is "butt"; the word comes from the French word but, meaning "target" or "goal".The standard numbered point system is attributed to Lancashire carpenter Brian Gamlin, who devised it in 1896 to penalise inaccuracy, though this is disputed. Many configurations have been used, varying by time and location. In particular, the Yorkshire and Manchester Log End boards differ from the standard board in that they have no triple, only double and bullseye. The Manchester board is smaller than the standard, with a playing area of only across, with double and bull areas measuring just. The London Fives board is another variation, with only 12 equal segments, with the doubles and triples being a quarter of an inch wide.
Mathematically, after removing symmetrical dartboards by placing the "20" at the top with 1 on one side and 5 on the other, there are 19 factorial, or 121,645,100,408,832,000 possible dartboards. Many different layouts would penalise a player more than the current setup; however, the current setup actually does the job rather efficiently. There have been several mathematical papers published that consider the "optimal" dartboard.
Before World War I, pubs in the United Kingdom had dartboards made from solid blocks of wood, usually elm. But darts pocked the surface of elm such that it was common for a hole to develop around the treble twenty. The other problem was that elm wood needed periodic soaking to keep the wood soft.
In 1935, chemist Ted Leggatt and pub owner Frank Dabbs began using the century plant, a type of agave, to make dartboards. Small bundles of sisal fibres of the same length were bundled together. The bundles were then compressed into a disk and bound with a metal ring. This new dartboard was an instant success. It was more durable and required little maintenance. Furthermore, darts did little or no damage to the board; they simply parted the packed fibres when they entered the board.
Darts
The earliest darts were stubs of arrows or crossbow bolts. The first purpose-made darts were manufactured from solid wood, wrapped with a strip of lead for weight and fitted with flights made from split turkey feathers. These darts were mainly produced in France and became known as French darts. Metal barrels were patented in 1906, but wood continued to be used into the 1950s.The first metal barrels were made from brass, which was relatively cheap and easy to work. The wooden shafts, threaded to fit the tapped barrel, were either fletched as before or designed to take a paper flight. This type of dart continued to be used into the 1970s. With the widespread use of plastic, the shaft and flight came to be manufactured separately, although one-piece moulded plastic shaft and flight darts were also available.
Equipment
Dartboard
According to the Darts Regulation Authority, a regulation board is in diameter and is divided into 20 radial sections. Each section is separated with metal wire or a thin band of sheet metal.Quality dartboards are still made of sisal fibres from Eastern Africa, Brazil, and China; less expensive boards are sometimes made of cork or coiled paper.
Darts
Modern darts are made up of four components: the points, the barrel, the shafts and the flights.The points come in two common lengths, and are sometimes knurled or coated to improve players' grip. Others are designed to retract slightly on impact to lessen the chance of the dart bouncing out.
The barrels come in a variety of weights and are usually constructed from brass, nickel-silver, or a tungsten alloy. Brass is cheap but light and therefore brass barrels tend to be very bulky. Tungsten, on the other hand, is twice as dense as brass; thus a tungsten barrel of equivalent weight could be thirty percent smaller in diameter than a brass one. Pure tungsten is very brittle, however, so an alloy is commonly used, with between 80 and 95 percent tungsten and the remainder usually nickel, iron, or copper. Nickel-silver darts offer a compromise between density and cost. Barrels come in three basic shapes: cylindrical, ton, or torpedo.
- Cylindrical barrels are the same diameter along their entire length and so tend to be long and thin. Their slenderness makes them better for grouping, but because they are long, the centre of gravity is further back.
- Ton-shaped barrels are thin at either end and bulge in the middle. This makes them fatter than a cylindrical barrel of equivalent weight but the centre of gravity is further forward and so theoretically easier to throw.
- Torpedo-shaped barrels are widest at the pointed end and taper towards the rear. This shape keeps the bulk of the weight as far forward as possible but, like the ton, gives it a larger diameter than the cylinder.
The flight stabilizes the dart by producing drag, thus preventing the rear of the dart from overtaking the point. Modern flights are generally made from plastic, nylon, or foil and are available in a range of shapes and sizes. The three most common shapes in order of size are the standard, the kite, and the smaller pear shape. The less surface area, the less stability; but larger flights hamper close grouping. Some manufacturers have sought to solve this by making a flight long and thin but this, in turn, creates other problems such as changing the dart's centre of gravity. Generally speaking, a heavier dart will require a larger flight.
The choice of barrel, shaft, and flight will depend a great deal on the individual player's throwing style. For competitive purposes, a dart cannot weigh more than including the shaft and flight and cannot exceed a total length of.
Playing dimensions
The World Darts Federation uses the following standards for play:- Height: the dartboard is hung so that the centre of the bull's eye is from the floor. This is considered eye-level for a tall person.
- Distance: the oche should be from the face of the board. If the face projects outward from the wall, owing to the thickness of the board or a cabinet in which it is mounted, the oche must be moved back appropriately to maintain the required distance.
Scoring
The standard dartboard is divided into 20 numbered sections, scoring from 1 to 20 points, by wires running from the small central circle to the outer circular wire. Circular wires within the outer wire subdivide each section into single, double and treble areas. The dartboard featured on The Indoor League television show of the 1970s did not feature a treble section, and according to host Fred Trueman during the first episode, this is the traditional Yorkshire board.Various games are played using the standard dartboard. However, in the official game, any dart landing inside the outer wire scores as follows:
- Hitting one of the large portions of each of the numbered sections, traditionally alternately coloured black and white, scores the point value of that section.
- Hitting the thin inner portions of these sections, roughly halfway between the outer wire and the central circle coloured red or green, scores triple the point value of that section.
- Hitting the thin outer portions of these sections, again coloured red or green, scores double the point value of that section. The double-20 is often referred to as double-top, reflecting the 20's position on the dartboard.
- The central circle is divided into a green outer ring worth 25 points and a red or black inner circle, worth 50 points. The term "bullseye" can mean either the whole central part of the board or just the inner red/black section. The term "bull's ring" usually means just the green outer ring. The inner bull counts as a double when doubling in or out.
- Hitting outside the outer wire scores nothing.
- A dart only scores if its point is embedded in or is touching the playing surface. This rule applies to any dart that lands in such a way as to be partially or totally supported by others that have already hit the board.
- When a standard board is used, any dart whose point does not remain in contact with the playing surface until being collected by the player does not score. This includes darts that bounce off the board for any reason, that fall off on their own, or that are dislodged by the impact of later throws. However, when an electronic board is used, fallen/dislodged darts do score as long as their impacts have registered on the board first.