Darts

In this article, I share what I learned about darts after recently discovering the game: surprisingly, the bullseye isn't the highest-scoring target on the board, and pros usually aim for another target instead (the triple 20).

Through a couple of interactive simulations, I show that this strategy, however, only pays off at high accuracy: the triple 20 is surrounded by low-scoring segments, so, for noobs like me, the bullseye remains the better bet.

Last week, while roaming the top floors of the game centers in Akihabara, my wife and I discovered darts.

Of course I knew about the game, and I’m sure that, at some point in my life, I had already picked up a dart and thrown it at a target. I don’t remember ever playing a game, though, and I hadn’t imagined how, behind the simple challenge of seeing who’s best at making a pointy thing land at a certain spot 2 meters away, there’s a whole universe of leagues, championships, rankings, and strategies. It’s a full-blown professional sport, and apparently not even a niche one. I must’ve been living under a rock.

Anyway, after a fun night of abysmal results, back at our hotel, we started binge-watching YouTube compilations of “RECORD BREAKING SETS 🤯” and discovered that, to our surprise, when the pros play they don’t usually aim for the bullseye.

In fact, despite being the smallest target on the board, the bullseye isn’t the highest-scoring one. It’s worth 50 points, but one of the arced segments a few centimeters above it pays 3×20 = 60 points. That’s what the pros go for.

Armed with this crucial piece of knowledge, the following night we headed back to the arcades for a second attempt, certain that now we’d also be scoring 180s one after the other 180 is the maximum possible score in a set of three throws. . Unfathomably, our results got worse.

Turns out, there’s a reason why the triple 20 is more valuable than the bullseye. It’s true that its area is larger, but it’s a much riskier target to aim at! It’s surrounded by low-scoring segments, which means that, unless you’re very accurate, statistically you’ll get fewer points if you try to hit it. The bullseye is more lenient: when you miss (and boy, did we miss!), you still end up with an OK score.

The simulation below lets you see this for yourself: using the slider, set a throwing accuracy (i.e., how tightly your throws cluster around the aimed-at point). Then click anywhere on the target to watch 1000 throws land around it.

When you set a very high accuracy and aim for the triple 20, you get a higher score than if you aim for the bullseye. However, if you lower the accuracy, the outcome flips.

It seems that, if you’re a beginner like me, your best bet is indeed to aim at the bullseye. And maybe a bit lower and to the left.

Having pinned you to your seat with these dazzling simulations, now would be the moment to cash in on your attention: a very subtle pivot into the apps I’m building and the services I offer, with the “noobs shouldn’t copy the pros” metaphor stretched dangerously thin to tie it all together.

It’d be a masterpiece of blog spam, and I’m definitely not above that. But I just can’t be bothered now, so I’ll leave you with the darts trivia and the fun widgets, and go throw a few more terrible rounds instead. Sayonara.