How to play 501 darts
Start on 501, throw three darts a turn, take what you score off your total, and be first to exactly zero — with your last dart in a double or the inner bull. Overshoot, or leave yourself on 1, and the whole turn is wiped: you go back to the score you started the turn on.
Also played as 501 Up.
Chuck Darts scores this game to exactly the rules on this page, and keeps the card open mid-match so anybody at the board can check one. A full leg of 501, a board of Cricket and six practice drills are playable right now with no account at all.
SCORING
Three darts a turn. The outer ring doubles the number, the inner ring triples it. The outer bull is 25, the inner bull is 50. Your turn total comes off your remaining score.
WINNING
You win by getting to exactly 0 with a dart in a double — any of D1 to D20, or the inner bull, which counts as double 25. The outer 25 is a SINGLE: it does not finish a leg, even though it is part of the bullseye. Reaching 0 on a single or a triple is not a finish either. Nothing ends the game by itself. The app calls the game shot and marks you OUT, but the host still has to end the game, and the lowest remaining score is then recorded as the winner. Once the leg is won, stop throwing — and the app holds you to it. With a player on 0 it refuses every further turn, because the first player to finish is the winner of the leg and a dart thrown after that does not count. A tie on the lowest remaining score SHORT of zero — the host ends it with two of you on 40 — still records NO winner and no places at all.
BUST
Three ways to bust, and all three do the same thing — the turn scores nothing and your score goes back to what it was when you stepped up: * you go below zero * you leave exactly 1 (there is no double that finishes 1) * you land on exactly 0 with a dart that is not a double or the inner bull Bust on your second dart and the third does not count either, exactly as a paper scorer would do it.
IF A TURN CANNOT BE READ
Score dart by dart — the phone's Coach pad, or tapping the darts into the web keypad — and the app sees which dart landed last, so it rules on the double. A turn typed as one total is different, and under DOUBLE OUT the app no longer takes it on trust: a total that would land you on 0 cannot say which dart landed last, so the app stops and asks for the darts. On the phone a panel opens and you tap the three you threw; on the web the total is refused and you enter the darts on the keypad instead. Nothing is recorded until you do, and backing out leaves it your turn. Under STRAIGHT OUT there is no double to prove, so a total that lands on 0 is simply the finish. Some remainings a total cannot claim at all: sitting on 1, 159, 162, 165 or 168 — or on anything from 171 to 180 — no three darts finish under double-out, and the app refuses the turn outright rather than record an impossible checkout. (Those are bogey remainders — a score you can be sitting on but cannot go out from in one turn; do not confuse them with the impossible turn totals below, which are scores three darts cannot add up to. 163, 166 and 169 are on both lists, and are stopped as impossible totals before the bogey rule is reached.) OUT* in the score table still marks an out the app could not check against the double — but since it started asking, that only turns up on games played earlier, and on a turn later corrected to a bare total. The below-zero and leave-1 busts always apply, darts or no darts. A turn total must be a whole number from 0 to 180, and it has to be a number three darts can actually make: the scoring pads refuse 163, 166, 169, 172, 173, 175, 176, 178 and 179, because no three darts on the board add up to any of them — a typed 179 is a mis-keyed 79 every time. If you enter the darts they must add up to that total.
STRAIGHT OUT
Straight out is a choice now, not just an engine mode: pick the Finish Rule when you create the game. Under straight out only the below-zero bust applies — any exact zero wins, leaving 1 is fine, and the last dart does not need to be a double. The match header shows a Double out or Straight out badge so everyone at the throw line (the oche) knows which rule is live, and a rematch or a game-night playlist carries the rule over. Leave the setting alone and the game is double out, exactly as above.
MATCH LENGTH
Pick Single leg, Best of 3 or Best of 5 under Match length when you create the game; a venue's house rules can set it for you, and your pick overrides them. A single leg is the game above. Best of 3 is first to 2 legs and best of 5 is first to 3. Each checkout banks a leg and every board resets to its starting score by itself; everything else about the match — the tally, the opener alternating leg by leg, what an early end records — works exactly as on the Legs card.
ROUND LIMIT
The host can cap a single leg at a set number of rounds when creating the game — a round is one turn for every player still in the game — and with the Round limit left off, nothing on this card changes. A limit cannot be combined with a best-of match. With one set, the app takes no turn after the last capped round. A checkout inside the limit wins exactly as above; if nobody has checked out by then, the lowest score left wins — counting only the players still at the board — and a tie on the lowest score is a draw that records no winner and no places. It is the format the soft-tip bar machines use.
TURN ORDER AND TIMERS
Players throw in the order they were added, host first — there is no throw for the bull, and the order does not alternate between games — only a best-of match alternates the opener, leg by leg (see MATCH LENGTH). In a game of two or more, the app will not accept a score out of turn. A turn clock is optional; it only auto-forfeits in a ranked online game, where running out records 0 for that turn and moves play on. In an online game your turn waits until every opponent confirms it, and a dispute holds it until it is settled. If someone has to leave, the host — or that player themselves — can take their seat out of a live game, as long as two players are left at the board: the app refuses a removal that would leave one player throwing alone, so a two-handed game has to be ended instead. Their score stops where they left it, the app keeps the seat in the running order so everybody else can play on, and they are placed after everyone who finished, whatever they were sitting on when they went. It cannot be undone, and Rematch will not bring them back: it carries only the seats that were still in, so start the next game and add them to it yourself.
CORRECTIONS
The host, or the player who threw, can correct any turn while the game is live - with one exception, and it is the one the clock writes. A turn the timer forfeited is the clock's own record: neither you nor the host can undo it or correct it afterwards. The whole leg is then replayed under these same rules, so fixing an early turn can flip a later bust into a score or the other way round. Correct it with the darts as thrown — typed T20 D10 5, M for a miss — and the app re-scores the turn from those darts and can still rule on the double. Correct it with a total instead and the dart record is dropped: the new total counts, but a finish from it can no longer be checked against the double, so the score table marks it OUT*. Setting a turn to 0 undoes it. Once the game is ended the scores are frozen.
HANDICAP
If the game was created with auto-handicap on, the strongest player starts on 501 and the others start lower — rounded to a multiple of 10, never below 250, and only for players with enough recent scoring history. Everyone still finishes under the game's finish rule — on a double, unless the game was created straight out.
HOUSE RULES AND TOURNAMENT PLAY
The scoring above is the tournament game, near enough word for word: a straight start, the three busts, and a double or the inner bull to finish. Three things on this card are the house's rather than the rulebook's, and a stranger should not read them as the rules. The first is the throw order — tournament play decides who starts by throwing at the bull, and the opener alternates from leg to leg and from game to game; Chuck Darts seats the host first and keeps that order all night, alternating the opener only inside a best-of match. The second is the length: the numbers the tournament rulebooks name are 301, 501 and 701, with 1001 as the long game, so 201, 601 and 801 are house lengths this app adds. The third is the auto-handicap, which is a league handicapping idea — scaling a weaker player's start down toward the strongest player's — and not a tournament rule at all. Straight out is a real format rather than a shortcut, and it is the normal game on American soft-tip league nights, but tournament play always finishes on a double. If your venue wants one of those, agree it out loud before the first dart — the app will still score the version above.
OTHER STARTING SCORES — 201, 301, 601, 701 AND 801
This app scores six X01 lengths and they are one game. Everything on this page holds for every one of them without a single change: three darts a turn, the double finish, the inner bull counting as double 25 while the outer 25 does not finish a leg, and all three ways to bust. The only thing that changes is the number you start on. * 201 — start on 201; auto-handicap never seeds anyone below 100 * 301 — start on 301; auto-handicap never seeds anyone below 150, and it has a guide of its own * 501 — start on 501; auto-handicap never seeds anyone below 250, and it has a guide of its own * 601 — start on 601; auto-handicap never seeds anyone below 300 * 701 — start on 701; auto-handicap never seeds anyone below 350 * 801 — start on 801; auto-handicap never seeds anyone below 400 201 and 301 are the short games — a 180 leaves 21 off 201 and 121 off 301, so the doubles arrive in the first turn or two, which is why they are what most people practice finishing on. 601, 701 and 801 are the long games: one, two and three hundred more to clear than 501, and nothing else about them differs. One thing worth knowing about the numbers themselves: only 501 and 701 are lengths the sport's competition rulebooks actually name. 201, 301, 601 and 801 are house lengths — played everywhere, written into no official format. It changes nothing about how they are scored here: the rules of X01 never depended on the number you start from, so all six are scored to the same standard as 501.