How to play Custom Cricket
Cricket on a board you name yourself: pick anything from 2 to 21 targets out of 1 to 20 and the bull before the game starts, and that is the board for the whole game. Close each target you picked by hitting it three times, then score on the ones your opponents have not closed yet. You win the moment you have closed every target on the board AND your points are equal to or higher than every opponent's. Points on their own never win.
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.
THE BOARD
You choose the numbers on the setup screen, before the game is created, and they do not change afterwards — not on a correction, not on an undo, not if the host pauses. Everybody plays the same board. Any target from 1 to 20 can be on it and so can the bull, in any combination: 20, 19, 18, 17, 16, 15 and the bull is the standard board and is one tap, 10 up to 20 is another, and 3, 5, 7, 11, 14 and 19 is a perfectly ordinary night. Two targets is the smallest board the app will start — a race on one number is a coin toss, not a game — and 21 is every number plus the bull, which is all of them. The board is shown high to low with the bull last, the way every cricket board here is drawn, so the order you tapped them in never shows. Every bed that is not on the board is dead: on a board without 20, a double 20 marks nothing and scores nothing, and the app records the dart and moves on. The game will not start until the board is finished — an unfinished pick is refused rather than filled in for you, because a board nobody chose is worse than no game. Rematch replays the SAME board, because that is the one the players agreed on; pick a different set from the setup screen if you want a different game.
MARKS
A target closes at three marks. A single is 1 mark, a double 2, a triple 3 — so a triple closes a target in one dart. On the bull, the outer ring is 1 mark and the inner (double) bull is 2. There is no triple bull and the app will not let you enter one. Nothing about marking changes because you picked the numbers: a single 3 on a board holding 3 is one mark, exactly as a single 20 is on a board holding 20.
POINTS
Once you are on three marks, every extra mark on that target scores its face value: a single 19 on a closed 19 is 19, a triple 5 on a closed 5 is 15. The bull scores 25 per mark, so an inner bull on a closed bull is 50. Overflow inside one dart counts — sitting on two marks, a triple 20 gives you the third mark and two spare marks, so 40 points. The board you pick decides the game you get, and that is the point of it rather than a fault. A board of low numbers pays small points, so the closing race decides more of the result than it does on 20 down to 15; a wide board of fifteen or twenty targets is a long closing race; a board of three is a sprint. Agree it before you pick, because it cannot be changed once the game exists. You only score while at least one opponent still has that target open. With three or more players, one opponent closing does not stop you: you keep scoring until they have all closed it. Once every player has closed a target it is dead for the rest of the game — it goes gray on the board and nobody can score on it again. Playing solo, nobody has anything open, so no dart can ever score. Solo Custom Cricket is a closing race.
WINNING
You win when both are true at the end of your own turn: every target on the board closed, and your points equal to or higher than every opponent's. A tie on points goes to whoever got there first — closing out level is a win, not a draw. If you close everything while behind, nothing stops you: keep hitting the targets your opponents still have open until you are level. The app checks the win at the end of the turn that completes it, and the first player to satisfy it is the winner for good. Nothing ends the game automatically — the app tells the host "Game over" and the host presses End Game.
ROUND LIMIT
The host can cap the game at a set number of rounds when creating it — a round is one turn for every player still in the game — and with the Round limit left off, nothing on this card changes. With a limit set, the app takes no turn after the last capped round. Close out inside the limit and you win exactly as above. If nobody has by then, the points decide it — the one time this game is won on points alone: the most points wins, counting only the players still at the board, and level points is a draw that records no winner. A turn that could not be read dart by dart keeps the points from deciding it, and then no winner is recorded either. It is the format the soft-tip bar machines use.
ENTERING SCORES
Custom Cricket is scored dart by dart, because a turn total cannot say which targets were marked — and on a board you chose it cannot even say which targets were in play. Enter each dart; a bare total is refused. One, two or three darts per turn is fine — enter what you actually threw, and use Miss for the ones that went nowhere. The app works out what the turn is worth from your darts. If the total it is sent disagrees with the darts it is sent, it refuses the turn rather than guess. In a game of two or more, only the player whose turn it is can enter a score.
CORRECTIONS
Correcting a turn replays the whole board from the start, so every point and every mark after it is recomputed. The board is not re-chosen by a correction, an undo or an edit — it was picked once and the replay uses that same board. Correcting a turn to zero is stored as a miss, which keeps the marks record honest. Undo is a different door: it removes the last turn completely and replays without it, so the turn goes back to unthrown. A turn the clock forfeited is the clock's own record: neither you nor the host can undo it or correct it afterwards. Once the marks have decided a winner, a correction typed as a bare total is refused — re-enter that turn dart by dart instead. Before a winner exists, correct with the darts too: a bare-total correction erases that turn's marks, and once any turn has no darts the app stops naming a winner for the rest of the game.
THE CLOCK
A turn clock only auto-forfeits in ranked online games. When it runs out, the turn is recorded as three misses — no marks, no points — and play moves on. In a local game nothing forfeits; the host fixes it by hand.
LEAVING THE GAME
If someone has to go, 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. Everything they already threw stands: their marks stay marked and their points stay scored. The app keeps their seat in the running order so the turn order holds for everyone else, but nothing more is added to their card, and they are placed after everyone who finished. 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.
PLAYERS
Two to four is the intended game and what the scoreboard is drawn for. Each setup screen holds you to four, and a fifth player trying to JOIN a Custom Cricket game is refused by the server — as is a fifth seat asked for when the game is created. Throwing order is the order players were added, host first. If the host ends the game before anyone has legally won, no winner is recorded — cricket never awards the game on points alone. The finishing order shown is by points only, and does not mean anyone won.
HOUSE RULES THIS APP DOES NOT PLAY
No governing body publishes cricket in any form, and no machine that publishes a chosen-board version lets you vary how MANY targets you pick — they fix it at six or seven and the bull. Chuck Darts lets you name the targets and nothing else: three marks to close, any ring marks, points to the thrower — Cricket exactly as its own card describes it, on the board you picked instead of the fixed one. Versions you may have played elsewhere and will NOT find here: giving each player a board of their own; changing the board between legs or rounds of the same game; a different number of marks to close on a board you chose; and cut-throat scoring, which is its own game on this app's list and is played on the fixed 15 to 20 board. If your venue plays one of those, agree it out loud before the first dart — the app will still score the version above.