How to play Double Trouble
Twenty-one doubles: D1 through D20, plus the double bull. Hit them in any order you like; every one you hit is crossed off your card. First player to clear all 21 wins, the instant the last one lands. There are no points.
Also played as Doubles Around the Clock, All Doubles, Doubles Practice.
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.
WHAT COUNTS AS A HIT
Only a genuine double. A single, a triple or a miss does nothing at all — no credit, no penalty. A triple 20 is a dead dart in this game. Hitting a double you have already crossed off is a wasted dart and nothing more. The card stays as it was.
THE BULL
The 21st target is the DOUBLE bull — the 50, the inner ring. The outer bull, the 25, does not cross it off, exactly as it would not finish a leg of 501. The app labels the slot D-Bull for that reason.
ORDER, ROUNDS AND VISITS
Any order at all. Nothing is assigned to a round: no double belongs to any particular turn. Each turn is three darts and you may aim them wherever you like — three darts at one double, or three different doubles, it makes no difference to the card. You throw until somebody clears all 21, or until the host ends the game — in which case the most doubles crossed off wins, and a shared count records no winner. A Round limit, if the host set one, ends it the same way (see ROUND LIMIT).
HOW YOU ENTER A SCORE
Dart by dart. The app rejects a turn typed in as a bare total, because a total cannot say which double you hit. No double is worth anything in points, so every turn is stored as 0 — the app will not record any other number against your name.
WINNING
First player whose 21st double is confirmed. The game ends on that dart — the rest of the turn is not thrown and is not counted, and a player who has cleared the card throws no more. The face value of a double never matters. Clearing D1 through D5 is worth exactly as much as clearing D16 through D20. In an online game, darts waiting on confirmation show on your card but cannot win the race. A card completed only by unconfirmed darts is not a completed card. If a turn earlier in the race was logged with no dart detail, the app cannot tell which doubles it marked and stops calling the race on the card. Every mark it can read still shows on the board, and the race does not end there — if the host ends the game, the player with the most doubles crossed off is recorded as the winner; a shared count records no winner at all. A turn lost to the clock is not that — it counts as three misses and costs you nothing but the darts.
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. It is this app's option, not a rule of the game. With a limit set, the app takes no turn after the last capped round, and if nobody has cleared all 21 by then the game is recorded exactly as if the host had ended it at that moment: the most doubles crossed off wins, and a shared count records no winner.
TURNS, CLOCKS AND CORRECTIONS
With two or more players you can only submit on your own turn. If a turn clock is set in a ranked online game and you run it out, the app throws three misses for you — which costs you nothing but the darts. Corrections: a turn typed as a number is refused — the card is built from the darts. Undo removes the last turn completely and replays the card without it, so a wrongly crossed double comes straight back off and the turn can be thrown again. Correcting the turn to 0 takes the double off too, but leaves the turn on the record as thrown. A turn the clock forfeited is the clock's own record: neither you nor the host can undo it or correct it afterwards. 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 card 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. 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 eight is the intended game. The app will let you play alone — clear the 21 and you have won.
HOUSE RULES THIS APP DOES NOT PLAY
No governing body publishes this game, and no published rulebook uses the name Double Trouble for it — among players that phrase usually means missing the double you needed to go out. Chuck Darts plays it as a race: the twenty doubles and the bullseye, in any order, first to hit them all. Published versions of the same doubles drill nearly always run IN ORDER, double 1 up to double 20 and then the bull. Common alternatives you may have played elsewhere: that in-order version; the bullseye as a wildcard standing in for any double you have not yet hit; finishing the round so that everyone has thrown the same number of turns, rather than ending on the dart; and versions that bank points instead of racing. If your venue wants one of those, agree it out loud before the first dart — the app will still score the version above.