How to play Fives
Three darts a turn, and all three have to score. Add them up, and if the total divides by five you bank one point for every five in it — 60 banks 12, 45 banks 9, 20 banks 4. If it does not divide by five, or if one of your darts missed, you bank nothing at all. First player to exactly 51 wins.
Also played as All Fives, 51 by 5s, Fifty-One by Fives.
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
Every part of the board scores at face value towards the turn total: singles, doubles, triples, the outer bull as 25 and the bullseye as 50.
ALL THREE DARTS MUST SCORE
A dart that misses the board does not just score nothing itself — it kills the whole turn, and the two good darts beside it count for nothing. Throw all three and land all three, every turn. This is the rule that stops the obvious cheat, and it is worth knowing why it is there. A third dart can only ever RUIN a total that already divides by five, so without this rule the clever play on 48 — needing exactly 15 — would be to throw two darts for your 15 and simply stop, or to lob the third at the floor. Neither works here. Two darts is not a turn, and a dart in the floor is not a score.
THE DIVIDE-BY-FIVE GATE
Once all three darts have scored, the gate is on the turn TOTAL, never on individual darts. A single dart does not have to divide by five; the turn does. T20 T20 T20 = 180. Divides. Banks 36. S19 S19 S7 = 45. Divides. Banks 9. S20 S20 S1 = 41. Does not divide. Banks nothing — the whole turn is a blob. S20 S20 out = 40. Divides perfectly — but a dart missed. Banks nothing. Three misses = 0. Nothing scored, nothing banked.
BUSTING — AND WHAT "OVER 51" MEANS
You have to land on exactly 51, counted in fives. If the fives you just earned would take your total past 51, the turn busts: it banks nothing and your score stays exactly where it was. The 51 is a count of fives, not of dart points. A 180 turn is 36 fives, which is a perfectly good turn from a standing start. It is only a bust when your running total plus those fives would go past 51. On 48 you need exactly 3, so nothing but a turn totaling 15 will do.
ONE ROUND IS ONE TURN
The gate is applied to your whole round. Enter your three darts together, once — but if a turn does end up split across two entries in the same round, the app merges the fragments and grades the round's full total as one turn. 40 and 1 entered separately in the same round is still a 41 turn, and 41 banks nothing: the split cannot turn a blob into 8 points. What it cannot merge is entries in different rounds — darts recorded against the wrong round are graded with that round's turn, so keep the entry with its turn.
HOW YOU ENTER A SCORE
Dart by dart. The app rejects a turn typed in as a bare total, because the score comes from the darts.
WINNING
Exactly 51, first one there. The game is over on that dart — darts thrown afterwards score nothing, for anyone. There is no other way to win: you play until somebody lands it, or until the Round limit runs out if the host set one (see ROUND LIMIT). The winning turn is a turn like any other, which means all three darts have to score on it too. You cannot finish on two darts and you cannot finish on a turn you put in the floor: that turn banks nothing, so it cannot be the turn that takes you to 51. If a turn was logged with no dart detail the board stops declaring a winner on the darts, because it cannot tell whether that turn divided by five — but the game does not end itself either. Everything it can read still shows on the board, and when the host ends the game, the player with the most fives banked is recorded as the winner; a shared lead records no winner at all.
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 landed 51 by then the game is recorded exactly as if the host had ended it at that moment: the player with the most fives banked wins, and a shared lead records no winner.
TURNS, CLOCKS AND CORRECTIONS
With two or more players you can only submit on your own turn. In an online game your turn waits for your opponents to confirm it before it counts; an unconfirmed turn shows as a preview and never moves a score. If a turn clock is set in a ranked online game and you run it out, the app throws three misses for you — one spoiled turn, nothing worse. Corrections: a turn typed as a number is refused — the score comes from the darts. A turn the clock forfeited is the clock's own record: neither you nor the host can undo it or correct it afterwards. Undo removes the last turn completely and replays the score without it, so the turn goes back to unthrown and you take it again. Correcting a turn to 0 leaves it on the record as a miss instead: one spoiled turn, banks nothing. Fives has no penalty for a blank turn, so the score lands in the same place through either door — undo simply gives you the darts back. 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. The app keeps the seat in the running order so everyone else's turn order holds, but nothing more is scored for or against them: their board stops where they left it, 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 — land 51 and you have won.
HOUSE RULES THIS APP DOES NOT PLAY
No governing body publishes this game, so what follows is convention rather than a rulebook. Chuck Darts plays the version the published descriptions agree on: a fifth of any turn total that divides by 5, nothing at all when it does not, all three darts have to score or the turn is void, and exactly 51 to win. This app USED to let a dead dart cost only itself; it no longer does, because every description we could find says otherwise. Two things are still ours to choose. The TARGET is fixed at 51, which is the standard, but some houses play to 50 and some to 21 — the sources do not agree and you cannot change it here. The NAME is the other, and it is worth settling before the first dart: what this app plays is the game usually written out as All Fives or 51 by 5s, while at least one published game called plain Fives is a different one entirely — a race to 50 or 100 in which doubles and triples do not count. If your venue wants either of those, agree it out loud first; the app will still score the version above.