How to play Gotcha
Everyone starts on 0 and climbs to EXACTLY 301. Go one point past it and the whole turn is wiped. Land on the number an opponent is sitting on and you knock them straight back to 0 - that is the "gotcha". First player to land exactly on 301 wins. 2 to 8 players.
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 CLIMB
Three darts a turn. Every dart adds face value times its multiplier: triple 20 is 60, double 16 is 32, the bull is 25 and the double bull is 50. A miss adds nothing. There is no double to start and no double to finish - your first dart counts and your last dart can be anything, as long as it lands you on 301 exactly.
BUST
The moment a dart would take you past 301 the turn is dead. You do not throw the rest of it, and your score goes back to whatever it was when you stepped up. A bust also undoes anything you did to other players during that turn: if you knocked someone to 0 with your first dart and then busted with your second, they get their score back. A busted turn never happened.
THE GOTCHA
Your score is checked against every opponent after EVERY DART, not at the end of your turn. Any opponent sitting on exactly the number you are now on goes back to 0. That includes numbers you only pass through on the way to somewhere else - if your first dart lands you level with someone, they are gone, even if your next two darts move you off it again. One TURN can get more than one player - one on each dart. One DART cannot, and that is the game rather than a limit of the app: landing on a number is exactly what clears it, so no two players are ever sitting on the same score to begin with. You cannot get yourself. Nobody can be got on 0 - everyone starts there, so sitting on 0 is the one safe place on the board. Once a player has been knocked to 0 the rest of that turn cannot touch them again. Sitting on a round number is dangerous. So is a big lead.
WINNING
The first player to land exactly on 301 wins, and the game ends on that dart - the rest of that turn and anything thrown afterwards counts for nothing. There is no second prize for being closest: 302 is a bust, not a win. Places after first are ordered by how high each player climbed, and level scores share a place. If the host ends a game of two or more before anyone reaches 301, the app awards it to whoever has climbed highest at that moment - unless two players are level at the top, in which case it records no winner and no places at all. A solo climb the host ends before it reaches 301 records no winner and no place, whatever the score at that moment. Agree before you start whether an unfinished Gotcha is a result or a no-contest. One thing can take the result away from a game that was plainly won, and it is worth knowing before it happens to you. Every score in this game leans on every other one - a gotcha only fires because the app knows both players' exact totals - so a turn it cannot read dart by dart turns the whole board into a guess, and it will not crown anybody off a guess. In an online game an unconfirmed turn counts as unreadable until your opponent confirms it. If that happens and play carries on regardless, a second player can climb to 301 as well, and then the app records no winner and no places at all. Confirm turns as they come in, and if one is stuck unconfirmed, settle it before anybody gets near 301.
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 exactly on 301 by then the game is recorded exactly as if the host had ended it at that moment: whoever has climbed highest wins, and two players level at the top means no winner and no places. On your own, the last capped round is the end of your card, so a solo climb that plays it out wins whatever the score.
WHAT THE APP MAKES YOU DO
The app seats eight and refuses a ninth. It does not refuse a FIRST, though: you can open Gotcha on your own and climb to 301 with nobody to knock you back, and the app will record you as having won it. That is a practice run rather than the game - the gotcha is the game, and it needs somebody to aim it at. Every turn must be entered dart by dart. This game is scored from the darts - it has to know exactly what you hit and in what order to work out the busts and the gotchas - so typing a turn total is refused. If you are logged as scorer, log all three darts, including the misses. 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. Only the player whose turn it is can enter a score; the app refuses anything out of turn. If a turn timer is running in a ranked online game and it expires, that turn is recorded as three misses: you keep your score, you cannot bust, and you cannot get anyone. In a local game nothing is auto-forfeited. That timed-out turn is the clock's own record: it cannot be undone or corrected afterwards, by you or by the host.
UNDO AND THE PENCIL
Both doors genuinely put the board back here, and neither is a penalty - a miss costs nothing in Gotcha. Undo removes your last turn completely and replays the game without it: the climb it made comes off, anyone it knocked to 0 gets their score back, and the turn comes back to you as well. Correcting that turn to 0 leaves it on the record with its darts rewritten as a single miss - the board lands in exactly the same place, but the turn counts as thrown, so the turn is spent and play moves on. Without a Round limit the throw itself is the only thing the pencil costs you that undo does not; with one set, that throw was also one of the rounds you had left. If you mis-tapped and want that turn back, UNDO it. A correction typed as a number is refused: this game is scored dart by dart, and a total cannot say which dart busted you or which one fired a gotcha. Correct it with the darts as thrown — typed T20 D10 5, M for a miss — and the climb and the gotchas recompute from those darts. 0 is the single exception among totals - it is how the pencil records a turn as a miss. In an online game your turn sits in the throw history until your opponent confirms it - the Gotcha board itself does not move at all, no climb, no gotcha, no win, until confirmation lands.
HOUSE RULES AND VARIATIONS
This is a house game with no governing body, so what the app does is one common version, not the only one. Before you start, agree: - The target. The app plays to 301 and cannot be set to anything else. Other houses play 501, or shorter targets like 200. - When the gotcha fires. The app checks after every dart. Some published rulesets only compare totals once the whole turn is thrown, which makes passing through an opponent's score harmless. This is the single biggest difference between houses. - What an overshoot costs. The app wipes the whole turn and puts you back on the score you started it with. The American bar machines do not: they take the amount you went over off the score you had, so passing 301 by 12 leaves you 12 short of it rather than back where you began — and no gotchas fire on the way through. - Whether an unfinished game counts.