How to play Halve-It
Halve-It is a nine-round gauntlet. Everyone starts on 0 and your first round sets your score. Each round has one target; score what you hit on it and add it to your total. Blank the round completely — nothing on the target with any of your three darts — and your total is CUT IN HALF. Highest score at the end of the ninth round wins.
Also played as Half-It, Halve It, Split.
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 NINE TARGETS, IN ORDER
1. 20 2. 19 3. 18 4. 17 5. 16 6. 15 7. any double 8. any triple 9. bull That sequence is fixed. This app does not let you choose your own targets, and the round moves on only when every player has thrown in it.
WHAT COUNTS, ROUND BY ROUND
Number rounds (20 down to 15): any ring on that number, at full value. On the 20 round, S20 is 20, D20 is 40 and T20 is 60. Nothing else scores — a triple 19 in the 20 round is worth zero. The double round: EVERY double on the board counts, at its double value. D1 is 2, D20 is 40, and the double bull counts as a double and is worth 50. The triple round: every triple counts, at its triple value. T1 is 3, T20 is 60. The bull CANNOT be tripled, so the bull is a dead dart in this round — do not throw at it. The bull round: outer bull scores 25, inner bull scores 50. Both count.
THE HALVE — THE RULE THE ARGUMENTS ARE ABOUT
Your score is halved only when your WHOLE TURN scores nothing on the target. One dart on target and you are safe: two misses and a single 15 in the 15 round scores 15 and does not halve you. The halve rounds DOWN. 75 becomes 37, not 38. (Published guides split about evenly on this — as many round up as round down. This app rounds down, and that is a deliberate choice, not a bug.) Your score cannot go below zero and cannot go negative. Once you are on 0 you stay on 0, and you are not out — keep throwing, you can still climb back. You start on nothing, so a blank first round leaves you on 0 and costs you nothing — half of nothing is nothing. That is why the first round is the one that SETS your score rather than one you can be punished in. From the second round on it bites, and the later you blank the more it costs: blank the bull round sitting on 180 and you lose 90 with no round left to win it back.
ENTERING SCORES
This game is scored dart by dart. Every turn must be entered as the three darts you actually threw. Typing a bare turn total is rejected by the app — a total cannot say whether you hit the target, so it cannot tell a score from a halve. There is no tenth round. Both apps lock the pad once all nine rounds are in, and the server refuses a late turn outright.
THE CLOCK
In online ranked games with a turn timer, letting the clock run out records your turn as three misses — which in this game means YOUR SCORE IS HALVED. Halve-It is the one game here where running out of time costs you real score. Throw something. 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.
WINNING
Highest score once every player has completed all nine rounds. The app works the winner out for itself when the host ends the game, and ranks second place and below on final score, with players level on score sharing a placing. Do not end the game early: if the host ends it before the ninth round is complete for everyone, the app hands the win to whoever is ahead at that moment.
A TIE
There is no tie-break. If the two leaders finish level, the app records NO winner and NO placings. The game still counts as played in everyone's stats, and a linked league match still closes, with nobody credited a win. Ties are more likely here than in most games, because halving drives scores towards the same handful of numbers. Agree a decider before you start (a tenth round on the bull is the usual house fix) and have the host name the winner when ending the game. The host can override the result and name any player the winner when ending the game (on the phone: End Game, then Forfeit — pick winner; on the web: End Match, then pick the player). That is a manual decision, not the engine's — and it is the intended fix for a tie.
CORRECTIONS — READ THIS BEFORE YOU ARGUE
The score is rebuilt from the recorded darts every time. A correction typed as a number is refused. A turn the clock forfeited is the clock's own record: neither you nor the host can undo it or correct it afterwards. The two repair doors are NOT the same door, and in this game the difference is half a score. Undo removes the last turn completely and replays the board without it: the round goes back to unthrown, and a score that turn halved comes back whole. Correcting a turn to 0 is the opposite — a zero is stored as a miss, a round of misses is a blank round, and a blank round HALVES that player. So if you mis-entered your last turn, UNDO it; pencil it to zero only if you mean the halve. If neither door puts it right, agree it at the throw line (the oche) and have the host name the right winner when ending the game.
PLAYERS
2 to 8 players — the ceiling both setup screens seat and the one the server holds you to, so a ninth trying to JOIN is refused — and so is a game created with nine in it. A solo card works too, recorded as a win.
HOUSE RULES THIS APP DOES NOT PLAY
Halve-It has no governing body and more variants than almost any game on the board — even the target list is regional. Chuck Darts plays 20-19-18-17-16-15, any double, any triple, bull; start on 0; halve on a blank turn; round down; floor at zero. The start is not ours — every published guide that names one says nought, or says your first throw establishes your score, which comes to the same thing. The nine targets and the rounding ARE ours. Common alternatives you may have played elsewhere: rounding the halve UP (about half the published guides do, and half round down as this app does); "harsh" Halve-It, where a blank round resets you to zero instead of halving; sequences that alternate easy and hard targets, or run 11 through 20; a "three colors" round; and inner-bull-only for the last round. Halve-It is also played under the names Half-It, Split and — confusingly — as a cousin of Bermuda Triangle, which this app scores as a separate game. If your venue wants one of those, agree it out loud before the first dart — the app will still score the version above.