How to play Killer darts
Killer is last-man-standing. Everyone throws one dart for a number, everyone starts on 5 lives, and only DOUBLES do anything. Hit the double of your OWN number three times to become a Killer, then take lives off other players by hitting THEIR doubles. Lose all five lives and you are out. Last player with lives left wins.
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.
YOUR NUMBER
You throw for it. One dart each, with your NON-DOMINANT hand, and the bed it lands in is your number for the game — that is how Killer is played everywhere it is written down. Throw at the board, then tap the numbers in on the Killer screen: the host taps a player, then the number that player hit, and Chuck Darts keeps them exactly as thrown. Two of you in the same bed is a re-throw. The app will not choose between you, because nobody at a real board would. A selection dart in the bull, or off the board altogether, is a re-throw as well — there is no bull in Killer. Nobody has to throw for it. Anyone who does not get a number in before the first scoring dart is simply dealt one, and a table that skips the ritual gets a full shuffle of 1 to 20, a different one each. Either way the numbers are settled by the first dart of the game and cannot be swapped or re-rolled after that — the board is rebuilt from the recorded darts, so moving a number later would re-aim every life already taken.
WHAT A DART DOES
Only doubles count. A single, a triple, a miss and the bullseye (inner or outer) all do nothing at all, on any number, for any player. That includes a triple of your own number: it is not progress, it is a wasted dart. A double that takes a life takes exactly ONE, whoever's number it is — never two, even from the triple ring on that number. Three darts in the same double take three lives because that is three darts. Which doubles take a life, and when, is the rest of this card: a double does nothing until it counts.
BECOMING A KILLER
Hit the double of your own number three times. The board shows your progress as pips, and marks you with a knife and your number lit once you are there. Until you are a Killer, darts at other players' numbers do nothing — you cannot take a life before you have earned the knife. Once you are a Killer you stay a Killer, even when you are down to your last life.
TAKING LIVES
A Killer takes one life from an opponent by hitting THAT OPPONENT'S double. A dart in a double nobody owns does nothing. A dart in the double of a player who is already out does nothing — an eliminated number is dead, and you cannot lose the game by throwing at it.
KILLING YOURSELF
Once you are a Killer, your own double turns on you: every time you hit it you lose one of your own lives. That is the classic way to lose this game.
BEING OUT
At 0 lives you are eliminated and your darts stop counting. Once your lives are gone you're out of the rotation: the app stops passing you the turn and the throw goes straight to the next player still standing, the way it would at a real board. Your number stays on the scoreboard, dead — a dart in it does nothing for anybody. A seat the host — or that player themselves — takes out of a live game stops taking turns the same way an eliminated one does, and its number stays on the board exactly like a dead one. Lives it already took stay taken.
ENTERING SCORES
Killer 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 — there is no way to score Killer from a total, because a total cannot say whose double was hit. Lives are the only currency in Killer, so every turn is stored as 0, and a turn sent with a score on it is refused.
THE CLOCK
In online ranked games with a turn timer, letting the clock run out records your turn as three misses. In Killer three misses cost nothing, so a timeout does not lose you a life.
WINNING, AND EVERYONE ELSE
The game ends the moment one player is left with lives. That player wins, and the app works this out for itself when the host ends the game — nobody has to name a winner. Killer cannot be drawn: a dart only ever takes one life from one player, so the board can never empty. Every player who is not the winner is recorded in equal second place. The app does not rank the losers by how long they survived, and does not record the order of elimination. The one exception is a seat taken out of a live game: it is placed behind everyone who was still at the board at the end, because a player who left should not finish level with one who stayed. If the host ends the game before one player is left standing, no winner and no places are recorded — the game still counts as played in everyone's stats — unless the host names a winner by hand. 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.
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 standing — 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 more than one player still has lives by then the game is recorded exactly as if the host had ended it at that moment: no winner and no places, unless the host names a winner by hand.
CORRECTIONS — READ THIS BEFORE YOU ARGUE
The board is built entirely from the recorded darts. Undo genuinely works here: it removes the last turn completely and replays the board without it, so a wrongly taken life comes back and the turn can be thrown again. Correcting the turn to 0 puts the life back too — three misses cost nothing in Killer — 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. A correction typed as a number is refused — the app cannot turn a total back into darts. If neither door puts things right, agree it at the throw line (the oche) and have the host name the right winner when ending the game. If a turn thrown before the last player fell was logged with no dart detail, the app will not name a survivor: that turn could have been the double that took a last life, so the lives on the board are a guess. Every life it can read still shows. End the game and name the winner yourselves.
PLAYER COUNT
2 to 8 players at the table. That is what both setup screens seat and what the server holds you to — a ninth player trying to JOIN is refused outright, and a game created with nine in it never starts. The app also refuses a solo Killer game: with nobody to eliminate it can never end. The board itself runs out at 20 players, one number each, and a game started with more than 20 in one go is refused for that reason. Killer is at its best with 3 to 6.
HOUSE RULES THIS APP DOES NOT PLAY
No governing body publishes Killer, and there is no single version of it. Chuck Darts plays 5 lives, 3 own-doubles to become a Killer, and 1 life per double. Common alternatives you may have played elsewhere — and the first two of these TOGETHER are what most published guides describe, so the app's five-and-three is the longer game rather than the standard one: 3 lives instead of 5; ONE own-double to become a Killer; accumulating lives by hitting your number (single 1, double 2, triple 3) rather than starting with a fixed pool; damage scaled by ring so a triple takes 3 lives; and "blind killer", where the number assignments are kept secret. If your venue wants one of those, agree it out loud before the first dart — the app will still score the version above.