Guide · Doubles

How to practise doubles in darts

Most legs are decided on the double. This guide shows you how to measure where you stand, which doubles to focus on, and three drills you can fit into a 20-minute session.

Why doubles matter more than you think

A strong visit of 100 is worth a lot less if you then need nine darts to hit D16. Every dart you throw at a double without hitting it adds to your darts per leg and pulls your 3-dart average down. Two players with the same scoring can end up with very different averages simply because one of them finishes in two darts and the other needs six.

That is why doubles practice pays off quickly. Scoring improves slowly over months. Finishing can improve in a few weeks, because you are training a small number of targets and the feedback is immediate: the dart is either in or out.

Step 1: Measure your starting point

Before you change anything, find out where you are. Two numbers tell you most of what you need to know:

• Checkout rate: darts that hit the double divided by all darts thrown at a double. If you threw 40 darts at doubles and won 10 legs, your checkout rate is 25%.
• Hit rate per double: the same figure for each double on its own. Most players are noticeably better on two or three doubles and poor on the rest.

Write these down after every session, or let a scoring app record them for you. Look at at least 50 darts at a double before you draw conclusions; with fewer darts a single good or bad evening skews the figure.

These are rough guidelines based on common experience, not official figures. Your own trend matters more than the comparison.

Step 2: Pick the doubles you will train

You don’t need to be good on all 21 doubles. You need to be reliable on the ones you leave most often. In 501 those are usually:

• D20 and D16, the classic finishing doubles at the top and left of the board.
• D8, D4 and D2, because a single on D16 leaves you 16, then 8, then 4. These are your follow-up doubles.
• D10 and D5, the follow-ups when you play D20 and hit the single.
• D18 and D12, which come up on finishes such as 81 (T19, D12) and 72 (T12, D18), and as straight leaves of 36 and 24.

Choose one main double, usually D16 or D20, and set up your finishes towards it. Then make sure you can follow up when you miss into the single.

Step 3: Three drills that work

Bob’s 27

You start on 27 points and throw three darts at each double from D1 to D20, then the bull. Every hit adds the value of the double. If you miss all three, the value of the double is taken off. If you drop to zero or below, the game is over. The maximum is 1,437.

Bob’s 27 is good because it punishes misses and forces you to cover every double. Note your score each time. Reaching the bull at all is a good first goal; a score above 200 is a sign that your doubles are becoming solid.

Halving Chains

Halving Chains trains the routes where the double halves: D20 → D10 → D5, D16 → D8 → D4, D8 → D4 → D2, D12 → D6 → D3 and D4 → D2 → D1. You throw one dart at each double, hit or miss, and move on to the next. One round is 15 darts.

It mirrors what happens in a match: you go for D16, the dart lands in the single, and now you need D8. Because every double gets exactly one dart, you also get a clean hit rate for each one, which makes it easy to spot weak links.

Double Chase

You throw at the bull. Three bulls in one visit complete the round. When you miss the bull, the number you hit instead becomes your double, and you chase that next. The drill keeps you switching targets around the whole board, which is closer to match play than throwing at one double for ten minutes.

A 20-minute doubles session

1. 15 minutes: warm up with doubles-only Around the Clock or a few visits at your main double.
2. 210 minutes: one game of Bob’s 27. Note your score.
3. 35 minutes: one round of Halving Chains, or Double Chase if you want more movement around the board.

Three or four sessions like this a week is plenty. Short, focused sessions work better than one long one, because your concentration on the double drops quickly once you are tired.

Tips for match play

• Know your leaves. On 32, a single leaves 16; on 40, a single leaves 20. Both still give you a double.
• Don’t switch doubles after one miss. Staying on the same double keeps your rhythm.
• Avoid leaving odd numbers on your last scoring visit if you can. Use a single to set up an even score instead.
• Practise under a little pressure: set yourself a target score in Bob’s 27 and play until you beat it.

How to tell if it is working

Compare your checkout rate month by month, not session by session. If it climbs by a few percentage points over six to eight weeks and your darts per leg drop, your practice is paying off. Also watch your hit rate on your weakest double. Raising a 10% double to 20% often wins you more legs than polishing your best one.