How to Keep Score in Darts

Darren Parzow: Hi, I am Darren Parzow, Hall of Fame darts player and I am teaching you how to play darts. Now I am going to teach you the proper way to keep score including scoring etiquette. First thing I am going to teach you to keep score for is going to be cricket. Cricket is very simple when you score the numbers, when you score a 20 you are going to want to put it in this column here right next to the 20. Two 20s would be an X, three would a zero or a circle around that X. Now if you hit three 20s in one handful you don't have to put the X in, you can just put a circle. People will know that it is closed and that is the important part. When they score points you are going to put that in the next column over. So if they score 40 points you are going to want to put that here. Moving on to the 19s, if you hit four 19's you hit the three to close plus 19 points. So you are at total 59, go ahead and cross out the old score. So that is what you are going to want to do for cricket all the way down the board and if you are a scorekeeper once that winning dart is hit you want to signify the game is over just by putting your hand out. You don't want to turn, you don't want to yell, "Game over!" You just - the players will know the game is over and it is complete.

Now I am going to show you the right way to keep score for 501 and 301, sounds simple but there is some intricacies to it so it will help you to keep things simple. When you score starting with let's just say 501 points, if you score a triple 20 and two single 20s which is a 100 points, see I am keeping the math easy you are going to write the 100 points on one column and the remaining score on the other column and that is what you have remaining 401. After the next handful, if you hit 60 points which leaves 341, go ahead and mark that out so just the 341 showing. That way when you get lower into the scores, you won't get confused what you have remaining and what you scored if you always put a mark through it like so. You know you have 61 remaining, not a 100. So you don't shoot the wrong shot and end up having to do another turn. So that is pretty much your basics to scoring for Cricket and 501 and 301. That is some basics on how to play the game of darts. I hope you got some great things out of that and if you would like to get some more you can contact the Washington Area Darts Association. Have fun and shoot well.