Others are designed to retract slightly on impact to lessen the chance of the dart bouncing out. The points come in two common lengths, 32 and 41 mm ( 1 + 1⁄ 4 and 1 + 5⁄ 8 in) and are sometimes knurled or coated to improve players' grip. Modern darts are made up of four components: the points, the barrels, the shafts and the flights. Quality dartboards are still made of sisal fibres from East Africa, Brazil, or China less expensive boards are sometimes made of cork or coiled paper. Each section is separated with metal wire or a thin band of sheet metal. Equipment Dartboard Īccording to the Darts Regulation Authority, a regulation board is 451 mm ( 17 + 3⁄ 4 in) in diameter and is divided into 20 radial sections. With the widespread use of plastic, the shaft and flight came to be manufactured separately, although one-piece moulded plastic shaft and flight darts were also available. This type of dart continued to be used into the 1970s. The wooden shafts, threaded to fit the tapped barrel, were either fletched as before or designed to take a paper flight. The first metal barrels were made from brass which was relatively cheap and easy to work.
Metal barrels were patented in 1906, but wood continued to be used into the 1950s. These darts were mainly produced in France and became known as French darts. The first purpose-made darts were manufactured from solid wood, wrapped with a strip of lead for weight and fitted with flights made from split turkey feathers.
The earliest darts were stubs of arrows or crossbow bolts. Furthermore, darts did little or no damage to the board they simply parted the packed fibres when they entered the board. It was more durable and required little maintenance. This new dartboard was an instant success. The bundles were then compressed into a disk and bound with a metal ring. Small bundles of sisal fibres of the same length were bundled together. In 1935, chemist Ted Leggatt and pub owner Frank Dabbs began using the century plant, a type of agave, to make dartboards. The other problem was that elm wood needed periodic soaking to keep the wood soft. But darts pocked the surface of elm such that it was common for a hole to develop around the treble twenty. īefore World War I, pubs in the United Kingdom had dartboards made from solid blocks of wood, usually elm. There have been several mathematical papers published that consider the "optimal" dartboard. Many different layouts would penalise a player more than the current setup however, the current setup actually does the job rather efficiently. Mathematically, removing the rotational symmetry by placing the "20" at the top, there are 19!, or 121,645,100,408,832,000 possible dartboards. The London Fives board is another variation, with only 12 equal segments, with the doubles and trebles being a quarter of an inch (6.35 mm) wide. The Manchester board is smaller than the standard, with a playing area of only 25 cm (9.8 in) across, with double and bull areas measuring just 4 mm (0.16 in). In particular, the Yorkshire and Manchester Log End boards differ from the standard board in that they have no triple, only double and bullseye. Many configurations have been used, varying by time and location. The standard numbered point system is attributed to Lancashire carpenter Brian Gamlin, who devised it in 1896 to penalise inaccuracy, though this is disputed. An older name for a dartboard is " butt" the word comes from the French word but, meaning "target" or "goal". The original target in the game is likely to have been a section of a tree trunk, its circular shape and concentric rings giving rise to the standard dartboard pattern in use today.
Doubles boards are common in the North of England. 'Doubles board' in a pub in North Yorkshire, England. Darts is commonly played in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, and recreationally enjoyed around the world.
#DART RULES PROFESSIONAL#
Though a number of similar games using various boards and rules exist, the term "darts" usually now refers to a standardised game involving a specific board design and set of rules.ĭarts is both a professional shooting sport and a traditional pub game. Points can be scored by hitting specific marked areas of the board, though unlike in sports such as archery, these areas are distributed all across the board and do not follow a principle of points increasing towards the centre of the board. Separate men's & women's championship although no restrictions on women competing against men.ĭarts or dart-throwing is a competitive sport in which two or more players bare-handedly throw small sharp-pointed missiles known as darts at a round target known as a dartboard. Team events exist, see World Cup and PDC World Cup of Darts