The story behind dartboards is that warriors started by practicing their aims with short spears aimed on a bull's eye, marked on barrels or marked trees. This has been refined, standardized and modified into a classic indoor game which can be played easily and safely.



Dartboards are round in shape with and are normally made of cork, soft wood, or compressed paper. Cork is the preferred material, as it is thicker and more stable than compressed paper and is lighter and less costly than wood. A traditional dart is a sharp steel tipped one, which can stick and get pinned into the dart board easily.

The material used for the dartboards does not normally matter to the game, except in cases where some darts cannot penetrate hard surfaces like wood as opposed to cork. The standard size of tournament dartboards is fifteen and a half inches and the bull's eye should be placed 5'8? (five feet, eight inches) from the ground and should be 7'9.5? (seven feet and nine and half inches) from the player who throws the dart. The dart board has numbers from one to twenty featured around it in a specific arrangement. This arrangement of numbers is to ensure that there are no hot regions and that the scores are distributed around in a consistent manner.

The numbers in the dartboards are further divided into wedges that start from the center and spread to the end of the board. Three sets of concentric rings are present from the center to the edge of the board. If the darts fall between the first or second concentric rings starting form the end, the player gets double or triple points respectively. The bull's eye is worth 50 points while the ring surrounding the bulls eye gets a player 25 points. As you can see a triple throw on 20 point region will get you more points than even the bulls eye.

Many different kinds of games can be played on the dartboards, but the most popular ones are the simple ones, where players accumulate points on different rounds. This game is popularly known as ?301? where each player starts with 301 points and tries to reach zero as early as possible. The catch here is that players have to reach exactly zero, which allows the games to become interesting and offers many chances for entertaining moments as the players get to the last 20 points.

Electronic dartboards are available in the market as well. Here the board is normally made of plastic, perforated with holes and the darts are soft-tipped. Talking electronic dartboards are also available where a voice record feature will provide the scores, commentary and also interesting comments on the player who scores well or even pass comical sarcastic comments when players play don't play as well. This can provide a lot of fun with family and friends and the talking feature can be switched off when it gets too distracting.

Always ensure that some sort of protection is provided to the area around the dartboards to protect it from errant throws from novice players or missed throws.