What’s odd about this Dartboard? Found in an East London Pub
Do you notice anything odd about this dartboard seen in an East London pub recently? Most darts boards look a bit like this, but different.
How on earth would you ever end a game of 301 on such a dart board?
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What’s odd about this Dartboard? Found in an East London Pub
Andy Roberts is a writer who initiated DARnet. Catch me on 
Only 12 numbers! Cool – it took a while. And only 5,10,15 and 20!
On a conventional dartboard, any two adjacent numbers add up to the same – 21 but on this one it could be 30 ,25 or 20. So where should you aim to get the best chances of the highest score?
Actually, on a conventional dartboard not just any two adjacent numbers add up to 21…
Seriously, go look at a dartboard.
So they don’t. I’m not sure where I got that crazy idea from, but somewhere…In fact I think it would be impossible to layout a dartboard so that adjacent numbers add up to the same sum. Maybe it’s the diagonal opposites or something.
the doubles and triples look a bit narrow to me.
I think the doubles and triples look narrow as they are elongated compared to a dartboard with the correct numbering
So, what are the rules of the games they play using this board? Were there other local layouts for dartboards? I’m glad to see that a local variation has survived, in spite of the odds. When I was a kid in Oxford they used to play Aunt Sally in the garden of my local, where I started drinking when I was 14 (till the landlady spotted me in school uniform on a bus). Now that garden is a car park. You rarely see people play games at all in pubs these days, although I now live in Plymouth where there are Euchre leagues, and where a few pubs still have skittle alleys.
Joe, There are still a few pubs here and there where the old games are still played, and some attempts to reintroduce them. Euchre is getting popular again in Cornwall, but not as quickly as gig racing! There were a few pubs with skittle alleys in East Kent, but it seems to be mainly just pool tables and watching sport on TV these days .
I found out a bit about the history of this dartboard layout at The East london Advertiser. It’s called a “London Fives” board, and yes, there are a few other regional variations.
“With three wide 20 sections, there would be three times the chance of hitting a celebrated maximum ‘180′, if only the trebles weren’t so narrow and the oche-the point from which the darts are thrown-so distant.
At nine feet, the throwing distance is more than a foot further than for the Clock board. And with no number 1, the standard dart match of ‘501 up’ is replaced with games that begin at 505 points. It is only the two central ‘bullseye’ rings, worth 25 and 50 points each, which are replicated on both boards.
As with much relating to the history of darts, there is no absolute certainty about the origin of this local board.
The game itself has been around for centuries – with its beginnings in medieval England and France. It is generally accepted that it originated as an indoor version of archery – and the belief that Anne Boleyn presented her husband-to-be Henry VIII with a set of ornate darts, suggests the game had royal patronage as early as the sixteenth-century.
Patrick Chaplin, Britain’s only darts historian, believes that a small indoor archery target would have been easy to hit and deadly dull to play on after a few throws – so the values of a circular archery target (5, 10, 15 and so on) were transferred to a more complicated segmented format, with the bullseye retained for good measure.
The Fives board therefore significantly pre-dates its cousin the Clock, which first appeared in the 1890s.”
Yes – it is called a ‘5-Board’/'Five-Board’ and is commonly used in matches by pub dart teams; they do not, however, play the usual 301 & 501 games – they play 305, 505 and 1005 games.
The order of play varies whereby random team members face other random members of the opposite team (often the 305 & 505 games) and then at the end of the match/evening, all members from the teams play against each other (something like 8-on-8, for example) and this is where the 1005 game comes in.
Personally, I favour the ‘1-Board’/'One-Board’ as I believe that it forces the player to be more accurate and requires more consideration with regards to constructing a suitable checkout/finish.
I hope that this has helped!
Kind regards,
Mustafa.