Dart Game Rules for Cricket Variations
Playing Straight, Standard and Points Cricket Darts
Sep 26, 2009
The Cricket game is commonly played in dart tournaments and is sometimes combined with the games 301 and/or 501. Variations of the Cricket game are played all over the United States and is considered to be the most popular game in bars of the U.S. Usually Cricket games played in bars are played as Straight Cricket since there is no need to keep score beyond keeping track of which numbers have been hit but there is still order to the game.
Straight Cricket
Each player is allowed to throw three darts in each turn. The object of the game is to hit each number – 20, 19, 18, 17, 16, 15 and the bull with three darts each. The players must aim for the 20 first and cannot progress until he has hit the 20 three times. If the dart lands in the "treble" area of the 20 it counts as triple 20 and the player can move on. If the dart lands in the "double" area of the 20 it counts as double 20 (or two of the three hits).
Once a player has landed his dart on 20 to equal three times, he may move on to the 19s. Once he has hit 19 with the equivalent of three darts, he can move to the 18s and continue through the numbers until he reaches 15. After completing all the numbers through 15, the player shoots for bullseye. If it lands within the inner circle of the bull it counts as a double-bull, if it lands in the outer ring of the bull, it is a single. The first player to "close out" all of his numbers and the bullseye wins.
Standard Cricket
Standard Cricket is played the same way as Straight Cricket with the exception of the order in which numbers must be hit. In this version of the dart game, each number must be hit three times, but there is no restriction regarding in which order the numbers must be hit. A player could hit one of each number on each turn, and as long as he hits each number plus the bullseye three times each and is the first player to do it, he is the winner. Players keep score by placing a tick mark next to each number for the number of times he hits it with his dart.
Points Cricket
Cricket played for points is a little more complicated, but the most professional way to play the Cricket games. Each player must hit each number – from 20 through 15 and the bullseye – three times, or the equivalent of three times. After he has scored three hits on a number, it is considered closed out.
The numbers can be hit in any order, but once a number has been closed out by one player, that player can get points by hitting that number again until the other player has closed out that number. For instance, if player number one has closed out his 18s, he can continue to score on 18s until player number two has closed them out, after that neither player can score on 18s any longer.
Players score the number of points equivalent to the number that the dart landed in. So if player number one landed his darts on triple 20 for the first dart and double 19 on his second, he would score three hits for 20 and close them out and two hits for 19 for that round. At this point the player has the option of shooting for another 20 and scoring it at 20 points or moving on to a number that he himself hasn't yet closed out. He can only score the points if he hits a number that he has closed out, but his opponent has not. He can continue to score 20 points for each 20 that is hit until his opponent closes them out. In this version of the game, the score is kept by marking each hit on the board next to its corresponding number – first hit is a slash, the second hit is a backslash (making the original slash an X) and the third hit is marked by circling the X. Points are added when earned and a running tally is kept until the end of the game. Play continues in the game until the highest scoring player closes out all of his numbers and completes the bullseye. The player with the highest score wins.
In all forms of Cricket, shooting the dart accurately and predictably comes into play, especially when playing with experienced players. Players can learn to throw their darts consistently with a lot of practice.
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