Darts Bust Rule: What Counts as a Bust and What Happens
The darts bust rule as played in England and the UK: the three ways a visit goes bust, why the score resets to its start-of-turn total, and what it costs.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Darts Rules & Scoring25 min read
- Ways a visit can go bust
- 3
- Smallest total that can be finished
- 2
- Total that can never be finished
- 1
- Score after a bust
- Start-of-visit total
Sixteen left, three darts in hand, and the first of them lands a touch low and a touch inside, in the big single 16 next door to double 8. Sixteen from sixteen is nothing. The leg is not won. The referee says "no score", the player pulls one dart from the board and keeps the other two, and the scoreboard still reads 16.
That is a bust, and the darts bust rule is short enough to state whole. A visit is bust if the darts score more than the total left, if they leave exactly one, or if they bring the score to zero with a dart that is not a double. When any of those happens the visit is cancelled and the score goes back to what it was before the turn began. The Darts Regulation Authority Rule Book applies it to every PDC match played in Britain, the World Darts Federation's rules say the same, and so does the sheet behind the bar in any English league that plays 501 to a double finish.
What counts as a bust in darts: the three cases
The rule is checked dart by dart, against the running total. After each dart lands, one question is asked: what would be left? If the answer is a number of two or more, play goes on. If it is zero and the dart was a double, the leg is won. Any other answer is a bust.
| Case | An example | Why it is a bust |
|---|---|---|
| Scoring more than is left | 10 left, dart in the single 12 | The total would fall below zero |
| Leaving exactly one | 21 left, dart in the single 20 | One can never be finished |
| Reaching zero with a single or treble | 16 left, dart in the single 16 | The last dart has to be a double |
| Reaching zero on the outer bull | 25 left, dart in the outer bull | The outer bull is a single 25 |
The fourth row is the third case in disguise, and it is listed separately because it trips people up. The bull, worth 50, counts as double 25 and finishes a leg. The green ring round it does not.
It helps to be clear about what is not a bust. Missing the board is not. Scoring three with three darts is not. Leaving an ugly total, a 5 or a 7 or a 13 with one dart in hand, is poor play and perfectly legal. A bust needs a dart that actually scores, and scores the wrong amount. A dart that bounces off the wire cannot bust anybody, since it scored nothing.
Nor does the rule care about the first half of a leg. From 501 down to the point where a single dart could take the player past zero, a bust is arithmetically impossible, and the highest dart on the board is 60. So the rule comes into play only once a player is on 61 or lower with a dart to throw. It is purely a rule about endings.
Everything else about how a leg is thrown, from the bull-up to the call of "game shot", is in our guide to the rules of 501. This page stays with the one rule and follows it into the corners.
Why the whole visit is cancelled and not only the last dart
Take a player on 86 with a clear plan: treble 18 to leave 32, then double 16.
| Dart | Aimed at | Lands in | Left after it |
|---|---|---|---|
| First | Treble 18 | Treble 18, scoring 54 | 32 |
| Second | Double 16 | Single 16, just inside the wire | 16 |
| Third | Double 8 | Single 16, in the next segment | Bust |
| Score for the next visit | 86 |
Two of those darts were good. The first was exactly what was intended, and the second, though it missed the double, left another. The third strayed by the width of a wire into the neighbouring segment, took out exactly 16 without a double, and wiped all three. The player returns on 86, not on 16 and not on 32.
That is the feature of the rule people find hardest to accept, and the rule books are unambiguous about it. The score reverts to what the player had before the throw, and a throw in the books is the full set of three darts. Scoring in darts is recorded by the visit. The referee calls one figure for the three darts, the scorer writes one subtraction, and when the visit fails there is one earlier total to go back to.
There is a sound reason beyond bookkeeping. Suppose only the offending dart were cancelled. An overshoot would then cost no more than a miss, and a player on a finish could throw at any double with nothing at stake but the dart itself. Under the real rule each dart at a finish puts the earlier darts of the visit at risk too. The price of the third dart in the example was not one dart. It was 70 points of progress.
The effect is to make the order of a finish matter. A player who gets down to a double with the first dart of a visit has two attempts at it with little already invested. One who arrives there with the last dart has, in a sense, risked more to get a single shot. Good finishers think about this constantly, and it is one reason they will sometimes decline a tight shot at a treble early in a visit in favour of a route that cannot go wrong.
Harsh, then, but coherent. A version of the rule that kept the good darts would be kinder and would make the end of a leg a duller thing.
Why leaving one is a bust
No double is worth one. The smallest double on the board is double 1, which scores two, and so two is the lowest total from which a leg can be won. A player left on one would have no shot to play, on that visit or any later one. The leg could not end.
The rule books solve this the simple way. A visit that leaves one is treated exactly like an overshoot: cancelled, and the score put back. That makes this part of the bust rule a consequence of the double finish and not a penalty added on top of it. If the game is to end on a double, one has to be forbidden ground, and the only question is what to do with a player who lands on it. The reasons the game finishes on a double in the first place are set out on our page about the double-out rule.
In practice a player arrives on one in a small number of ways.
The commonest by far is from two. Double 1 is the last stop for a player who has kept missing inside: double 16 becomes double 8, then double 4, double 2, and at last double 1, known in English pubs for generations as the madhouse. From there an inside miss, into the single 1, leaves one. Bust, and back to two to try again. The name is earned.
The others come from odd totals a dart or two earlier. A player on 3 needs single 1 and then double 1, and a dart in the single 2 leaves one. A player on 21 is in a quiet trap: the natural routes are single 5 to leave double 8, or single 1 to leave double 10, and both of those singles sit beside the 20. Stray into it from either side and 21 becomes one.
There is no playing on from one, and no waiting there. A player cannot choose to accept the one and try to "bust back" later, because the reset happens at once. The visit that produced it never counted.
Games without a double finish do not have this problem. In a straight-out game, where any dart may finish, one is a live total and single 1 wins the leg. The bust on one belongs to double-out darts alone, which in England means nearly all darts.
Reaching zero the wrong way
This is the bust that feels least fair, because the arithmetic has worked. The player needed 20 and scored 20. Under a double finish that is not enough: the dart that reaches zero has to be a double, and a single 20 is not one.
It happens in three recognisable forms.
The single of the total. A player on 16 aims at double 8 and lands in the single 16 beside it. A player on 18, aiming at double 9, could do nothing of the kind, because the 18 is nowhere near the 9 on the board. Whether this bust is available depends on where the numbers happen to sit.
The treble of a setup shot. On 60 the standard play is single 20, to leave double 20. The treble 20 lies in the same segment, and a dart that finds it scores exactly 60. Zero, no double, bust. It is one of the few places in darts where hitting the most valuable bed on the board is a disaster. The same thing happens on a small scale with 3 left and a dart in the treble 1, or 6 left and a dart in the treble 2.
The outer bull. On 25, the outer bull takes out the total and does not finish. A player on 25 has to go single 9, double 8, or some other pair of darts.
The inside single that is usually not a bust
One miss is widely assumed to be a bust and generally is not. A player aiming at a double who lands just inside it, in the single of the same number, has scored half of what was needed. Thirty-two left, single 16: sixteen remain, and the next dart goes at double 8. No bust. The score has simply halved.
That is why players favour doubles that can be halved repeatedly. The inside miss turns into a bust only at the very bottom, on two, where the single 1 leaves one.
So the dangerous single is not the one inside the target double. It is the one beside it, or a single thrown as a setup that turns out to equal the total. A player on 20 who has miscounted, believes 60 is left, and throws at the single 20 to set up double top has just taken out the leg without a double. It is rare. It is also, when it happens, entirely the player's own doing.
The visit ends at the bust dart
A bust stops the turn where it occurs. If the first dart does it, the other two are not thrown. If the second does, the third stays in the hand. The DRA book lists a bust with fewer than three darts thrown among the events that complete a visit, and there would be nothing for the remaining darts to do: the score has already gone back to its starting figure and no dart thrown now can change it.
- The dart landsIt scores more than is left, leaves one, or reaches zero without being a double.
- The visit stopsAny dart still in the player's hand is not thrown.
- The callThe referee or chalker announces the visit as a bust or as no score.
- The resetThe total returns to the figure the player had before the first dart of the visit.
- The opponent throwsPlay passes across in the normal order, with no further penalty.
The sequence under the Darts Regulation Authority and World Darts Federation rules. It is the same whichever of the three darts causes the bust.
Players do sometimes throw on. A dart leaves the hand out of rhythm before the bust has registered, or a player who has not realised keeps going. Under the rules that dart is nothing. It cannot rescue the visit and it cannot make matters worse. Should it land in a double that would have finished from the restored total, it still wins nothing, because the turn was already over when it was thrown. A call of "game shot" is valid only when the darts genuinely achieve the finish, and a visit that has gone bust cannot contain one.
The mirror case is worth a line. A player who busts and does not notice may stand at the oche working out the next shot from a total that no longer exists. The referee's call is what ends the turn, and on a stage it comes promptly. In a league match with a chalker who is also adding up, it may take a moment, and an opponent who has seen a bust go unnoticed is entitled to raise it once the throw is over.
On the question of which darts are "lost", then, the answer has two halves. The darts thrown before the bust are cancelled. The darts not yet thrown are forfeited. Either way the turn has produced nothing.
What the referee calls and what is written down
On the professional stage the call for a bust is usually the same as for three darts that scored nothing: "no score". Plenty of league chalkers say "bust", which is clearer. Either way the scoresheet shows the same thing, a nought or a dash in the scored column and an unchanged figure in the remaining column, because from the point of view of the sheet nothing happened.
Something did happen to the statistics. No rule book defines the three-dart average, which is a figure produced by scorers and data companies and not by the laws of the game, but every method of working it out has to deal with a bust, and they all deal with it unkindly. The visit adds no points to the player's total and it adds darts to the count. Conventions differ on how many: some systems charge the full three for any completed visit, others only the darts actually thrown. The points side is never in doubt. It is nought.
A worked case shows the size of it. A player has thrown twelve darts and scored 461, leaving 40. Hit double 20 with the next dart and the leg is won in thirteen.
One wasted visit has taken more than twenty points off the average for the leg. Across a long match the effect is diluted, but a player who busts three or four times in an evening will see it in the final figure, and how that figure is assembled is covered in our guide to the three-dart average.
The checkout percentage takes a hit as well. That statistic divides finishes made by darts thrown at a double, and a dart aimed at a double which lands in the bed next door and busts is a missed dart at a double like any other.
Bust or no score: two visits that look the same on the board
After either, the number on the scoreboard has not moved. A viewer who looked away for ten seconds cannot tell from the graphic which one happened. They are different events all the same.
| Visit | Darts thrown | Points credited | Total afterwards |
|---|---|---|---|
| An ordinary visit of 60 from 100 | 3 | 60 | 40 |
| Three darts that all miss or bounce out | 3 | 0 | Unchanged |
| A bust on the first dart | 1 | 0 | Unchanged |
| A bust on the third dart | 3 | 0 | Unchanged |
A genuine no score means every dart failed to register: off the board, into the number ring, or out of the board before it could be called. The visit runs its full three darts, because there is nothing to stop it. Our guide to the bounce-out rule explains why a dart that falls is not thrown again.
A bust is the opposite kind of failure. At least one dart scored, and scored too much or in the wrong bed. The visit may have lasted a single dart. And the darts that landed before the bust were real scoring darts that have been taken away, which is a different experience for the player from never having hit anything.
Tactically they differ too. A no score on a finish is nearly always a set of narrow misses outside the double, and it says the player was close. A bust on a finish says the player missed in the expensive direction. Coaches tell club players to prefer one kind of miss to the other for exactly this reason: when the bed beside the double is a bust, aim to miss, if miss you must, off the outside of the board.
The opponent reads them differently as well. Three darts wide of a double tell the player waiting behind that the leg is still alive and the next visit matters. A bust on the first dart tells them the same thing ten seconds sooner, with less time to settle before stepping up.
On television the commentary and the caller's tone usually make the distinction for the viewer, and some electronic scoreboards flash the word. In the pub, the chalker saying "bust" is the only record there will ever be.
The totals where busts happen
Busts are not spread evenly. They cluster at the bottom of the board's arithmetic, where almost every bed is worth more than the player has left.
Count the scoring beds on a board: twenty singles, twenty doubles, twenty trebles, the outer bull and the bull, sixty-two in all. With 40 left, only nine of those would bust on the next dart, and none of them is in the double ring. With two left, sixty-one would. Only double 1 itself is safe.
What matters more than the count is what sits next to the target, since that is where a near miss goes. The order of the numbers round the board, described in our guide to the dartboard's number sequence, puts large numbers beside small ones, and on a low finish that arrangement turns hostile.
| Total left | Target | Numbers either side | A dart in the single next door |
|---|---|---|---|
| 40 | Double 20 | 5 and 1 | Leaves 35 or 39, no bust |
| 32 | Double 16 | 7 and 8 | Leaves 25 or 24, no bust |
| 16 | Double 8 | 16 and 11 | The 16 busts, the 11 leaves 5 |
| 8 | Double 4 | 18 and 13 | Both bust |
| 6 | Double 3 | 17 and 19 | Both bust |
| 4 | Double 2 | 15 and 17 | Both bust |
| 2 | Double 1 | 20 and 18 | Both bust |
Why 32 and 40 are the favoured leaves
The table explains a preference every decent player shares. On 40 or 32 it is close to impossible to bust with a dart aimed at the double. A miss outside scores nothing. A miss to the side leaves an awkward number but leaves something. A miss inside halves the total and offers another double.
Thirty-two is the best of all. It halves cleanly four times, through 16, 8, 4 and 2, so the player has a double to aim at after each inside miss. Forty halves to 20 and then 10, and after that the next inside miss leaves five. This is why the standard finishing routes in the checkout chart keep steering towards double 16 and double top, and why a player who has a choice will leave 32 before 30 or 34.
Low totals are where a leg turns sour. Each inside miss moves the player down into territory where more beds bust and the neighbours are less forgiving. By double 2 the target is flanked by 15 and 17. By double 1, with the 20 and the 18 alongside and the single 1 inside it, every direction but one is fatal.
The deliberate bust
Twenty left. The first dart at double 10 goes inside: single 10, ten left. The second, at double 5, goes inside again: single 5, five left. One dart in hand and no way of winning with it, because five is odd and no single dart finishes an odd number.
The textbook play is single 1, to leave four and a shot at double 2 next time. But there is another option. The player could throw the last dart at treble 20, bust on purpose, and come back next turn on 20 with three darts at double 10.
Nothing in the published playing rules forbids this. The bust rule is arithmetic: it asks what the dart scored and what that leaves, and it has no interest in what the thrower intended. The DRA book does require a player to compete to the best of their ability in every match, a rule aimed at those who are not trying to win, and a tactical bust is an attempt to win. So it is legal, in a pub and on a stage, as far as the rule books go.
Whether it is wise is another matter, and usually it is not.
The first objection is that the situation is rarer than it sounds. A deliberate bust makes sense only when the remaining darts cannot finish the leg. With a dart at a double available, throwing it away is absurd. Had the second dart in the example missed outside the board and left ten, the third would have been a shot at double 5 to win, and nobody sane busts in preference to that.
The second is that the gain is small. Returning on 20 in place of 4 swaps one double for another. Double 10 is a friendlier target than double 2, with an inside miss that leaves double 5 where the other leaves the madhouse, but the difference is a matter of percentages and the price is certain.
The third is that the honest shot contains its own insurance. A player on five who throws at the single 1 and strays into the 20 or the 18 on either side of it has bust anyway, and is back on 20 without having planned it. The deliberate bust is already the failure mode of the orthodox play.
There is a quieter alternative: not throwing the last dart at all. A visit is a maximum of three darts, not a compulsory three, and both rule books treat a player who touches a dart in the board as having finished the visit. A player who would sooner keep five than risk the single 1 can walk forward and pull the two already thrown. What the DRA book does not allow is a dart lobbed deliberately wide. Every dart has to be thrown with its point aimed at the face of the board, and one that is not is a foul throw. The tactical bust and the unthrown dart both look odd, and at any serious level both are seen hardly ever.
Bust rules in other formats
The bust rule described here is the double-out rule, and it changes with the finish. Alter what the last dart is allowed to be and the list of busts alters with it.
| Format | What may finish the game | Is one a live total? | What busts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Double out, the standard | A double or the bull | No | Overshooting, leaving one, zero without a double |
| Straight out | Any dart | Yes | Overshooting only |
| Master out | A double, a treble or the bull | No | Overshooting, leaving one, zero on a single |
| Double in, double out | A double or the bull | No | The same as double out |
| Cricket | Not a countdown game | Not applicable | Nothing, as there is no total to overshoot |
Straight out is the gentlest. Any dart that takes the score to exactly zero wins, so a single 16 finishes from 16 and a single 1 finishes from one. The only bust left is going past zero. It is common as a beginners' setting and on electronic boards.
Master out sits between the two. A treble may finish as well as a double, which makes more totals reachable in one dart, but one is still dead, since nothing in the double or treble ring is worth one. The format belongs mainly to soft-tip darts, one of several differences drawn out in our comparison of steel-tip and soft-tip darts.
A double start does not add a bust. Darts thrown before the opening double simply score nothing, and a player cannot overshoot a total they have not begun to reduce. The bust arrives at the other end of the leg, as usual.
Games that do not count down have no bust at all. In cricket darts the players are closing numbers and building points, and there is no total to go past.
Electronic boards and scoring apps
A machine applies the rule without discussion. An electronic board set to double out detects the bust as the dart registers, announces it, puts the score back, and waits for the player to remove the darts and press the button that changes the turn. It will not count a dart thrown afterwards. Scoring apps on a tablet beside a bristle board do the same job from the other direction: the chalker enters the visit, or taps a bust button, and the software restores the total and logs the darts for the average.
The one caution is the setting. A board left on straight out or master out by the last people to use it will apply a different bust rule from the one the players think they are playing, and it will do so silently. Check before the first leg.
Pub versions that are not the rule
Darts was a pub game for a long time before anybody wrote its rules down, and local habits about the bust survive in places. They are customs. None is in the DRA or WDF rule books, and a league that uses one will have said so on its rule sheet.
Keeping the darts scored before the bust. Under this version only the offending dart is cancelled, and the player keeps whatever the earlier darts of the visit had scored. In the example from earlier, the player who went from 86 to 32 to 16 and then bust would stay on 16. It is a kinder game and a common one among casual players, many of whom believe it is the real rule. It is not. Both rule books put the score back to its start-of-visit figure.
Throwing the offending dart again. Some house games let a player who busts retake that dart. Once a leg is under way the rule books allow no dart to be thrown twice, whether it bust, bounced out or fell from the board.
Splitting the 11. The oldest and oddest. Where it is played, a player left on one is not bust but may finish by landing a dart between the two digits of the number 11 on the ring round the board. It gave a stranded player something to throw at, and in a few places it is still a house rule. Under the rule books it fails twice over: one is a bust, so the player would never be standing on it, and a dart in the number ring is outside the double wire and scores nothing.
Playing on from the bust. Occasionally a table will let a busted player throw the remaining darts at the restored total. The official position is that the visit ended with the bust.
None of these does any harm in a friendly game, provided both players know before the first dart which version is in force. The trouble comes when one of them finds out at 16 left. For a match that matters, the league's rule sheet settles it, and where the sheet is silent the standard rule applies: whole visit cancelled, score back to where it was.
Why professionals still bust
Players who can find treble 20 almost at will still bust. Three things cause nearly all of it.
The first is the miscount. Finishing arithmetic is done in the head, at speed, in front of a noisy crowd, and it has to be redone in the middle of a visit whenever a dart lands somewhere unintended. A player who planned single 16 and double 20 from 56 and has caught the treble 16 by accident now needs 8, and has perhaps a second to see it. Most of the time they do. Now and then a player throws at the double top they had in mind before the stray dart, scores 40 with 8 left, and busts on a dart that went exactly where it was aimed. A player may ask the referee what remains, and the best ones do so without embarrassment. The habits that prevent this are the subject of our piece on darts maths.
The second is drift on a low double. Nobody chooses to be on double 2. Players get there by missing inside from a better double, and each miss takes them to a smaller total with worse neighbours. By the time a professional is throwing at double 1 the margin for error has gone, the opponent is usually waiting on a finish, and one dart a few millimetres wide ends the visit. The small doubles are where busts pile up, for the reason the chart earlier on this page shows.
The third is route choice. Take 19 left with two darts. Single 3 leaves double 8, and single 7 leaves double 6, and both of those singles lie next to the 19 itself. A dart that slides into it takes out exactly 19 without a double. Single 11, to leave double 4, has 8 and 14 on either side, and a dart in either of those singles still leaves a total to play from. A player who picks the first or second route out of habit has accepted a risk the third did not carry.
That last cause is the one worth dwelling on, because it is the only one a player controls completely. A miscount is a lapse and a drifting dart is a physical error. A risky route is a decision. The strongest finishers in the game are not the ones who hit the most doubles in practice. They are the ones who, when a setup dart misses, have arranged for it to miss into something harmless.
The rule that makes all this matter is among the most settled in the book. It is the reason the last thirty points of a leg are harder than the first four hundred and seventy. The rest of our coverage for readers in this country, across darts and the other sports, is collected on the England hub.