How to finish a leg of 501 — setting up the double
Why 170 is the biggest finish, what a bogey number is, how to leave yourself a double you can actually hit, and the handful of checkouts worth learning first.
Open the appScoring wins you time. Finishing wins you legs. Most players who plateau have stopped getting better at the second one, and it is the half that responds fastest to being thought about.
Why 170 is the maximum
The highest a dart can score is 60, on the treble twenty — but the last dart of a leg has to land in a double. The biggest double is the bull at 50. So the most three darts can finish is 60 plus 60 plus 50: T20, T20, BULL, which is 170 and is called the big fish.
Everything above 170 needs at least four darts, which means at least two turns, which means your opponent gets another turn too.
Bogey numbers
Seven scores below 170 cannot be finished in three darts at all: 169, 168, 166, 165, 163, 162 and 159. There is no combination that adds up and ends on a double.
They matter in one specific way. If you are sitting on 180 and score a 20, you have left yourself 160 — which is finishable. Score 11 and you have left 169, which is not. Knowing the seven stops you scoring yourself into a corner.
Setting up the double
The whole craft of finishing is arriving at a double you like with a dart to spare. Which double you like is personal, but most players settle on 16 or 20, because both halve cleanly: miss D16 with a single 16 and you are on D8, then D4, then D2. A miss does not end the turn.
That is why a route that leaves 32 is usually better than one that leaves 30, even though 30 is a smaller number. 32 is D16, and D16 forgives a mistake. 30 is D15, and missing D15 with a single leaves 15 — an odd number and a dart wasted getting back to even.
Leave yourself an even number. Under double-out an odd score always costs a dart to fix, and the difference shows up over a season, not over a leg.
The ones to learn first
Nobody memorises all 169. A dozen covers most of what you will actually face:
- 40 — D20. The most common finish in darts by a distance.
- 32 — D16, and the reason so many players aim for it.
- 36, 24, 16, 8 — the rest of the 16 ladder, which is where a missed D16 lands you.
- 60 — 20, D20. Not a treble: the single keeps you on an even number.
- 81 — T19, D12. Worth knowing because it looks awkward and is not.
- 100 — T20, D20. The one that feels like a proper finish.
- 121 — T20, 11, D25. An odd one that comes up more than you would think.
- 170 — T20, T20, BULL, for the one time in your life it happens.
The full table has every score from 170 down, with the best route at three darts, two and one — generated from the same code the app uses to suggest a finish while you are standing at the oche.