Bermuda Triangle rules: a bank that multiplies, and a miss that halves it
Bermuda Triangle is Halve-It's opposite number. You climb a ladder of eleven targets — 13, 14, any Double, 15, 16, any Triple, 17, 18, 19, 20 and the Bull — and every round multiplies your bank by the number of darts that found the target. Miss with all three and the bank is halved.
Play Bermuda Triangle, the classic eleven →
How a round is scored
Everybody starts on 1, not on nothing — a multiplying game needs something to multiply, and zero would stay zero for ever.
Three darts at the round's target, and what counts is how many landed, never what they were worth:
- Three darts on target — the bank is tripled.
- Two darts on target — the bank is doubled.
- One dart on target — multiplied by one, so the bank holds station. Not a disaster, and not progress either.
- None — the bank is halved, rounded up, so you are never quite wiped out. That is the classic rule, and one of three this board offers — see below.
Two of the eleven rounds are a ring rather than a number: the Double round counts a dart in any double on the board, and the Triple round any treble. They are the rounds where a player who has been quietly doubling suddenly cannot be caught, or is halved twice in a row.
After the Bull, the highest bank wins. The numbers get silly quickly, and that is the point: a perfect card is three darts on all eleven targets, which is 311 = 177,147, while merely landing two on every single target is 2,048.
Why the ladder is worth climbing
The compounding does something no additive game can. Being 40 points behind in Halve-It is a round's work; being a factor of three behind here is a round's work too, because one tripled round catches anybody. Nobody is ever out of it, so nobody stops watching.
It also does the reverse. A player who has tripled four rounds running and sits on a bank in the thousands is one blank round from losing half of it — and the round after a huge one is exactly where people throw badly.
The name is the three rounds in the middle: the Double, the 15 and 16 around it, and the Triple. That is where the cards go missing.
House rules this board plays
The part no other rules page has, because no other site implements them. Each one opens the setup screen with that ladder already set.
- The short ladder Six rounds instead of eleven: 20, any Double, 19, any Triple, 18 and the Bull. The same game inside fifteen minutes, and the version to play when there are six of you waiting. Set it up →
- Rings only Double, Triple, Double, Triple, Bull — no numbers at all, so every round is the whole ring and the only question is how many darts you can put in it. The fastest way to learn what your grouping is really worth. Set it up →
- The checkout ladder T20, T19, T18, D20, D16 and the Bull — six named beds rather than six numbers, so a dart in the single 20 is a miss. It is the hardest version of this game there is, and it is practice for the only shots that decide an X01 leg. Set it up →
- What a blank round costs The same three rules Halve-It gives a missed target, on a bank that multiplies instead of adding: a blank round halves your bank, rounded up — the classic rule; a blank round puts you back on the 1 everybody started with — every round you banked, gone; or a blank round halves your bank rounded down, never below the 1 you started on — a point harsher on every odd bank. None of the three drops a card below that 1: a bank of nothing stays nothing for every round left, and nobody should be out with four targets still to throw at. Set up the wipe →
The ladder is editable on the setup card — up to twelve targets, typed as numbers, doubles (D16), trebles (T20), the words Double and Triple for a whole ring, or the Bull — and it can be dealt at random: eight numbers in climbing order with the two ring rounds somewhere inside them and the Bull last, which is the shape the classic ladder has.
Common questions
- What is Bermuda Triangle darts? A ladder of eleven targets — 13, 14, any Double, 15, 16, any Triple, 17, 18, 19, 20 and the Bull — where every round multiplies your bank by the number of darts that found the target.
- What do you start with in Bermuda Triangle? One point, not nothing. A multiplying game needs something to multiply, and a bank of zero would stay zero for ever.
- What happens if you miss a Bermuda Triangle round? The bank is halved, rounded up, so nobody is quite wiped out. Three darts on target triples it, two doubles it, and one holds it exactly where it was. Which of the three blank-round rules is in force is a chip on the setup card.
Play it
Bermuda Triangle is one of the twenty modes in Friendly Fire Casper, a free darts scoreboard that runs in a browser and keeps working when the wifi drops. It scores the game for you, undoes the dart you typed wrong, remembers who won, and can put the board on a TV while everybody scores from their own phone.