Count-Up rules: eight rounds, and the biggest total wins
Count-Up is the warm-up game everybody starts with, and the only darts game with no rules to get wrong: throw three darts, add the total, do it eight times, and whoever has the most points wins. No doubles to open, no checkout, no bust.
How it works
Everybody starts on 0. Each visit is three darts, the total goes on the card, and the game ends when the agreed number of rounds is thrown — classically eight, which is twenty-four darts and about ten minutes for a pair.
Highest score wins. That is the whole game, which is exactly why it is the one every beginner is taught first: it is X01 scoring practice with the frightening parts taken out.
The numbers to measure yourself against, over eight rounds:
- 240 — an average of 30 a visit, which is where a genuine beginner starts.
- 360 — 45 a visit, a solid club scorer having an ordinary evening.
- 480 — 60 a visit, or twenty points a dart, which is the number to aim at for years.
- 1440 — eight maximums, and nobody has ever done it.
Ten and twenty rounds are on the setup card too: twenty rounds is sixty darts, which is long enough that the average it produces means something.
The format everybody actually plays
Fixed rounds are the book version. What gets played on a pub board is a race: first past 500, no round limit, and it is over when somebody gets there.
The one rule that matters in a race is that everybody in the round still gets their visit — the last thrower is never robbed, and can pass the leader on the way past the post. So a race is not decided by who happens to throw first.
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 rule already set, and each one keeps its own high-score board.
- Trebles only Only a dart in the treble ring scores. Everything else is a blank, so a visit still tops out at 180 but a bad round is a genuine zero. There is no treble bull, so it is T20 or nothing for a maximum. Set it up →
- Doubles only Only the doubles ring counts, and the bull counts as its double — 50. A visit tops out at 150, three bulls, and this is the hardest scoring practice on the list. Set it up →
- Odd numbers only Half the board is dead: 19, 17, 15, 13 and the bull, which is the 25 — all three rings of them. There is no T20 to lean on, so the maximum visit is three T19s for 171, and the geometry of the board decides where the darts go. Set it up →
- Even numbers only The other half: 20, 18, 16 and their neighbours, so T20 and a 180 both survive — but the bull is an odd number and scores nothing at all, and no odd total counts. Set it up →
- Twenty rounds Sixty darts, which is long enough for the total to be an honest measure of a night's scoring rather than of one lucky round. Set it up →
The four restricted versions are the same eight rounds with most of the board switched off, which turns the friendliest game here into the two or three hardest practice routines there are — and the board refuses a total those darts could not have made, so a mistyped visit is caught rather than banked.
Common questions
- What is Count-Up darts? Three darts a visit, add the total to your card, do it eight times, and the highest score wins. No doubles to open, no checkout and no bust.
- What is a good Count-Up score over eight rounds? 360 is 45 a visit, which is a club scorer having an ordinary evening. 480 is 60 a visit, or twenty points a dart, and that is the number to aim at for years.
- Can you play Count-Up as a race instead? Yes: first past 500 with no round limit. Everybody in the round still gets their visit, so the last thrower can pass the leader on the way past the post.
Play it
Count-Up 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.