Knockout Count-Up rules: bottom of the table goes out
Knockout Count-Up is Count-Up with the exit door open. Every round each surviving player throws one three-dart visit onto their running total, and when the round closes the lowest total on the table is knocked out. Keep climbing and you survive; fall to the bottom and you are gone. The last player in wins.
How a round is scored
Everything the dart hits counts — no doubles to open, no target to find, just the total. The cut is what everybody is playing against:
- One visit each, added to the running total. 60 in round one and 45 in round two is a card on 105.
- The round closes when every survivor has thrown, so the cut always falls on the true lowest total rather than on whoever threw first.
- A tie for the bottom takes everybody sharing it. Two cards level on 88 both go out.
- If a round would wipe out everyone left at once, the highest total among them takes the win rather than the game ending with nobody in it.
It needs two players and rewards a completely different throw from ordinary Count-Up. In Count-Up a quiet 26 costs you a little; here it can cost you the game, because you are not chasing a number — you are staying off the bottom of a table that everybody else is pushing up.
Why the last two rounds are the whole game
Being ahead early is worth less than it looks. A player who opened with 140 and then threw three 26s is beatable, because the totals compress: the cut takes the lowest, and once the field is down to three the gap between second and last is usually one good visit. The endgame is a head-to-head where the leader has to keep scoring and the chaser only has to out-throw one person once.
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.
- Round one is a warm-up Hold the first cut back to round two, and nobody goes out on a single unlucky opening visit. In a party six-hander that is the difference between a game and somebody standing at the bar after ninety seconds. Set it up →
- Three visits before anybody goes out The kindest start for a big field: everybody gets a proper look at the board, and the table means something by the time the first card is taken off it. After the named round nothing is different — the cut falls every round as usual. Set it up →
- Cut two while the field is big An eight-hander is seven rounds of eighty-odd darts before anybody knows who won. Taking the two lowest totals halves that night — and it drops back to cutting one as soon as fewer than five are left, so the deeper cut thins the field without ever deciding the game. Set it up →
- The party setting Both at once: two grace rounds and then a cut of two, which is the version for eight people, one board and an hour. Set it up →
The classic game is the one the board plays unless you say otherwise: the first cut falls at the end of round one, and it takes the single lowest running total.
Common questions
- What is Knockout Count-Up? Count-Up with the exit door open: every round each surviving player adds a three-dart visit to their running total, and the lowest total on the table is knocked out.
- What happens if two cards are level at the bottom? Both go out. If a round would wipe out everybody left at once, the highest total among them takes the win rather than the game ending with nobody in it.
- Can the first round knock somebody out? In the classic game yes. The grace-round rule holds the first cut back to round two or round three, so nobody goes out on a single unlucky opening visit.
Play it
Knockout 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 keeps the running totals, closes the round, works out who is at the bottom, undoes the visit you typed wrong, and can put the table on a TV while everybody scores from their own phone.