Darts can trace its origins back to the 19th century in the United Kingdom. In the past, UK’s pubs and coffee shops gave rise to debating, idea sharing, stock exchanges, and a place to engage with other people. Over time, they incentivized pubs and bar owners to bring in new revenue streams while giving customers a better experience. Several bars, coffee shops, and pubs started hosting indoor games such as snooker, pool, billiards, poker, and even darts. Darts wasn’t considered a competitive sport initially. However, that’s how most new sports start before gaining popularity and mass adoption. As more players adopted the sport professionally, more fans wanted to watch and make wagers while having a pint. Today, fans pack stadiums in the UK in the tens of thousands for professional dart tournaments.
Darts Betting Strategies
While darts betting is still in its infancy, it’s overgrowing as more countries adopt darts as a recreational and professional sport. Some of the dart betting strategies punters need to adopt are making wagers on different dart games, access to more betting markets, chances based on rankings, points, and winning markets.
Dart Variations
Dart games have several variations and iterations depending on the host country and the dart tournament. Apart from traditional darts, fans play American darts, cricket darts, beer darts (drinking game), dart golf, dart ball, lawn darts, killer, half darts, Shanghai darts, rugby darts, and other variations. Punters gain access to the most dart betting markets on traditional dart games and tournaments. The rules and scoring systems may vary depending on the type of tournament. Punters need to understand the kind of tournaments to make wagers on, the odds, and the players participating in each game.
Dart Betting Markets
Punters have access to several betting markets in popular sports such as football, rugby, cricket, basketball, and American football. Darts betting is still a growing betting market, and punters have access to an increasing number of dart betting options each year. Apart from making a wager on the outright outcome of a dart game, a punter can make a wager on the set, the points, the most misses, tournament winner, place position finish, handicap, Asian handicap, and more. Some betting markets allow punters to make wagers during dart games or tournaments, with odds changing as the game progresses.
Rankings
Rankings are based on player’s winnings and match performances over the past year. Rankings thus help determine a player’s current form but fail to consider the player’s condition before the past year. Sportsbooks take orders into account when issuing odds in various dart betting markets. Player rankings give punters a good idea of how dartists stand compared to each other but are no indication of who will win, underperform or outperform in the tournament. The World Darts Association has over 650 players ranked every year, and the Professional Dart Players Association has over 675 players ranked every year.
Points
Dartists can score points by throwing a dart on a number between 1 and 20. If a player lands on a specific marked part of a number, the player can get up to 3 times the points hit. So the maximum a player can shoot in a single dart is 60 points, while the bullseye is worth 50 points. Four markers allow a player to score more than 50 points. Each player starts with a little over 300 or 500 points, and the first player to reach 0 wins the round. A player must also land the final dart on the bullseye or a double-pointer without overshooting the result. If a player goes below 0, then they go bust, which is another famous betting market for punters to make wagers.
Winner Markets
Making a wager on the winner of a dart game is one of the most popular betting markets among dart punters. Dart games rarely end in a draw, and the results are straightforward and lie between a win or a loss. However, winner markets are almost always reasonably priced and give a punter a limited upside win for a wager on a favorite. An alternative solution lies in the Asian handicap market that prices the odds of both dartists closer by giving the underdog or lower-ranked dartist an edge.
