How to Bet on Darts – Darts Betting Made Easy

Know the Players

Our first piece of advice for those who bet on darts is to spend some time getting to know the players. Every player has his or her strengths and weaknesses. Some step up to the oche and start throwing 180s without batting an eyelid. Others are ‘slow starters’ and take a leg or two to get into their stride. Knowing how different players approach the game is something that can be very useful when making your selections. Also, look at the rankings of players, any rivalries they have with other professionals, and so on.

Research Past Meetings

The previous darts betting tip will give you a good overall picture of a player, so the next thing you should do is start looking at how he has performed against his upcoming opponent in the past. Look at previous head-to-head results and compare the T20 and checkout percentages of each player. If a player routinely beats a certain opponent and he has the better stats, the chances are pretty good that he will do so again.

Focus on Long-Format Games

Different darts matches have different formats (different numbers of darts sets and legs). Most matches have up to five legs per set, but some have up to seven, and others only have up to three. Similarly, the number of sets in a match can also vary. It is useful to focus on long-format games when betting, as that gives players more time to get into their groove and for results to run to form. This is especially true if one or both players is a ‘slow starter’ as discussed earlier. Of course, if you want to bet on the opponent of a slow starter, a short-format game could work in your favour.

Back Slow Starters In Running

Talking of slow starters, if you want to bet on a player who tends to need a leg or two before he starts firing on all cylinders, consider darts betting in play. We’ll discuss darts live betting later, but for now it means placing a bet on the player after the match has already started. It’s quite possible that your player mightn’t perform particularly brilliantly in the first leg or two (because he’s a slow starter), and in that case, the odds available for him might be bigger after the first leg than they were before the match. If so, you might be able to strike a bet in play at a higher price.

Get the Best Darts Odds

Whatever sport you bet on, keeping value betting principles in mind is always a good idea. The better the odds you get for each bet you make, the easier it will be for you to make an overall profit. For example, if you have ten bets of £10 each at decimal odds of 1.91 each and five of your darts betting predictions are successful, you’ll end up losing £4.50 overall. But if you could get decimal odds of 2.10 each and win five, you’d make an overall profit of £5.

For this reason, we suggest that you explore the odds available at all of our recommended online betting sites and get the best darts odds wherever possible.

Tournament Winner

This is a market that lets you bet on the winner of a tournament or competition as a whole, such as the World Cup of Darts. You select a competitor to win (it could be a player or a nation, depending on the event) and if your darts outright betting selection succeeds, so will your bet. This isn’t the easiest market to bet in because there will be quite a few competitors, each with a chance. The good news is that the darts betting outright winner odds will reflect that fact, so if you win, you’ll get a decent return.

Match Winner

Here you are given the task of predicting who will win a particular darts match. We provided an example of a match-winner betting market earlier in this darts betting guide when we talked about Ross Montgomery and Tommy Morris. As you’ll recall, all you have to do here is pick one of the two players to win the match and hope that your selected player proves you right.

Correct Score

If you’re familiar with the correct score markets in football betting, then you’ll have a good idea of what to expect here. This market requires you to predict the final score of the match. For example, in a World Cup of Darts match that goes to the best of seven sets, your options will be 4-0, 4-1, 4-2 and 4-3. You need to select both the winning score and the player or team that will win the match. That makes correct score betting a lot trickier than pure match-winner betting, but you will get more generous odds, so success here will be more profitable.

Handicap Betting

A handicap betting market aims to even up a match for betting purposes by imposing a theoretical handicap on the favourite. The favourite must then win even after the handicap has been applied for a bet to win. For example, if Player 1 has a -2.5 handicap, then 2.5 will be deducted from his score for bet settlement purposes. Similarly, if you bet on the underdog, 2.5 will be added to his score before your bet is settled.

The chief advantage of handicap betting markets is that they can give you better odds about a favourite who is considered to be a sure thing. They can also give you a better chance of winning if you want to back the underdog.

Total Legs

In this market, your aim is to predict the total number of legs that will be played in a set. That might sound tricky, but normally you will only be asked to bet on whether the total will be over or under a figure quoted by the bookmaker. For example, the bookie might quote 3.5 legs as the total. In that case, you would bet on there being Over 3.5 legs or Under 3.5 legs.

Most 180s

Which player in the match will score the most 180s? That’s the question you have to answer in this darts betting market. There are generally three possible outcomes, allowing you to bet on Player A, Player B, or the draw (both players scoring the same number of 180s). As you might imagine, darts favourites to win their matches will also tend to be the favourites to score the most 180s.

Player 180s

Here, you can bet on whether a player in the match will score over or under a certain number of 180s. This is a good market to look at if you are considerably more knowledgeable about one player than the other, as the opponent’s 180 performance is irrelevant as far as your bet is concerned.

Highest Checkout

A checkout is the total scored by a player to win a leg. For example, if a player visits the oche and throws a double 20 to win, that checkout would be 40. If a player has to throw two 180s and a double 20 to win – and succeeds – the checkout would be 400. In the highest checkout darts market, you simply bet on which player will throw the highest checkout in the match.

9 Dart Finish

It’s possible to achieve a 501 darts target in as few as nine darts. For example, a player could throw seven 180s, one treble 19 and a double 12. And that’s just one way of doing it. A ‘nine-dart finish’ isn’t at all easy to accomplish and is allegedly more difficult than a player scoring a 147 break in snooker. Even so, both feats are achieved in both sports, so all you have to do here is predict whether or not a nine-dart finish will be seen in the upcoming match.

To Win First Leg

The final darts betting market that we’ll mention here asks you to predict which player will win the first leg of a tournament. Your options will obviously be Player 1 or Player 2, and the odds will usually reflect how the bookie perceives their chances of winning the match as a whole. That means you might want to consider a modest bet on the underdog if the favourite is a player you’ve identified as a slow starter.