To throw a dart, stand behind the throw line with your throwing-side foot forward, hold the dart with a relaxed grip, line it up between your eye and the target, move only your forearm, release, and let your arm follow through toward the board. There is no single correct technique: in a study of expert players, the two most accurate throwers used clearly different strategies. What mattered was that each throw repeated the last one.
| Step | What to do |
|---|---|
| 1. Stance | Feet behind the throw line, throwing-side foot forward, weight steady |
| 2. Grip | Hold the barrel with your fingertips, firm enough to control, loose enough to let go |
| 3. Aim | Dart, eye and target on one line |
| 4. Throw | Upper arm quiet, forearm swings from the elbow |
| 5. Release | Let the dart go, do not push or flick it |
| 6. Follow through | Arm keeps moving toward the target after release |
This table is a common starting point, not a rule. The rules only say that "all darts shall be thrown deliberately, one at a time, by and from the hand" (WDF 1.02) and where your feet may be (below).
Before you throw: the board and the line
Set up to the official measurements so that what you practice carries over to a match:
- Board height: 1.73 m (5 ft 8 in) from the floor to the center of the bull (WDF 6.01; the PDC gives the same 5 ft 8 in).
- Throw line (oche): 2.37 m (7 ft 9 1/4 in) from the back of the line to the face of the board (WDF 6.02).
- Your feet: behind the line, and if you stand to one side of it, behind its imaginary extension (WDF 6.04, 6.05). The rules restrict where your feet are, not how far you lean.
More on the rules in darts rules.
How to throw darts, step by step
- Stance. If you throw right-handed, put your right foot forward; left-handed, your left. Stand side-on or at an angle, whichever lets you keep your body still while your arm moves. Keep your weight in the same place for every dart.
- Grip. Hold the dart at the barrel with your thumb and two to four fingers. Too tight and the release gets jerky; too loose and the dart wobbles. There is no correct number of fingers.
- Aim. Bring the dart up so that the dart, your eye and the target sit on one line. Look at the exact spot you want to hit, not at the whole segment.
- Take the dart back. Draw it back toward your face with the forearm, keeping the upper arm and shoulder as still as you can.
- Throw. Swing the forearm forward from the elbow. Your elbow may rise a little at the end, which is fine as long as it does the same every time.
- Release. Let the dart leave your fingers during the forward swing. Do not push it at the board or flick your wrist.
- Follow through. Let your hand keep moving toward the target, and hold that position until the dart lands.
What a study of expert players found
Researchers at Osaka University filmed 8 expert and 8 novice players throwing 60 darts each at the bull with seven high-speed cameras (Nasu, Matsuo and Kadota, PLoS ONE, 2014). The experts released the dart with less timing error than the novices. But the two best experts did it differently: one released with timing errors no smaller than a novice's but moved his hand along a path that made up for them; the other, like three further experts, cut his timing error down, to as little as 1 ms.
The authors also note that "dart throwing movements are too fast to make corrections based on proprioceptive information": you cannot fix a throw while it is happening. That is why repetition matters more than any one grip or stance. With 16 players in total, this study shows what those experts did, not what every player should do.
How to throw darts better and more accurately
- Change one thing at a time. If you move your stance and your grip at once, you will not know which one helped.
- Throw at one target for a whole session. Grouping only means something when every dart had the same target.
- Watch the grouping, not the single dart. A tight group away from the target points to your aim; a wide scatter points to the throw itself.
- Measure it. Your 3-dart average and your checkout percentage tell you whether a change worked over dozens of legs, not over one lucky visit. See what is a good darts average for how to compare your numbers fairly.
Check your throw with a heat map
Darts Counter records which field every scoring dart hits and shows it as a heat map. This is how to use it as feedback on your throw:
- Create a practice player, for example "T20 practice". The heat map is kept per player, so this keeps practice apart from your matches.
- Throw every dart at one target, for example the 20 segment, in an X01 game, and enter each dart with the field it actually hit.
- Open Statistics, then X01 advanced statistics, then Hits heatmap (All fields). Filter by Singles, Doubles or Triples.
- Read the neighbors. On the board, 5 is to the left of 20 and 1 to the right. Many hits on 5 mean you miss left, many on 1 mean you miss right. The share of triples, doubles and singles in the 20 shows how often you hit the ring you aimed at.
What the heat map cannot tell you: it counts per number and ring, not the exact spot, so an inner single and an outer single look the same. A dart that misses the board (0) is not recorded. And if you correct a dart with Undo, the heat map keeps the first entry for now. It shows where darts land, not how you moved, so it is not a video analysis of your throw.
X01 advanced statistics, including the heat maps, are unlocked with a short video, a one-time purchase or a Darts Counter Plus subscription.
Darts Counter keeps your heat map, your average and your darts per leg for every player.
Sources
Written by FLAME Apps, maker of Darts Counter since 2015. Checked 2026-09-25.
- Nasu D, Matsuo T, Kadota K (2014): Two Types of Motor Strategy for Accurate Dart Throwing. PLoS ONE 9(2): e88536 (open access)
- WDF Playing and Tournament Rules, 20th revised edition, rules 1.02 and 6.01 to 6.05
- PDC: Rules of darts (board height and oche, fetched 2026-09-25)
- Darts Counter app code, X01 advanced statistics and heat maps (read 2026-09-25)
- Keep reading: darts rules, what is a good darts average, how to calculate your darts average
