The only numbers you should shoot in cricket are 20, 19, 18, 17, 16, 15 and the bullseye. Once a player has added three marks for a number, that number is considered closed. A triple counts as three marks, a double counts as two and a single counts as one. When a number gets the first mark, draw a backslash ‘/’ next to the number, draw ‘×’ when the number gets two marks, and draw ‘⊗’ when it has three marks which means it is closed.
When a number is closed, you can score on it as long as it has not been closed by all other players. Triples and doubles are scored accordingly for closed numbers.
For example, in the first round, a player hit single 20, triple 20 and single 20. The first dart added one mark for the number, the second dart was triple 20, it would add another two marks to close it and scored an extra 20 points. The third dart counted as 20 points as well. So after the first round, he had the number 20 closed and got 40 points in total.
If a number is closed by all players, that number is no longer valid and no one can score on it any more.
Once a player closes all cricket numbers and has the highest points, he wins the game directly. If nobody wins that way after finishing all rounds, the player with the highest score wins the game.
◆ Strategy
Do you try to close numbers early and risk going behind in points, or do you try to build a points lead and risk not having numbers closed out quickly enough? That’s up to you.
◆ MPR
Marks per Round (MPR) is one of the most accurate ways to measure your cricket skills. It is the average number of marks that you get per round.
◆ Overkill
For some casual occasions or soft-tip darts, there might be a 200 points overkill limit to protect the weaker players. Overkill happens when one player’s points has exceeded 200 that of the lowest one. In that case, no point will be added to his total points.
For example, player A has 300 points and has the number 20 closed. Player B has 120 points.
- In the next round A hit T20 and got 60 points for the first dart. Since his score only exceeded 180 (<200) that of B’s, 60 could be added and the new total points for A was 360.
- For the second dart, A hit D20 and got 40 points, but his score has already exceeded 240 (>=200) that of B’s. So overkill happened and NO point would be added to A’s total points.
- So obviously, for the second and third dart, A should try to close new numbers instead of scoring more points on closed numbers.