Your Starter for 5: A Sectional Game for Beginners and Improvers

One important key to successful darts training is to play routines suitable for your current level.

If you are a beginner trying to play too advanced routines or if you are an advanced player and facing a beginner’s game, you’ll soon lose your motivation to practice.

When I initially was working with the Virtual Coach concept I needed a few more good and fun beginners games to add to the Virtual Coach toolbox. So I came up with a few game ideas and tried them out first on a few beginners, to see how they responded and if they found the games fun and challenging enough.

I wanted bigger targets than just a single number field, so I grouped 3 numbers together as one target to aim for but with varied scoring inside. These bigger targets will be easier to aim for in the beginning but as you improve you will be able to score more and finish the game faster.

This idea ended up as the Section 5 game on GoDartsPro.com.

The Game: Section 5

The dartboard is devided into 5 sections that you need to close on by one.

Section 1: 5 – 20 – 1
Section 2: 13 – 6 – 10
Section 3: 17 – 3 – 19
Section 4: 8 – 11 – 14
Section 5: Bull (25/50) – Inside treble ring

For the first 4 sections, you get 3 points if you hit the center number (20, 6, 3 and 11) and 1 point if you hit either of the adjacent fields for the current section. The first section for example, has the fields 5 – 20 – 1. You get 3 points for hitting the 20 and 1 point for hitting number 5 or 1.

It doesn’t matter if you hit a single, treble or double. They all count the same in this game.

For the last section, you aim for bull. You get 3 points for bull (25 or 50) and 1 point for darts inside the treble ring (not treble). You need to close all the 5 sections with at least 5 points on each.

Try to finish the game with as few darts as possible.

Conclusions

I’ve seen many beginners asking for training routines at different forums or Facebook groups and too many replying ”Practice the doubles”. If beginners starts to aim for the doubles straight away they most likely will miss the board with many darts, lose their confidence and worst case scenario walk away from darts forever thinking they have no talent for darts.

If they instead try out different games suitable for beginners to build up their throw and confidence gradually while having fun, they might be hooked for darts for life.

If you ask Peter Wright to try to throw 100 darts inside the treble ring he’ll soon be bored and do something else. It is the same with telling a beginner to play Bob’s 27 or Doubles Lock.

Play the games that are fun and good challenge for your current level and remember:

Championships are won at practice.
Enjoy your darts! /Anders