Tool · desk
Darts checkout trainer
In one line: put in the score you have left and get the checkout — fewest darts first, every step of the working shown, how many legal routes exist, and a result card you can share.
Every checkout is the same three-dart puzzle: reach exactly zero with the last dart landing on a double. That constraint is the whole game — and it is small enough that a browser can search every legal combination in one pass. This trainer does exactly that. It quotes no folklore table: it computes the routes, counts them, and shows the working.
How the trainer works
It is an exhaustive search, not a model. Every legal dart is one of sixty-two targets (singles, doubles, trebles, the outer bull and the bull); a checkout is any sequence of up to three of those targets that sums to your score with the final dart on a double. The browser enumerates them all — a score like 100 has two routes (treble 20, double 20 and bull, bull), and the trainer reports both, with the working for the one it recommends.
The recommendation rule is stated above deliberately: when many routes exist, hidden preferences are how folklore spreads. Ours are visible and checkable.
The bogey numbers, computed
Some scores cannot be finished at all. The no-checkout list is 1, 159, 162, 163, 165, 166, 168, 169 and everything above 170 — not because players dislike those numbers, but because no three darts ending on a double sum to them. The two most famous near-misses are actually legal: 157 (treble 19, treble 20, double 20) and 158 (treble 20, treble 20, double 19). The trainer checks this in front of you — enter any of the impossible numbers and it says so.
Setups worth knowing by heart
Experienced players do not compute routes during a visit — they memorise the common setups until the finish is automatic. The ones that come up most are worth drilling before anything else. Any even score of 40 or below is a single dart: 40 is double 20, 36 is double 18, 32 is double 16, and so on down to 2, which is double 1. When the score is under 40 and odd, the first dart exists only to set up that double: 39 is single 3 into double 18, 33 is single 1 into double 16.
The middle band is where matches are won or lost. Scores from 41 to 60 are two-dart finishes and they are drilled obsessively: 60 is treble 20, double nothing — leave it and you need three more darts — while 50 is bull, 44 is treble 12, double 4, and 41 is the awkward single 1, double 20 that every player argues about. Above 60 the three-dart routes take over, and the setups worth memorising are the ones the trainer recommends first: 81 for instance is treble 15 into double 18, and 100 is treble 20, double 20 — the classic “ton” checkout that separates steady finishers from hopeful ones.
The last habit is the one this trainer is built around: when you practise, check the working, not just the route. If you know why treble 20, treble 20, bull is the only way to 170, you also know why leaving 169 in a real leg is a mistake the arithmetic cannot rescue. Route knowledge that survives pressure is route knowledge that was computed at least once, out loud.
The result card
Every result carries a small share object (bryme.checkout.v1: the score, the dart count, the route, the working, and the route count). The Download result card button draws it as an image card in the house style; Share this checkout hands the text to your phone’s share sheet, or copies it where there is no share sheet. The card states the route and the working — a number without its working is just a claim.
The game behind the arithmetic
Why 501, and why finish on a double at all? The desk’s explainer on why darts starts at 501 covers the history and the double-out rule; this trainer is the arithmetic side of that same rule. For the table maths in football, see the league tiebreak calculator.
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