Dart is both a professional sport and a traditional local pastime, very popular in the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, Scandinavian countries, the United States, and many other countries. ¹⁾

Dartboards are usually manufactured from sisal fiber. Individual fields are marked with metal wire. Numbers indicating the value of a particular field can also be made of wire, but most often they are printed directly on the board. ²⁾

It's not entirely clear who invented the dart game. The very idea of the board probably comes from the cross-section of a tree, but some historical records suggest that the first dartboards were the bottoms of wine barrels, which is supposed to have given the game its first name - “butts.” It is also speculated that the sport took its origins from competition between bored warriors in between battles. The soldiers would throw short arrows at the surface of a tree trunk. ³⁾

The board with the modern, most official field numbering can be recognized by the fact that the triangular field of the highest scoring field (20 points) is at the very top. For many years, different combinations of field numbering were used in different parts of the world. Modern numbering was introduced by Brian Gamlin in 1896. It is designed to penalize player inaccuracy as much as possible. Its disadvantage, however, is that it is most profitable to throw to the left of it, around the field with the number 14, due to the fact that this gives the highest probability of hitting the high-scoring fields. This strategy is especially preferred by novice players. ⁴⁾

A standard dartboard is divided into 20 triangular fields, radially extending from the center of the board. These fields are numbered from 1 to 20. This numbering is the basis for awarding points for a hit. Wires running radially from the outside of the board to the center of the board together with wires forming a concentric set of circles, divide each field into single, double, and triple values. ⁵⁾

The term “bullseye” can refer to either the entire middle part of the board or just the middle circle worth 50 points. ⁶⁾

A new type of dartboard is a special board for soft-headed darts, made of plastic and covered all over its surface with small holes (about 2 mm in diameter). Darts having soft plastic spearheads are usually lighter than their steel counterparts and have a much lower allowable maximum weight. Darts with plastic heads “enter” the hole placed on the board to a depth of about 6 mm before they stop. They can be pulled out of the board with a simple twist and pull. ⁷⁾

A single game, or “leg,” is a duel between two players who take turns making three throws at a target. The player who first reaches a set number of points, usually 301 or 501, wins, with points “counting backward” from, say, 501 all the way to 0. ⁸⁾

Other, more well-known dart-related games include “Double-in” (in which a double field must be hit to start counting points at all), “Round The Clock” (in which players must hit consecutive numbered fields of the board), and the more complicated “Cricket,” which has several variations. ⁹⁾

The oldest existing darts organization is the British Darts Organization (BDO), founded in 1973. ¹⁰⁾

The World Darts Federation for national teams has been played every two years since 1977. ¹¹⁾

Dart was the first broadcast in 1962 via Britain's Westward Television, which broadcast the Westward TV Invitational amateur tournament. In 1970 ITV broadcast the News of the World Darts Championship tournament, and from 1972 the Indoor League program, which also included a dart tournament. ¹²⁾