Like many games, darts comes with some language of its own.
There are different names for different scores and events. This is by no means a full listing of every dart term, and I’m sure some of the terms are local, and vary from town to town.
Blackout – an inning with zero points.
White Horse – an inning with 9 points, the max in a game of Baseball
Ginsberg – is also an inning with 9 points.
Bucket of Blood– three darts in the red, worth 6 points in Baseball
Dogballs – an inning with 8 points.
Snowman – is another term for an inning with 8 points.
The Gun as in “give him the gun” is an inning with 7 points. Named after the hand signal for a 7 point inning.
Angel Dart – a final dart in the trip, after having missed points with the first two darts in the inning. In some circles this is referred to as a Zippy Dart in honor of a player who makes use of this tactic regularly.
Three in a Pond – three darts that all hit the singles section of the inning.
Hand Signals
It’s usually noisy when a game of darts is taking place, whether it’s in a league or at a tournament. So, there are some common hand signs that people use when calling out a score, so make it easier to communicate with the score keeper.
One Point – Raise one finger, typically or index finger.
Two points – raise two fingers.
Three points – Raise three fingers.
Four points – Raise four fingers. Are you getting a sense of a pattern here?
Five points – Raise five fingers.
Six points – Here is the point where we run out of fingers. Usually a player is already grabbing for the darts in the board when they call out the points, so in the spirit of keeping all the information on one hand when you’re calling a six, raise your thumb. It’s exactly like the “thumbs up” sign.
Seven points – Building on how to call out a six, raise your thumb and index finger. It looks like a gun from when you were pretend shooting the bad guys in second grade.
Eight points – Now we’re starting to get creative. Keep everything on by just adding an extended middle finger to “the gun” (an extended index finger and thumb). Or, make two fists and tap them together (at least twice) – one on top of the other.
That’s the signal for “dog balls”, or an eight.
Nine Points – this is a special event, the player has earned every point available in an inning. And how do we show this?
Point your index finger towards the sky (well, probably ceiling), and make circles like you’re twirling a lasso in the air and announce “All Of Them”!
It’s at this point, how to announce a perfect inning, that I am sure that others will have things to share. And they may have other traditions on how to announce the other scores as well, bt at least now you have some info to get you started!
