Running order
A night of darts comes unstuck on three things: too many players for the number of boards, a draw that has to be made on the night, and one person stuck behind a laptop all evening. Below is how to avoid all three — with the arithmetic, so you can run it on your own entry count.
"Who fancies it?" gets you a group chat full of thumbs-up and no entry list. Put a date, a time and a cut-off on it: entries close Wednesday, the draw stands after that. You need that hard moment, because everything below hangs off the number.
Expect ten to fifteen per cent to drop out. Twenty sign up, seventeen or eighteen turn up. That is fine as long as you only make the draw on the night itself.
The number of boards decides how long the evening runs, not the number of players. With four boards and twenty-three players you play sixty-three matches; that is sixteen per board. On two boards it is thirty-two per board, and you are there past midnight.
Rule of thumb: one board per six entrants. More than that barely helps, because then players are waiting for each other rather than for a board.
Group stage followed by a knockout is the only format that works for one evening: everybody throws at least four matches, including whoever loses first up, and you still end with a winner. A straight knockout sends half your guests to the bar after one match.
A best-of-3 match between amateurs takes eight to twelve minutes, including setting up and entering the result. Call it ten. The sum is then: number of matches divided by number of boards, times ten minutes.
Three groups (5, 5, 6) give 35 group matches. Six go through, with two byes: six knockout matches including the third-place play-off. That is 41 matches, 14 per board, about 2 hours 20 plus half an hour for the start and the presentation.
Four groups (5, 6, 6, 6) give 55 group matches and 8 knockout matches. That is 63 matches, 16 per board, about 2 hours 40. This is exactly Open Darts, and the size that runs best.
Six groups give 70 group matches and twelve qualifiers in a bracket of sixteen: 12 matches. That is 82, 21 per board, about 3.5 hours. On six boards it is 2 hours 20 and fits an evening comfortably.
For the exact figures at your entry count, the table on the group draw page has every number from 12 to 32 — including how many byes you end up with.
Collect names until the last moment, then make the draw. Two people with the same first name? Add a letter straight away. At Open Darts there were two called Dennis; they became Dennis K and Dennis R before anything was drawn, and that saved a whole evening of shouting.
A printed sheet on the wall is the slowest option: it is out of date the moment the first result comes in. A screen that cycles by itself between who is throwing now, the group standings and the bracket takes "when am I on?" away from you.
Give every group its own colour, and keep that colour the same everywhere. People remember "I'm blue" far better than "I'm in group C".
The biggest time sink is not the throwing but the reporting. Someone walking over to the organiser after every match costs two minutes a time — across sixty-three matches that is two hours of your evening. Let the players at the board enter it themselves.
Best-of-3 in the groups, best-of-5 in the knockout, best-of-7 for the final. The group stage has to move; the final has to mean something. Fix it beforehand, and do not change it once matches have been played — otherwise last round's result no longer matches the rule it was played under.
Then everyone is watching the last match of the night, rather than a consolation game after the winner is already known. It costs no playing time and it is worth a lot in atmosphere.
Add them as long as the group stage has not started. After that it is too late: dropping someone into a group halfway means the others play an unequal number of matches. Let them into the third-place match, or just have them throw alongside the tournament.
Their remaining matches become losses. Do not delete the matches they already played — that changes the standings for everyone who has already played them, which is more unfair than the problem itself.
Correct the match, not the table. Standings and rankings should be calculated from the results; anyone who edits the table by hand has two different truths after the second correction.
That happens because the next match up contains a player who is already throwing elsewhere. Skip it and take the one after. By hand that is a puzzle every single time; a queue that does it itself does it all night without thinking about it.
No wifi in the room? You do not need any: a darts tournament without internet explains how the phones connect through the laptop itself.
darttournament.app does all of the above for you: the draw, the schedule, the board assignment, the standings, the knockout and the screen for the room. You hold your darts. It is not on sale yet — leave your address and you will hear when it is.