Play Darts, Cards, & Wii

The Dumb Bell is a traditional country pub buckinghamshire, home cooked english food, children welcome, disabled facilities, sunday carvery, gluten free vegetarian, happy hour discounts, log fire, darts pool poker wii, free interent access, real ales wine, walkers welcome M25, garden amazing views, functions parties weddings

Play on our Gaming consoles, Pool Table, or Play the ancient games of Darts and Cards.

Darts refers to a variety of related games, in which darts are thrown at a circular target (dartboard) hung on a wall. Though various different boards and games have been used in the past, the term 'darts' usually now refers to a standardised game involving a specific board design and set of rules. As well as being a professional competitive activity, darts is a traditional pub game, commonly played in the United Kingdom (the first country to officially recognise darts as a sport), across the Commonwealth, the Netherlands, the Scandinavian countries, the Faroe Islands, the United States and elsewhere.

Modern day bristle dartboards were invented by Nodor in 1932, where they replaced the plasticine dartboards which needed to be soaked overnight, and which had a strong odor of plasticine. When Nodor invented the new bristle dartboard it did not smell, so was named No-Odour (NODOR). Modern dartboards are made of sisal fibers; low quality boards are sometimes made of coiled paper. However, there are several types of sisal fibre that are used in dartboards today, originating from East Africa, Brazil and China. It is readily accepted[weasel words] that dartboards using East African sisal are by far the best quality and withstand far heavier play due to the fibres' superior make-up.

A regulation board is 45.1cm (17¾") in diameter and is divided into 20 sections. Each section is separated with metal wire or a thin band of sheet metal. The best dartboards in the world have the thinnest wire separating sections so that the darts have less chance of hitting these wires and bouncing out. The numbers indicating the various scoring sections of the board are normally made of wire, especially on tournament-quality boards, but may be printed directly on the board instead.

In the standard game, the dartboard is hung so that the bullseye is 5 ft 8 in (1.73m) from the floor: eye-level for a six foot person. The oche - the line behind which the throwing player must stand - is generally 7 ft 9¼ in (2.37m) from the face of the dartboard measured horizontally. This is the recognised world standard as set by the World Darts Federation and is played as such in most areas. Due to measurement error this may be incorrect in some places (such as measuring from the wall, rather than using a plumb line to measure from the board face). London 5 board or narrow 5's board set up is slightly different from the standard board. The height is set at 5 feet 6 inches to the center of the bull and the oche is at 9 feet from the face of the board.

The dartboard may have its origins in the cross section of a tree. An old name for a dartboard is a 'butt', and from this, folk etymology infers that the bottoms of wine barrels were the original dartboards; this word in fact comes, via archery, from the French word butte, meaning target. Various designs of dartboard have been used, and regional variations remain in parts of Staffordshire, Manchester (log-end board)and Yorkshire. In particular, the Yorkshire and Perrigo Manchester boards differ from the standard board in that they have a single, inner bull and no treble ring. The london 5.s board is another variation. This has only 12 equal segments numbered 20,5,15,10,20,5,15,10,20,5,15,10 with the doubles and trebles being a quarter of an inch wide.