About us

Bet On Darts started as an argument about what a betting page is actually for. Most of them show you a price and a button. Very few show you where the price came from, and none of them show you the bit the price leaves out.

Why the match is simulated

We do not have an odds feed, and we are not going to pretend we do. A page that shows invented numbers next to a real player's name, above a real tournament that is not happening, is lying about three things at once, and the fact that everyone does it does not make it better.

So the front page shows a match that is honestly nothing but a simulation, between players who honestly do not exist, and the prices beside them are honestly derived from that simulation and nothing else. Every number is true to the only thing it claims to describe. You can change a player's three-dart average in the configuration and watch every price on the page move, which is about as clear a demonstration as there is that the model is doing real work.

How the model works

Two numbers per player: a three-dart average and a checkout percentage. The chance of hitting the treble twenty is solved from the average rather than guessed, so a player who is set to average 97.4 really does average 97.4 over a long run of visits. Setup darts, missed trebles dropping into the single, missed doubles catching the single below, and busting are all modelled because all four happen.

For the price, the leg in front of you is simulated a few thousand times from exactly where it stands, and the rest of the match is then solved exactly — not simulated — by recursion over the two players' per-leg win rates. That is why a 180 visibly moves the number: it genuinely changes the position.

We quote the fair price, meaning the two prices always imply exactly 100%. A bookmaker adds a margin on top of that, and the converter on the front page will tell you how big it is on any market you can see.

What is real

• The board: correct number order, correct ring proportions, drawn to the measurements of a bristle board.
• The checkout finder: every combination of up to three darts ending on a double is enumerated. Nothing is read from a list, which is why the seven bogey numbers come back empty rather than coming back wrong.
• The nine-dart search: counted from first principles.
• The PDC World Championship winners, checked by hand, with the date of the check printed beside them.
• The odds arithmetic, all of it.

What would have to change

If this ever sat in front of real markets, it would need a licensed data source, an affiliate agreement with each bookmaker named, and the disclosure that goes with being paid by them. Until all three exist, the honest version of this site is the simulated one, and the notice saying so stays exactly where it is.

Contact

hello@betondarts.co.uk. It is read by a person, and corrections to anything factual are genuinely welcome.