Oche: 501 darts in a browser tab, thrown with one thumb

01  What Oche is

Oche is a game of 501 — the standard darts format — that runs in a browser tab. You start on 501, throw three darts at a time, subtract what you hit, and the leg ends when the score reaches exactly zero on a double. The opponent is the number: no computer player, no timer, no difficulty setting, no second format. One board, three darts, a score counting down.

The name is darts vocabulary. The oche is the line a player stands behind to throw from, and it is the line at the bottom of the screen here — the one you drag away from.

The board is drawn on a canvas, not assembled from images: twenty segments in the standard numbering, 20 at the top and running clockwise, pale sisal beds alternating with black, red double and treble rings on the dark beds and green on the light. The boundaries that draw those beds are the same constants that score your dart, so a ring you can see is a ring that counts. There is nothing to install and no account to make.

02  One gesture: your thumb sets the width, your pull sets the height

The throw is the whole product, and it is worth understanding before you start, because it is not the mouse-drag mechanic most browser darts games use. Press anywhere on the board and a reticle appears on the board's middle line, at whatever horizontal position your finger is over, stopping at the rim if you press past the edge. That is your aim, left and right only. The height of your finger is deliberately ignored.

Height comes from power instead. Drag downward and after a short dead zone the meter fills; the length of the pull, up to roughly 160 pixels, is your power, and you release to let the dart go. All the while the reticle sways on a slow two-axis loop — 3.5% of the board's diameter in each direction, one axis at 0.9 cycles a second and the other at 0.63 — so the skill is timing the release, not holding anything steady.

One thing catches everyone out. The reticle shows where the dart will land only while your pull sits inside the bright band on the meter, and the dot at the centre of the reticle grows when it does. Pull shorter than the band and the dart lands below the reticle; pull longer and it lands above it. That band is not a reward for a good throw — it is the only power setting at which the reticle is telling you the truth.

A quick tap with no pull throws at the middle of the band, which makes a tap the safe, no-commitment throw: no meter to judge, just the sway to time.

03  Which beds you can actually aim at

Inside the band the dart lands on the board's middle line, and that one fact shapes the game. The bullseye sits on that line at the centre, so pressing the vertical middle of the board and releasing as the reticle crosses the middle is a 50 — the highest score you can reliably hold. The sway alone never carries a centred throw past the 25 ring, so a mistimed one usually costs you 25 points rather than the whole dart.

The doubles on that same line are D6 to the right and D11 to the left, and they are the ones a true throw can settle on deliberately. Since a leg can only be finished on a double, those — and the bull, which also finishes — are the outs you will end up taking.

Everything higher up the board wants a longer pull. The treble 20 at the top is a pull of roughly 142 to 148 pixels out of the 160 the meter allows: a window about six pixels wide, four-fifths of the way down the drag. Pull a little less and the dart drops into the single 20 below it; pull the whole way and it climbs to the outer single 20 at the rim, so the double 20 above it needs the pull at maximum and the sway at the top of its swing at the same moment. A short pull of about 27 to 39 pixels, at the other end, puts the dart in the treble 3.

There is also an honest scatter you cannot remove: a small random offset — one standard deviation of about 1.5% of the board's diameter each way — is added to every dart. It is small next to a treble and meaningful next to a double: even a perfectly timed double is roughly a three-in-four proposition.

04  Double-out, busts, and the one hint you get

Reaching zero is not enough. Your last dart has to land in a double ring, or on the bullseye, and take the score to zero in that single dart — a single that merely equals your remaining score does not finish the leg.

A bust is any dart that takes you below zero, to exactly one, or to zero without a double. When it happens the visit is void: the score snaps back to where the visit started, the darts thrown in it are gone, and the visit ends there. Throw 140 and bust on the third dart and you are exactly where you began.

Under the remaining score sits a computed hint. With a finish available it reads "Checkout:" and the route — for 170 that is T20 · T20 · Bull, the longest checkout in the game. Too high to finish in three darts, it reads "Set-up:" with a first dart that leaves you a double. It is worth knowing what it does: the route is searched from the rules — one dart, then two, then three, always the highest-scoring first dart that still leaves a finish — not copied from a printed chart. 169 cannot be finished at all, and 168, 166, 165, 163, 162 and 159 are the three-dart bogeys, so for those the hint offers a set-up instead. It is a suggestion, not a command, but following it early teaches the discipline that wins legs: a sensible set-up beats a heroic treble.

05  The numbers you leave with

When the leg ends, the result card gives you the dart count and your 3-dart average — the 501 you cleared spread over the darts you used, scaled to a visit of three, which is how darts scoring is quoted on television. It is arithmetic you cannot game: 18 darts is 83.5, 24 darts is 62.6, and the perfect nine-dart leg is 167.0. The game adds a short description of the pace below it, from "Blistering pace" at 100 and up down to "Finding your range".

Busts are in there too — every dart you throw counts, including the one that busted the visit — so the average tells you how cleanly the leg went even when the dart count looks respectable.

Your fewest-darts finish is kept in your own browser under the local storage key oche.best, the only thing the game stores, overwritten only by a finish that beats it. Each checkout also mints a score card carrying the dart count, the route you threw and the average, built entirely from those numbers with nothing typed in. On a phone it goes out through the normal share sheet; on a desktop the hook line and link are copied to your clipboard instead.

06  Your first visit, in order

Nothing here needs a tutorial, but a few habits make the early legs much better:

• Start with taps: a tap at the middle of the board throws at the band centre and scores 50 or 25 while you learn the sway's timing.
• Then learn the long pull. Count the drag rather than trusting your thumb — the treble 20 lives in a six-pixel window near the end of the meter.
• Take D6, D11 and the bull as your outs — they are the finishes you can actually aim at.
• Follow the hint from about 170 down. It already knows the shortest route and which numbers are dead ends.
• If you prefer a still board, your system's reduced-motion setting stills the sway and lands the dart instantly, and the throw itself works the same way.

07  Questions people ask

How do you win a game of 501 darts?

Get to exactly zero, and make the dart that does it land in a double ring or on the bullseye. Any other dart that reaches zero does not finish the leg, and a dart that leaves you on 1 busts the visit — the score goes back to where the visit started.

What happens when you bust in darts?

The visit is void. In Oche the score snaps back to the number you started that visit on, the darts thrown in it do not count toward your score, and the visit ends immediately, so you start the next three darts from the old number.

Is Oche free, and do I need an account or a download?

It is free, there is no account and there is nothing to download — the game runs in the browser and the page is supported by advertising. No sign-up, no email address, no profile.

Can you play darts on a phone?

Yes, and Oche is built for it. Hold the phone in portrait and throw with your thumb: press the board, drag down to charge, release. It works with a mouse on a desktop too, and it respects your system's reduced-motion setting by stilling the reticle.

Do I have to hit the treble 20 to score well?

No. Three treble 20s is 180 a visit, but the bull is 50 a dart and you can hold it with a tap at the centre — 150 a visit with far less risk. In Oche the treble 20 sits near the very end of the power meter, so it is a length judgement as much as an aim one.

Is my score saved on your servers?

No. The only thing the game keeps is your fewest-darts best, stored in your own browser under the local storage key oche.best; it never leaves your device, and clearing your browser data clears it. The score card is generated from the numbers on your screen, never from anything you type.

08  More from the shelf

• Fiveaside — Score past the keeper. Post the scoreline.
• Acecourt — Nail the timing. Serve the ace.
• Claymark — One tiebreak. The court remembers.
• Dewkeep — Keep a creature. Grow a little world.

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