How to Play Gotcha! Darts

A simple count up dart game with a fun twist!

Gotcha! Dart Game Rules

Build up your math skills, work on your strategy, and strive to get even better at darts with a game of Gotcha!

Number of Players

Two or more players can play Gotcha.

How to Play

In Gotcha the dart game, the goal is to reach a predetermined score without going over it, almost like a reverse game of 501 or a harder version of count up.

Any number works, so if you like games of 01, the numbers 301 and 501 work well, or even numbers like 200 and 400 can be used. Once the goal is chosen, the game can begin.

Each player gets three darts per turn to try and score as many points as they can to try and reach the agreed upon score. It's a lot like games of 301 or 501 but there two major differences.

The first is that a double is not required on the last throw to win. As long as a player gets to the target number without going over they win.

The second is that it is possible to reduce another player's score to zero. To do this, all they have to do is get their score to be equal to their opponents. For example, if Player 1 has a score of 87 and Player 2 has a score of 100, Player 1 could throw their first dart to score a single 13 to bring their score up to 100. Since their scores are now equal, Player 2 would have their score set back to 0.

This is where the bulk of Gotcha's strategy comes in. Being in the lead isn't always a good thing. It's also why it's best to avoid choosing too high of a target number since once something like this happens it makes it very difficult to catch back up.

A similarity of Gotcha to games of 01 is that it is possible to bust. If a player goes over the chosen score, they lose any remaining darts they have and their score gets reset to what it was at the beginning of their turn.

But those are all the rules to Gotcha! It's a pretty simple game with some fun twists to keep things interesting.

Alternative Rule

An optional way to play is that when a player busts, the amount of points they busted by gets subtracted from their original score.

For example, if a player has 280 points and the target score is 300 they would need 20 points to win. If they accidentally hit the double 20 though they would have 320 points which means they busted by 20 points.

Their turn would end, their score would be reset, and since they busted by 20 points they would subtract that from their score and be left with 260 points.