How to Play Overs / Unders Darts

Overs / Unders Dart Game Rules

Both Overs and Unders are dart games that are focused on survival. Overs is based on slowly increasing your score, while Unders focuses on gradually decreasing it. These games are great for practicing your accuracy, improving your math skills, and competing against friends.

Number of Players

One or more people can play Overs and Unders.

How to Play

There are quite a few variations of Overs and Unders, so this article will cover a couple different ways to play the same game. Regardless of which version you play, each player will have a set number of lives and the last one standing wins.

Three lives is traditional, but an easier game could have more, while a harder game would have less.

Version 1
The first way to play is by having each player throw three darts on their first turn to set their starting score. Their next three darts, they would have to try and score over or under the total of the three darts thrown in their previous score.

So for a game of Overs the best strategy is to start off by scoring as low as possible so the next turn is easier to earn more points. Ties don't count and will result in losing a life for both games.

However, if a player fails to score more points on their next turn, they instead lose a life. They would then need to beat that new score. For example, if in a game of Overs, a player has a score of 85 and their next turn they only manage to score 60, they would lose a life. But on their next turn they would only need to beat a score of 60.

This introduces a lot of strategy into the game because when a player starts to get a higher score, they can choose to throw away a life by aiming for the 1 segment.

This works the exact same as in a game of Unders, except in Unders, the goal is to earn less points each turn. Which means starting out at 180 would be ideal. Unders is actually the harder of the two games because it is easier to intentionally score less points and slowly go up than score higher and slowly go down.

Version 2
The second way to play is much more straightforward. Instead of having to constantly go over or under your own score, each round a random number between 4 and 179 is chosen that has to be scored over or under. Not 3 to 180 because ties still don't count.

Failing to score over or under will again result in losing a life, but since the number is random you don't need to worry about scoring close to each round's number.

There is less strategy for this version, but the games can also be unpredictable depending on how the numbers are chosen each round.

Regardless, there are plenty of ways to play!