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09th Jan 2013

What do you make of the new dart board design?

In a bid to make the sport even more awesome than it already is a maths professor has designed a ‘better’ dartboard. Will it catch on?

JOE

In a bid to make the sport even more awesome than it already is a maths professor has designed a ‘better’ dartboard. Will it catch on?

We love darts here on JOE. And our recent poll on whether Phil Taylor was a world-class sportsman or not proved to us that you did too, with two out of every three of you saying that he was.

So we wonder what you darts fans make of this, the ‘optimal’ dart board designed by David Percy, Professor of Mathematics at Salford University in England.

Pictured in today’s Guardian, it rearranges the numbers into a more mathematically perfect line up. The proposed new layout is on the right.

You will notice that the numbers now go odd-even all the way round, avoiding the old problem of four odd numbers near the bottom, eight and 16 being beside each other, etc..

The new design also should penalize bad throws more, with three now beside 20 instead of five and four is beside 19 rather than 7.

And with eight and 16 now apart, finishing on those doubles could become less popular. And this isn’t just a crazy experiment. Manufacturers Winmau are making a few prototypes and it will be tested at the BDO world championship this week, though not in competition.

In fairness to the professor, it makes a lot of sense but after so long, will the sport really change one of the few bits of equipment needed to play the game?

If they do, we better get practicing, as we’re bad enough on the old board.

Topics:

Darts