Introduction
Why run a ladder?
Darts Associations come in different sizes. Some have hundreds or even thousands of members, while some have less than 10.
The more players you have, the more organizational work you need to do.
If you are trying to run a weekly tournament you need to pick a format that suits your needs best.
Ladders work very well when you have between 20 to 50 players. They are good for continuous assessement of players and for weekly darts meetings where Administration is getting too much work.
20 to 50 players is an awkward number to organize.
First of all there will be a few very good players who take the game seriously. They will want to play Nationally recognized games like '501 double out' or Cricket.
There will also be a large group of reasonably good players. Some might like to play the Nationally recognized games too. Some of them might not.
In any normal social darts meeting, there will also be a bunch of players who are not so good. They will have more fun playing the easier games like '301 straight in - straight out' or 'Short Cricket'
In such circumstances there is a good chance that if you insist everyone play the difficult games the less skilled players will drop out. If you play the easy games the good players will drop out.
In any case some players are going to be unhappy.
One solution to this dilemma if you have enough boards is organizing a 'Ladder'. Ladder format is very flexible and can usually be adapted to suit everyone. In the column on the right I explain one way to organize a ladder.
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Running a darts ladder.
To create a weekly ladder you need to have a venue with multiple boards. You need at least one board per each four players approximately. If you have 21 players (as in the example below) you would need at least 5 boards.
Week 1. Setting up the ladder for the first time. Example for 21 players.
The aim on the first week is to set things up and establish reasonably accurate starting position on the ladder for each player. In this case the ladder will have 16 ladder positions and 5 challenger positions.
- Name your boards 1 to 5
- Assign your 4 best players to board 1 (positions 1 to 4)
- Assign your next 4 best players to board 2 (positions 5 to 8)
- Assign your next 4 best players to board 3 (positions 9 to 12)
- Assign your next 4 best players to board 4 (positions 13 to 16)
- This leaves you with 5 players which you assign to board 5 (challengers)
The players on each board will now be able to play a mini competition amongst themselves to work out ladder starting positions.
The next step is to assign a permanent game format to each board. Board 1 has the strongest players so usually you would choose games of '501 double out' and 'cricket' in a 'round robin' format for players on board 1 to play.
Assign the other boards games you think will best the level of the players on them, and keep in mind the time it will take to play them. You can ask the players on each board what they would like to play if you want. In many cases players on board 2 will want to play the same games as board 1.
Game suggestions:-
board 2: '301 straight in double out' and 'Cricket' round robin
board 3: '501 straight in straight out' and 'Cricket' round robin
board 4: '301 straight in straight' and 'Short Cricket' round robin
The last board (5) has the weakest players and is used an entry board. The entry board may have between 3 to 6 players on it. If you get new players, and the entry board ends up with 7 players, you start a new entry board with 3 players (board 6) and board 5 becomes part of the ladder (positions 17 to 20).
You may have to change the games and/or format of the entry board each week to suit the number of players on it. The games you choose will mostly depend on the time available for play. For instance, a round Robin for 4 players involves 6 matches. If the matches are 20 minutes each they will take 2 hours to finish plus tie-breakers, if they take 30 minutes each they will take 3 hours to finish plus tie-breakers.
Tie-breaker suggestion
If you need to play a tie-breaker between 2 or more players, the best way is to have each player throw 9 darts at the board, highest score wins, second highest comes second etc. This is a very quick and fair method of deciding a tie.
Final positions: inter board play-offs
When all the boards have finished playing you should end up with a winner and a loser on each board. On board one, the winner will be in position 1 and the loser will be in position 4. On board two, the winner will be in position 5 and the loser will be in position 8.
To end the night and produce final ladder positions, winners challenge losers for their position on the board above. EG. If the winner of board 2 beats the loser of board 1 they swap places, otherwise they remain where they were.
Play-off format is generally 1 leg, sudden death. The game to be played is decided by a coin toss. The winner of the toss can choose the game.
After the play-offs are over, you are finished for the first week. You need only record the players final positions so you can start them off in the same place next week.
Week 2. Tweaking, no-shows, and new players
Start week 2 and all weeks thereafter by assigning players to the boards in the same positions they held at the end of the previous week.
If any board took too long to play, or finished to quickly you can 'tweak' the games played on that board to make them easier or harder to play. The aim is to try to get boards finished more or less at the same time so players don't need to hang around for the inter board play-offs at the end of the night.
If someone doesn't show up on time, phone them to see if they are running late. If they don't show up at all, then they will automatically be the loser on their board and the loser of the inter board play-off, thus they will drop a board.
You may get new players wishing to join in. When you do, start them on the entry board. They can then work their way up the ladder over a few weeks to end up in the best place for their standard of play. Once you get 7 players on the entry board, split it to form a new ladder board with 4 players, and an entry board with three players.
Other than that, play is the same as week 1. Darts ladders require very little administration. You need only keep a copy of the final ladder positions each week. At the end of the season you can find out who was the best overall player by adding up their weekly position numbers. The one with the lowest total is the champion.
Printable standard 4, 5 and 6 player round robin board scoresheets with order of play can be found here. (4 players) (5 players) (6 players) Just print some out to use for your ladder.
More information about Round Robins can be found here.
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