Doubles Practice: Drills to Stop Missing the Finish | Oche

Ask any club player where they lose legs and the honest answer is usually the same: the double. Scoring gets all the practice attention, but finishing decides matches — and it’s the easiest place to find quick improvement, because so few amateurs drill it properly. Here’s a focused doubles routine that works.

Why doubles need their own practice

Hitting a treble 20 and hitting a double are different skills under different pressure. The double comes at the tense end of a leg, often on a number you don’t throw at much. Practising 501 legs doesn’t fix this — you only get a handful of double attempts per game. To improve, you have to manufacture reps.

Drill 1 — Doubles around the board

Work through D1 to D20 and the bull, hitting each double before moving on. Time yourself or count total darts, then try to beat it next session. This builds all-board finishing accuracy so you’re never scared of an “awkward” double.

Drill 2 — Bob’s 27

The gold-standard doubles game: start on 27, throw three darts at each double in order, add on a hit, subtract on a complete miss. The escalating pressure mirrors a real finish. Full rules in our Bob’s 27 guide.

Drill 3 — Repeat the common finishes

Set yourself the doubles you’ll actually face and rep them:

• 40 (D20) — the most-left finish in the game.
• 32 (D16) — the best halving chain.
• 16 (D8) and 8 (D4) — where missed chains land.

Throw, finish, reset, repeat — count darts per finish over ten reps. Our best doubles to aim for explains why these matter.

Drill 4 — Pressure finishes

Give yourself a two-dart or one-dart finish and force a result before you move on. Adding a small consequence (start over on a miss) recreates match tension, which is exactly when doubles desert most players.

Leave the right double in the first place

Half of finishing is setup. Whenever you can, score down to a number that leaves a halving double — 32 over 39, 40 over 41 — so a miss still leaves you a double. This is the core of smart finishing; the math is in our checkout percentage guide.

Prove the drills are working

Doubles practice is satisfying precisely because the payoff is measurable. The Oche X01 scorer records every double attempt and the stats dashboard breaks your checkout percentage down by individual double — so you can see D16 climbing while you spot the one number quietly costing you legs. Read our checkout percentage explainer for what good looks like, and dig deeper in the doubles guide.