What is First Leg Winning Colour? First Leg Winning Colour Explained in 2 minutes
Jesse M. Cox Last Verified
26/06/2026
What is First Leg Winning Colour?
First leg winning colour describes the last dart thrown by a player who wins an individual leg of a darts match. In major championships, matches are divided into sets, and those sets are broken down into legs. The legs take the form of individual games of 501, in which each player takes it in turn to throw three darts, with the score from each set of darts being deducted from the total of 501. The winner is the first player to reduce the score to zero, with the proviso that the last dart thrown has to land in one of the double scoring sections of the board. Scoring a double to win a leg like this is sometimes known as checking out.
How is First Leg Winning Colour used in Sports Betting?
The double and treble sections of a professional dart board are divided into alternate red and green segments. The double 20 is red, the double 1 next to it green and so on around the board. Most bookmakers accept bets on which colour the winning number of the first leg will be before the match starts and also during the course of the first leg, up until around halfway through the leg, when the scores will have dropped to around 200/300. Choosing which colour the winning dart will be is, to some degree, a matter of luck, but there may be some pointers. Individual players may have a favourite number which they go for when checking out, and a player in particularly good form may be more likely to score a nine dart finish. In the case of a nine dart finish, three combinations are possible for the last three darts, and all finish on a red colour, making this the most favourable bet for a player in particularly good form.
