# 170 is the one everybody knows

> A checkout chart is a wall of three-dart combinations that players memorise. Printed with the famous one set large above it, it is arithmetic as a graphic.

August 17, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/darts-shirt

At the top, large: `170 — T20 T20 BULL`. Below it, a dense grid running down from 169, every number
with its three darts listed beside it.

That grid is memorised, not consulted. The chart on the shirt is a picture of what's already in
somebody's head.

## Why 170?

Because it's the biggest finish there is, and it only has one answer.

A leg of darts ends by taking the score to exactly zero with a double. From 170 there is precisely
one route in three darts, and everyone who plays knows it. It's the number commentators say in a
particular voice.

Printing it is the darts equivalent of a famous chord. Nobody needs it explained and nobody who
plays walks past it.

## What is the grid underneath doing?

Showing the work behind the headline.

The full checkout table is the unglamorous part: dozens of combinations, most of them ugly, all of
them known by anyone who plays properly. It's the difference between someone who throws darts and
someone who plays darts.

It also gives the design its texture — a wall of small figures under one big statement, which is a
[reliable structure for a chest print](/stories/composition-for-a-chest-print).

## Is a checkout chart anybody's property?

The arithmetic isn't. A published chart's layout is somebody's typesetting.

Which three darts finish 141 is a fact about a board with fixed numbers on it — there's nothing to
own. What can belong to somebody is a particular printed chart's design, and more obviously the
marks of darts organisations, tournaments and manufacturers.

Numbers, drawn fresh, in your own layout. The board's segment order is likewise a century-old
convention rather than anybody's design.

## Does it work without the grid?

A single checkout on its own is the stronger version for some people.

`170` alone, set enormous. Or a personal one — the finish somebody actually hit on a night that
mattered, which is
[a real number doing what a slogan can't](/stories/numbers-as-a-design). A nine-darter's full
sequence, for the handful of people entitled to print it.

The grid version says *I play*. A single number says *I did this*.

## Does it suit a team or a league?

Well, and league darts is under-served.

Pub teams, works leagues and county sides buy shirts constantly and mostly buy a dartboard graphic
with a name curved over it. A checkout chart with the team's name set as the chart's header is
recognisable at twenty paces in a room full of the other thing.

For a league night, the same chart on different garment colours reads as
[a set rather than a kit](/stories/family-reunion-shirts).

## What about other pub games?

Each has notation, and none of it is on a shirt.

Snooker has the colours and their values, and a rest-and-spider diagram. Dominoes has a scoring
sheet. Cribbage has the board itself, which is a beautiful piece of drilled geometry. Pool has rack
diagrams.

The cribbage board is the underused one — sixty-one holes in a pattern, instantly recognisable to
anyone who plays and completely abstract to anyone who doesn't.

## Does it print well?

Yes, with attention to how many rows survive.

The headline is unmissable. The grid is the risk: a full checkout table runs to over a hundred
rows, and at chest scale that becomes grey texture. Around thirty to forty rows, set larger than a
real chart, stays legible and still reads as a wall of numbers.

Bottle green, oxblood and black all suit the pub. Two inks — cream figures with the trebles picked
out in red — makes the grid readable rather than uniform, which is worth the second colour.

## How do I get one made?

Describe the chart at [JustOG](/) — which finish gets the headline, how many rows underneath, and
whose name goes at the top. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real
garment, and it's made to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop).

Treble twenty, treble twenty, bullseye. There isn't another way.