Part I – Checkout advice: No 3: 30

Hello everyone,
Today's checkout is 30. To start, here's a video of Ronny [sic] Huybrechts checking out 30.

30, like all even checkouts from 2-40, is pretty much a no-brainer. You just go for the appropriate double (in this case double 15). In the video, Ronny Huybrechts does just this, landing the double 15 with his third dart.

The only really worthwhile things to say about an even checkout between 2 and 40 is what happens if you miss. So here's a quick summary for 30.

1) The most likely miss is hitting the big single 15. This leaves you with 15 to get. What I recommend here is not to go 7 D4 because, though D4 is alright, with 7 you have the risk of hitting the treble and busting. So I recommend 15 1 D7. The other option with a safe treble is 15 3 D6, but I prefer double 7 to double 6, so that's my best bet.

Alternatively, though not one for me because I don't like double 5, you can go 15 5 D5. This has the advantage of staying in the same segment for darts two and three. Not for me (in this case), but worth thinking about (only if you hit the single 15 with your first dart, of course). The same segment shorts do have a certain charm.

2) Another neighbour is double 10. If you hit that, it's fairly obvious that you go double 5. Same sort of story for if you hit the other neighbouring double, double 2, where you obviously go for double 13. Neither of these is the nicest double on the board, but at least you haven't bust, which is always the nice thing about having a double with two smaller neighbours.

3) The other likely-ish misses are big single 10 and big single 2. If you hit big single 2, you're on double 14, which is a double I quite like. And if you hit big single 10, then you need double 10, so staying in the same segment, which is nice, and double 10 isn't bad either.

In fact, having both neighbours as even and lower (see point 2) means that all four possible misses in the neighbours leave you on a double. From this point of view, 30 is a nicer checkout to be on than 38 (D19) or 34 (D17), which have two odd neighbours (7, 3) and one odd neighbour (3) respectively.