Part I – Checkout advice: No 4: 38

Hello everyone,
today's checkout is 38. To start, here's a video of James Wade taking out 38 in the final of the 2014 World Grand Prix.

As I've said in the last post, even checkouts below 42 are pretty much no-brainers, as you just go for the double. However, some people do like to split less favourable doubles, and if you are someone who's into splitting, then 38 is probably the most splittable double. So that's what I'll talk about today.

Firstly, I don't really ever split doubles (other than the bullseye) for two main reasons:

• You're throwing away a possible dart at the double so you only have maximum two chances rather than maximum three;
• You might miss the big number you're going for to split in which case you've really made a pig's ear out of it.

38, however, does have the following things going for it, if you are contemplating a split:

• It's higher than 32 so you can hit 6 to split down to 32 (double 16), which is my favourite double;
• 6 is nextdoor to 10, and if you hit the 10 by accident, you're on 28 (double 14), which is also a nice double;
• Even treble 6 (leaves double 10) and treble 10 (leaves double 4) leave fairly nice doubles, so basically anything you hit in that arc of the board is going to leave you with a nice finish.

I still don't recommend splitting 38, but if you're going to, then I would definitely go for 6 to leave double 16.

And now the summary of what you do if you do go for double 19 but miss.

1) The most likely miss is the big single 19. This leaves 19, so your best bet is to go 3, double 8. This is quite nice too because 3 is just a little shift over from 19 so you might even hit it.

2) Other likely misses are double 7 and double 3, which leave you with double 12, which is OK, and double 15, which isn't great, but doable.

3) If you hit the big numbers on the side of your double, so single 3 or single 7, then you leave yourself on 35 and 31. 35 is great, because then you just whack in another single 3 to leave double 16.

31 is less good. In theory your best bet is single 15 to leave double 8. Though there is something to be said for going 3 to leave double 14, because then both neighbours (19 and 17) also leave some kinds of double (double 6 and double 7 respectively). Also, the treble 3 leaves a double too (double 11).

None of these are that great, but as back-up options, they may be OK. Because if you go for single 15 and miss then you're looking at things like hitting treble 15 (bust), 10 (leaves 21) and 2 (leaves 29), all of which mean you can't finish on that visit. So as the safe option, I recommend going single 3 if you've hit the 7 with your first dart.