  The game of darts has enjoyed great growth over the past decade with the
perception of darts moving from that of a pub game to a game that is regularly
scheduled on prime-time television in many countries including the U.K.,
Germany, the Netherlands, and Australia among others. The game of darts
involves strategic interactions between two players but to date the literature
has ignored these interactions. In this paper, we formulate and solve the game
of darts as a dynamic zero-sum-game (ZSG), and to the best of our knowledge we
are the first to do so. We also estimate individual skill models using a novel
data-set based on darts matches that were played by the top 16 professional
players in the world during the 2019 season. Using the fitted skill models and
our ZSG problem formulation, we quantify the importance of playing
strategically, i.e. taking into account the score and strategy of one's
opponent, when computing an optimal strategy. For top professionals we find
that playing strategically results in an increase in win-probability of just
0.2% - 0.6% over a single leg but as much as 2.3% over a best-of-35 legs match.
