Lip

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"Lip" describes that agonizing moment when a dart lands right on the edge of a segment — either just barely in or just barely out. It's the razor's edge of darts, and every player knows the feeling. You throw at D16 to win the leg, the dart hits the very edge of the double bed, and you hold your breath while figuring out which side it landed on. Lipping in is wonderful — you got away with one. The dart technically scored, and that's all that matters. Lipping out is devastating — your dart was millimeters from scoring and instead you hit the single next to it, or worse, bounced off the wire entirely. The concept of the lip highlights just how precise darts needs to be. The difference between a perfect checkout and a bust can literally be less than a millimeter. A dart that lips into the treble 20 scores 60; one that lips out scores 20. That 40-point swing from a fraction of a millimeter is what makes darts so thrilling. Lip shots are particularly dramatic during checkout attempts. When a player needs D16 to win a match and the dart lands right on the wire, the entire room holds its breath. In televised events, the camera zooms in, and you can see the dart sitting right on the boundary between scoring and not scoring. There's nothing you can do about lips — they're essentially random once the dart is in flight. Over time, they even out: you'll lip in as often as you lip out. All you can control is throwing accurately enough that your darts land in the center of the target, far from any wire.