Aiming: Line up your eyes, the dart, and the target you want to hit. Focus on the target, not the dart, and remember to follow your hand through on your throw. Use aiming points on the target if you like, or aim in a different way, but aimt Most dart players aim naturally, but surprisingly some beginners don't from the start. It's a definite must.

Backward move: This is the prolonged (but brief) pause before the dart is actually thrown at the board. It is a fundamental and comfortable phase, but don't do it too fast. Many beginners fear the necessary loss of aiming during the backward move, but controlling this is only a matter of practice. There are few successful players who omit the backward movement, so it's another must for 99% of us. How far you move the dart back is a personal thing, but it's good to move it back quite a bit. If you find it comfortable, you can and should move back as far as possible. You can avoid slamming into your eyes or nose by pulling back under your chin or beside your cheek - this, of course, depends on your personal technique. A typical error here is to not pull back far enough because of the proportional difficulty in control. But if you don't, you will sacrifice a lot of acceleration space and accuracy. It's better to practice the more beneficial (yet harder) techniques rather than going the easy way!

Acceleration: Not as crucial as you might think. Do it naturally, but not too fast or with too much force. It should be done smoothly in one move and all the way to the follow-through - remember the raising of the elbow. If you do wrist-snap, your hand will start to go forward in this phase until full extension of the whole arm at the follow-through phase.

Release: As written above, with the correct technique, throwing comes naturally and is no big problem. However, it is the phase that varies the most. If you have troubles with the release point, then it is most likely that you don't raise your elbow, don't follow-through or do some other technical error. Your hand must be at the correct angle to the forearm. If this is not the case, the dart will travel further and point down at the release point, and this as you will soon see, is a bad property of a dart throw.

Follow-through: A very important thing. Remember the shotgun-rifle comparison? The best way to follow-through is to end up with your hand aiming at the chosen target. A typical error is to let your arm 'fall down' after release. Just keep your arm in the straight and slightly upward position for a . moment and you will quickly get the feeling for follow-through.