Tournament format

Dixie Darts.
Nobody goes home early.

Dixie Darts is a round-based, bracket-free doubles format for steel-tip dart tournaments. Most tournament software assumes a bracket — Dixie doesn't have one. Every round the whole field is redrawn into fresh two-person teams and paired off across your boards, points follow the player rather than the team, and nothing eliminates anybody. It's the format for a league night rather than a title night.

Ask us about it See the other five formats

How it plays

New teams every round, points that follow the player

Win the match and the player who hit the double scores 2, their partner scores 1, and both losers score 0. So a good partner is worth having — and being carried still puts points on your card.

The room reshuffles

Every round, all players are drawn into brand-new two-person teams, and those teams are paired into four-player matches — two teams to a board. You never play the same lineup twice.

2 · 1 · 0

The winning team's double-hitter takes 2 points and their partner takes 1. Losers take 0. There are no legs to configure — a Dixie match is a single game with fixed scoring.

Nobody is knocked out

The standings are just the running point totals. The player who'd have gone home first in a knockout is still throwing at the end of the night.

The RabbidBracket operator screen during round 4 of a Dixie event: five four-player board cards, one reading Board 1 (reserved) for a pinned player, and a live points standings table beside them. — The operator screen mid-round. Board cards are ordered by board number, so a facilitator walking the room reads them in the order the boards are physically in — and the TV agrees.

Awkward player counts

Ghost fillers pad the field

Dixie needs a field that divides by four. When yours doesn't, the app pads it with up to three ghost fillers — placeholder entries with a fixed per-turn score you set alongside the roster.

A ghost can partner: A ghost can be somebody's partner and can earn the 1-point partner point. What a ghost never does is hit the winning double, so it never takes the 2.
Spread out, not stacked: The draw keeps ghosts on separate teams and — where the field allows — in separate matches, so one board never turns into a game against nobody.
They shoot first: The pair holding a ghost is always listed on top of the board card, so that pair throws first and the all-human pair has the ghost's score to chase. All-human matches are still flipped at random.
No money, no places: Ghosts appear in the live standings but are excluded from prize money and from tie-breaks. Final placements rank real players only.

Pacing

You call it, one round at a time

There is no fixed number of rounds to commit to up front. The app draws a round, you score the matches on the boards, and then you decide what happens next: play another round, take a break, or finish. You play until the room is done.

Breaks the room can see: Call a break of any length between rounds and it goes up on the TV with a countdown. While it runs, play another round and finish tournament are both disabled — nothing starts until everyone is back.
Cancel it in one click: If the room comes back early, Take a break has become Cancel break — one click ends it. Both screens count down on their own and re-open the choices at zero, with no refresh.

The operator screen during a break: a banner reads Break in progress, 4 minutes 54 seconds left of 5 minutes, and the Play another round and Finish tournament buttons are disabled while Cancel break stays active. — The operator's view. Play another round and Finish tournament are both disabled; Cancel break is the only live choice.

The venue TV during a break, showing a full-width green bar reading BREAK with a 4 minute 51 second countdown above the round's finished board cards and the points standings. — The same break on the venue TV, counting itself down.

Accessibility

Pin a player to a board

Dixie moves everyone around the room every round — which is exactly wrong for a player who can't. Pin them to a board and that's where they play, every round, all night. Pin the accessible board, pin a player on crutches, pin a ghost filler.

Set it, or change it: Set pins in the wizard's Boards step, or change them any time mid-event from 📌 Pinned boards in the operator sub-header. Mid-event changes apply from the next round's draw — a match already sitting on a board is never yanked.
The board is held, not stolen: If a pinned player's board is still busy, their match waits and the card reads "Board N (reserved)". An idle board there is intentional, not a bug — the screen says so, so nobody goes looking for a fault.
Visible on both screens: A pinned player carries a 📌 beside their name on the operator screen and on the TV, so the room can see it too.
The trade-off, stated plainly: A pinned player's match has to be the match on their board, and one match can't be on two boards at once. So two pinned players are never drawn onto the same team, or even into the same match. One pin per board, and at most one pin per match in a round — a 12-player field is 3 matches, so at most 3 pins.

The setup wizard's Boards step with four boards selected and a pin-a-player-to-a-board section below, where board 2 is set to H. Tremblay and board 4 to Ghost 1. — Pins in the setup wizard. The same editor is a click away mid-event.

To be precise about what this is: it's board-assignment accessibility, not a conformance claim about the interface. It solves one real problem — a player who shouldn't have to walk the room — and it solves it properly.

On the big screen

A TV view built for Dixie

Dixie gets its own read-only display mode — the current round's matches and the running points standings, sized to read from across a room and updating live as results land.

The Dixie big-screen view on a venue TV: round 4 board cards on the left with pin and ghost markers, and an auto-scrolling points standings table on the right. — The Dixie TV view. Ghosts sit in the standings with a dash for their place — they take no paying spot.

On paper

A score sheet that adds itself up

Download the Dixie score sheet at any point during the event, as a spreadsheet or a branded PDF — a grid of every player against every round, ready to post beside the boards or fill in by hand as a paper backup.

Live totals

The Total column is a real spreadsheet formula, not a number frozen at export time. A sheet you downloaded at launch adds itself up as you write results into it. A blank row stays blank rather than showing a zero.

A Place column

Ranks the real players off those totals the same way. Ghosts show a dash, since they take no paying place. The printable PDF carries the column too.

A branded Dixie Darts score sheet: a grid of twenty players against twelve round columns with four rounds filled in, a Total column and a Place column at the right, ghost fillers showing a dash for place, and the round's board assignments beneath. — The branded PDF score sheet, exported mid-event. Every sheet carries your colour scheme and logo.

Paying it out

Ties are played off, never split

Tied for money: If real players are tied for a paying position when you finish, the app schedules quick one-leg playoff matches to break the tie on the boards — the same rule the rest of the app follows. Prize money is never split to resolve a tie.
Ghosts take none: Ghost fillers are excluded from the prize table and from tie-breaks entirely, so an odd field never costs a real player a place.
Any payout mode: Dixie uses the same payout engine as every other format — pay places by number of entries, dollar amount, or percentage of the prize pool.

Setting one up

Six steps, not seven

Dixie is picked as an entry type in step 2, which selects the format for you — there's no bracket to choose. Players are entered individually, like a blind draw, and the ghost fillers' per-turn score is set alongside the roster.

No match config: The wizard skips the match-config step entirely: a Dixie match is a single game with fixed 2/1/0 scoring, so there are no legs to set. The step counter, the progress dots and Back/Next all read six steps.
Then the usual: Branding and colour scheme, format, players, boards and pins, entry fee and payouts, then a full review before you launch.

Step 2 of the setup wizard with Dixie Darts chosen as the entry type: the step counter reads STEP 2 of 6, the format cards are replaced by a panel explaining that Dixie Darts has no bracket so there is no format to choose, and the winning team scores 2 points for the double-hitter and 1 for their partner. — Step 2 with Dixie Darts picked — the format list is gone, and the counter has already dropped to six.

Dixie Darts.Nobody goes home early.