The 7 Best Darts Books, Chosen by a Darts Coach
If you search for the best darts books you will quickly notice two things. There are not many of them, and most of the lists recommending them have been written by someone who has never stood on an oche at nine o'clock on a Tuesday with their team one leg behind.
I coach darts for a living, online and face to face from my studio in Worcester, and these are the seven books I actually recommend to players. Three are about darts. Three are about performing under pressure and practising properly, which is most of darts. One is mine, and I will be upfront about that in a moment.
Every entry tells you what the book is for, who should read it and what it will not do, because a recommendation without that is just a list of covers.
The best darts books at a glance
One declaration before we start. Number one is my own book. It sits at the top because it is the only title on this list written specifically about the mental side of darts by a working darts coach, and because it is the book I went looking for when I started coaching and could not find anywhere. The other six owe are to be fair great books and I recommend them constantly, so judge the order as you see fit.
1. Little Mental Frameworks for Better Darts
Matt Tizzard
Every player knows the feeling. A throw that behaves perfectly in the shed on a Tuesday night, then deserts you the moment a leg actually matters. Nothing has changed in the stance, the grip or the arm. What has changed is what is happening in the eleven seconds before the dart leaves your hand.
That is the part almost nobody coaches, and it is what this book is about.
It takes nineteen of the most useful ideas in sports psychology and gives each one a single page, with a diagram, a plain explanation of why it works, what it looks like at the oche, and something to try in your very next session. Think Box and Play Box. Quiet Eye. External Focus. Reinvestment. The Red Spot. PETTLEP Imagery. If Then Plans. Pressure Training. The Check Engine Light.
What makes it more than a book to read is what sits after every framework. Each one is followed by its own journal page, so you test it on your own board, log what happened, rate it out of ten and decide whether to keep it or park it. It finishes with the DartsMatt Scorecard, where you score all nineteen and walk away with the two or three that are genuinely yours.
That short list is worth more than all the rest put together, because a framework you have not tested on your own board is just an idea.
Who it is for: players who practise well and cannot find it in a match, league and county throwers chasing consistency, JDC and ADC juniors and the people around them, and coaches who want a shared language for the mental game.
Format: 45 pages, illustrated throughout, 19 frameworks, 19 journal pages, 22 academic references, instant PDF download.
What it will not do: fix your technique. It assumes your throw is roughly where you want it and goes to work on everything above the shoulders.
2. How to Master the Sport of Darts
George Silberzahn
The most thorough technical darts book in print. Silberzahn was an American steel tip player of real standing and he writes like a man who has thought about the mechanics of throwing for forty years, because he has.
Its value is in the detail, exactly where most instructional books wave their hands. Grip, stance, the line the dart travels, how to build a stroke that repeats, and above all how to practise with purpose instead of throwing for an hour and calling it practice. His drills and his approach to diagnosing your own faults hold up completely.
It is not a beautiful read. The prose is plain, occasionally repetitive, and the soft tip and steel tip crossover means some sections will not apply to a UK player. Push through that and you have the closest thing darts has to a textbook.
Who it is for: the player who wants to understand the machinery of their own throw and build a practice routine with real structure.
What it will not do: hold your attention like a story. Treat it as a reference you return to, not a weekend read.
3. The Power: My Autobiography
Phil Taylor, with Sid Waddell
Sixteen world titles. Whatever your view of him, there is no serious argument about what he achieved, and this is how it happened, from a sheet metal factory in Stoke to the top of the sport.
Read it for the work ethic, which is the real lesson buried inside it. The sheer volume of practice Taylor describes is sobering, and so is the single mindedness behind it. The passages on Eric Bristow, the rivalry years with Dennis Priestley and Raymond van Barneveld, and the weight of being expected to win every single week tell you more about elite sport than any technique chapter could.
Who it is for: anyone who wants to understand what separates very good from historically great, and anyone whose practice has quietly gone comfortable.
What it will not do: teach you anything about throwing. There are no drills here. There is a mindset, and it is worth the price on its own.
4. Bellies and Bullseyes: The Outrageous True Story of Darts
Sid Waddell
Not an instructional book in any sense, and by a distance the most fun on this list.
Waddell was the voice of darts for a generation and he was in the room while the modern sport was being built, which makes him the only person who could have written this. It runs from the smoke filled pub and club circuit of the 1970s, through the Bristow and Lowe years and the television boom, into the split that created the PDC.
The reason it earns a place among the best darts books is context. Knowing where the sport came from changes how you watch it, and you will finish it with real appreciation for what Bristow, Jocky Wilson and Leighton Rees achieved with almost none of the support a modern player takes for granted. It is also very, very funny.
Who it is for: every darts fan. Read it for pleasure and absorb the history by accident.
What it will not do: improve your average. Not everything has to.
5. The Inner Game of Tennis
W. Timothy Gallwey
Written in the 1970s, about tennis, and still the best book on performing under pressure that any sport has produced.
Gallwey's central idea is that there are two selves standing at the oche. One wants to instruct, criticise and correct. The other actually performs. Most players spend their matches letting the first one shout at the second, and the result is that tight, careful, deliberate throw you will recognise from every leg that ever mattered.
Almost everything modern sports psychology says about external focus and quiet mind performance is already sitting in this book, decades ahead of the research that confirmed it. Swap racket for dart and court for board and it reads as though it were written for you. It is short, calm, and two evenings will see you through it.
Who it is for: anybody who throws differently in a match than in practice, which is to say almost everybody.
What it will not do: give you a drill. It gives you a way of paying attention, which turns out to matter more.
6. The Chimp Paradox
Prof Steve Peters
Peters is the psychiatrist behind British Cycling's dominant era and Ronnie O'Sullivan's late career revival, and this is his model of the mind made simple enough to use at the board.
The idea is a brain in three parts. The chimp is emotional, fast and reactive. The human is rational but slow. The computer stores the beliefs and automatic behaviours you have built over the years. Under pressure the chimp takes the wheel, and a chimp holding three darts is not a pretty sight.
Players get on with this one because it gives them language for something they already feel. Once you can name what is happening when you miss three at a double and the panic arrives, you can start doing something about it rather than simply hating yourself for it. The snooker connection helps too, since psychologically it is the closest sport to ours.
Who it is for: the player whose head goes when a leg gets tight, and anyone who talks to themselves at the oche in a way they would never talk to a teammate.
What it will not do: stay short. There is more book here than you strictly need, so take the model and move on.
7. Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise
Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool
Ericsson is the researcher whose work got mangled into the ten thousand hours rule, and this is him setting the record straight.
The real finding is far more useful than the myth. Hours alone do nothing. Skill is built by deliberate practice, which means working at the edge of your ability, on one specific thing, with immediate feedback, and with your full attention on it. Comfortable repetition of what you can already do, which is what most darts practice actually is, builds almost nothing.
Read this and you will never again count an hour at treble 20 with one eye on the television as practice. It also explains why the player in your league who practises less than you somehow improves faster.
Who it is for: anyone who practises plenty and improves slowly.
What it will not do: mention darts. You will be translating as you read, and that is part of why it sticks.
Which of the best darts books should you start with?
Pick by the problem you actually have, not by the cover.
Your practice is fine but matches are not. Start with mine, or The Inner Game of Tennis.
You are not sure your throw is sound. Start with Silberzahn.
You practise plenty and improve slowly. Start with Peak.
Your head goes in tight legs. Start with The Chimp Paradox.
You want your motivation topped up. Start with Phil Taylor.
You just want to enjoy the sport more. Start with Sid Waddell.
How to actually use a reading list
A word of warning, because I watch this go wrong.
Reading about darts is not practising darts. A book gives you a very pleasant sense of progress while your average sits exactly where it was, and a player who has read all seven of these and tested nothing will be beaten comfortably by a player who read one and applied two ideas from it.
So pick one book. Take two or three ideas out of it. Test them at your own board for a month and write down what happened. Then move on.
That is the whole method, and it is precisely why the book at number one is built around journal pages rather than chapters.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best darts book for beginners?Silberzahn, for the technical grounding, because a beginner's fastest gains are mechanical. Add a mental game book once your throw repeats reasonably well.
What is the best darts book for the mental game?Very few are written specifically for darts, which is why mine exists. Beyond that, The Inner Game of Tennis and The Chimp Paradox are the two I recommend most often, despite neither mentioning a dartboard.
Do darts books actually improve your game?Only the ones you act on. A book that changes two things about how you practise is worth more than five you merely finished.
Are there any good darts autobiographies?Phil Taylor's is the one to read for the mindset. Sid Waddell's Bellies and Bullseyes is not strictly an autobiography but it is the best written book about the sport itself.
What should I read if I only read one?If your match performance does not match your practice, mine or The Inner Game of Tennis. If you want to rebuild how you practise, Peak.
The honest conclusion
The best darts book is the one that changes something about Thursday night. Everything else is entertainment, and there is nothing wrong with entertainment as long as you know which one you are buying.
Read one properly. Test two ideas. Write down what happened.
Ready to stop reading and start improving?
A book hands you the ideas. A coach tells you which of them apply to you, and that is a far shorter conversation.
That is what I do at DartsMatt. I coach players online and face to face from my studio in Worcester, and you can read what players make of it in the reviews on the DartsMatt Facebook page, written by people who have sat in exactly the session you would be booking. What makes the difference is that I work on both halves of the game together.
SightRight certified technique work to build a throw that repeats, and the mental frameworks from the book at number one to make sure it still turns up when the pressure arrives. Most coaching gives you one or the other. It is the combination that moves players, and it works just as well for a first season league thrower as it does for a county player chasing the last few points on their average.
Every session comes with a four week practice plan built around your real week rather than an ideal one, so you leave knowing exactly what to do next.
Book a lesson with DartsMatt and let us find the two or three things actually costing you points.
Matt Tizzard MSc, SightRight Certified Coach, Professional Certificate in Sports Psychology, and founder of DartsMatt.com
