The dart board Bristle or electronic which is best

There are now two types of dart boards being used these days, the traditional bristle dart board (which has nothing to do with bristles by the way, it is made from compressed rope fibres) and the electronic dart board, the one with hundreds of holes in them. These boards also use 2 different types of darts, the standard steel tip darts as used on the bristle dart board and the soft tip darts as used on the electronic dart boards.

The steel tip variety have been around forever and have, as the name suggests , steel tips that stick into the old style bristle dart boards. The latest type of dart is the soft tipped dart, which has a plastic tip, which when thrown fit into a hole in the electronic dart board. They have become very popular as they are safer and the electronics in the board work out all the scores for you, which is a great boon for the darter, especially for the popular dart game Cricket.

So which is best, the traditional Bristle or the new electronic dart board? Well as far as the professional game is concerned, the Bristle dart board still reigns supreme and for most of the steel tip darters, this is the only true version of the game. However the electronic version of the game is growing in strength and there are exclusively electronic darts leagues in the USA and Europe. The attraction of the new type of game is the bells and whistles the electronics produce for you. The main attraction is that all the scoring is done for you, no arguments about whether the dart is in or not or whether the dart is in the treble or not. Also for tournaments and leagues the dart boards can all be networked together making the scoring process and league averages etc easy to compute. So for sheer convenience the electronic version of the game wins hands down, no need for chalking the score any more and they keep count of even the complicated games like cricket.

I think there is room for both codes of the sport, the new game has enormous advantages and looks all space age and really cool, and could even bring the game back into pubs and bars, although in my experience there are more bounce outs in the electronic version in spite of the myriad holes in the board, and there isn't the satisfying thud when the dart hits the board. Also as the technology advances, there are new electronic boards out now that combine the traditional bristle board with the advantages of the electronics, an electronic bristle type of dart board, which you can use steel darts on, now that could be a real winner.