New Winmau Blade 6 Triple-Core dartboards in use for one year by PDC: progress in all facets

It has now been a year since Winmau became the new board supplier at the PDC. In all facets, this move has proved to be a progression.

The switch was already applauded by many darters and fans at the time. The Blade 6 Triple-Core, the latest designed dartboard from manufacturer Winmau is seen by many as the best dartboard on the market.

The latter was also agreed at the time, for example, by Michael Smith, currently the top player for rival manufacturer Unicorn. A survey of PDC darters a year later also yielded purely positive reactions.

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Michael van Gerwen, himself also sponsored by Winmau, explains the biggest difference compared to the Unicorn dartboards used by the PDC in the past.

''Winmau's dartboards are all exactly the same. There are no bad dartboards between them,'' Van Gerwen states. The latter links seamlessly to a common criticism of the Unicorn dartboards. Back then, players said they always had to wait and see whether they were dealing with a board made of hard material, or soft. This made it virtually impossible for players to adjust the set-up of their darts to the type of dartboard.

This is now possible, as an example from Dirk van Duijvenbode shows. The Dutchman noticed at the start of the 2022 season that his darts were in the board in a different way with the Winmau dartboards. He made an adjustment to his set-up and since then his darts have been in the dartboard the right way every time.

Darts are also more likely to stay in the dartboard compared to its predecessor, although the differences are negligible, according to statistician Christopher Kempf, also known as Ochepedia. On average, out of 1,000 darts, 2.69 darts experienced what is known as a 'bounce out'. On the last dartboard Unicorn used, this figure was 3.17.

Visually, the Winmau Blade 6 Triple-Core has also proved to be a significant improvement. The dartboards look 'less used' after a match. The recreational darter also enjoys this dartboard for longer, meaning fans of the sport are less likely to have to buy a new board more often.