Four well looked after dart boards on the ground floor and another in the more dingy downstairs make Rileys one of the very best places in central London to throw some darts.
Having launched London’s first darts lanes here in 2010, the early 2020s saw Rileys toying with interactive darts – but on my 2025 visit it was back to sisal and white boards, and not a super-light ‘house’ dart in site. Good news for the traditionalist.
The boards upstairs are particularly roomy, so suit a serious game. The venue is, unusually, strictly over 18s.
I been a few times throughout the last year and as of Oct 2016, they still have 6 or 7 boards with winmau scoring machines all ready and free to go. Downstairs in the pool and snooker are they now also have 2 awesome darts live soft tip machines.
I went here yesterday (15/06/2018) and paid £9.95 to hire a lane to play darts. Once paid you can have the lane all day. You also have to be a member or go in with someone who is a member. They had the world cup on all the TV’s and it was £1.75 for a glass of cola.
It’s been recently refurbished so this review needs an update. The lanes are gone, and they have 2 steel tip boards and 2 electronic boards now. At the time of writing the steel tip boards are new Blade 6’s and they are in good condition, probably because the UK open qualifiers were held here last month.
However the big problem is the throw lines. Instead of having a proper regulation throw line of 7ft 9 1/4 inches or even a distance marking for it, like every other pub in the world with a dart board, Riley’s has 3 lines – “Rookie”, “Pro” and “Show Off”. I asked behind the bar which is the proper 7ft 9 1/4 inch line and neither of the young bar staff knew. Their response was “They don’t tell us that, sorry”. I had to ask a mate to bring a tape measure!