Do pool tables and darts affect my bar insurance?
Slightly, and it is the smallest factor on the underwriting list. Games extend dwell time and add a minor injury exposure of their own: a thrown dart, a cue in a crowded room, a heavy table. They are worth declaring and they very rarely decide an account on their own.
Tell us the situation.
One licensed human replies the same business day — not five agents, not an auto-responder. If the policy you have is already the right one, we will tell you.
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Send us what you have. We’ll tell you if it’s right.
Your current policy paperwork, a renewal notice, or nothing at all. A licensed agent reads it and replies the same business day.
What this means for you
- Dwell time again. Somebody playing pool is standing in your bar with a drink for two hours. The mechanism is the same one behind every other factor on this list.
- Darts are the one with a real injury record. A dartboard sited where people walk past the throwing line is a genuine premises hazard and an easy fix. Site it in an alcove or against a wall with a marked oche and the objection largely disappears.
- Pool cues appear in assault claims. Not often, and often enough that underwriters have noticed. It is one more reason the assault and battery sublimit is worth reading on a venue with a games room.
- League nights are events. A regular league brings a visiting crowd on a schedule, which is closer to the live entertainment question than to the games question. If you run leagues, describe them as what they are.
- Gambling is a completely different conversation. Machines, cash prizes or anything wagered move you into questions this page does not cover, and into state rules that vary sharply. Raise it early rather than at renewal.
Go deeper on any of these
Related questions
- Is a pool table worth declaring at all?
Yes. It takes one line, it is a small rating factor, and an undeclared fact is a credibility problem out of all proportion to its size. The general rule in this class is that small things declared stay small.
- What about arcade machines, shuffleboard or axe throwing?
The first two behave like pool. Axe throwing does not. It is its own class with its own underwriting, and a venue combining axe throwing with alcohol service is a specific and much harder placement that needs to be presented as such from the start rather than added to a bar application.
- So can you actually place a venue like mine?
Usually, yes, and the ones we cannot place quickly are almost always the ones where the submission arrived as a declarations page and a renewal date. This class is placed on operating detail: the floor plan, the hours you actually keep as opposed to the ones your license permits, the revenue split, the training records, the written policies, and an explanation attached to every claim. Venues that look identical on an application place very differently once that detail is in front of an underwriter who writes the class.
- The full underwriting list, in order
Need this handled?
Reading about it and having it handled are different jobs, and the second one is ours. We place the accounts other brokers decline — claims history, a cancellation, an unusual operation, a business nobody wants to underwrite twice — and we will tell you when the policy you already have is the right one. Tell us the situation and a licensed human replies the same business day.
Written by the licensed brokers at Boring Insurance. Last updated 2026-08-22. See all guides.