Something sad to see.....

FrankenDarter's Darts Blog: "I have decided to retire from darts. It just aint what it used to be.
Back in the mid to late 90's you could go out any nite of the week and
find a tourney or at least a good game.
Now you can drive 2 hours to a blind draw that guarantees $300 payback and nobody shows up!
I'm through after 15 years of darting.
Good-bye"

Yorkshire Darts

Here is something I've noticed floating around the web that might be of interest! I wonder if we shall ever see a finished project, as few dart films or videos ever surface here in the states.
Yorkshire Darts: "Dear Jim, I work for a TV Company called World of Wonder and we are making a film for the BBC about a celebration of darts - specifically the 9-dart finish. I am trying to find as many players as possible who claim to have achieved this in a game or just in practice, and was hoping that you could circulate an advert amongst the players in your county. The ad would read something like this: Have you ever achieved the elusive 9 dart finish? If so, we would love to hear from you! World of Wonder are making a film for the BBC celebrating the phenomenon and are keen to speak to as many 9-darters as possible. Call Laura at World of Wonder on 020 7428 3453 I'd really appreciate your help and any advice you may be able to offer. I look forward to hearing from you. Kind Regards, Laura Price Development Researcher World of Wonder Highgate Studios 53-79 Highgate Road London NW5 1TL T. 020 7428 3453 F. 020 7428 3440"

Come join us for our next tournament.....

The VCDA & Jester Room Memorial Day Shoot is complete, and I must say that a fun day was had by all! The event was Blind Draw Double Elimination Tourney with 20% of the entry fees going to the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society http://www.nmcrs.org/ . The competition was spirited, fun, and $116 was raise for our Armed Forces Personnel.

The tournament featured “Door Prizes,” prizes for “Mystery Outs” and “Highlight Darts”

“Mystery Outs” were won by:
Jack Issa
Wayne Breault

“Highlight Darts”
'01:
Aaron Arnold
Ton 40

Cricket:
Johnny O'Toole
9 Mark t20, t20, t19
3 Bull Out

The Tournament was won by Johnny O'Toole & Tammy Arnold, with second going to Will & Squid (Joe F.), and taking third was Wayne Breault & Clem.

I would also like to say thanks to all who help with setup, snacks, organizing, and running the tournament. Of course a thanks to all of the players who participated and truly made the tournament fun, enjoyable, and exciting. Last but not least we would like to thank Edo of the Jester Room for providing the facility, and a special thanks our favorite bartender Dana!

The possibility of a July 4th tournament is being discussed!

Most of all I would like to encourage all who read this to take some time to remember those that this day is meant to honor!

News: Darts legend launches game

Darts on your Cell Phone!!!
From Pipex: Phil 'The Power' Taylor has become the latest sportsman to lend his name to a mobile phone sports game.

The 12 times World Darts Champion is launching a darts game, which will be available across all mobile networks from the end of May.

The game features five licensed real world tournaments from the darts calendar including the Las Vegas Classic Darts tournament and the BDO Darts World Championship, as well as a selection of pub games which include the favourite 501 and 301 matches plus Cricket, Killer, Golf, High, Low and Around the Clock.

In addition to the Java game, a video of Taylor's nine dart 501 finishes will be available for fans to download.

Other stars who have launched their own mobile games include tennis babe Maria Sharapova and golf legend Tiger Woods.

Darts on TV - repeat..

Fox will air the "World Series of Darts" again this June:
• World Series of Darts - 'World Championships'
FSW, Wed Jun 01 02:00am PDT
• World Series of Darts - 'World Championships'
FSW, Thu Jun 02 11:00am PDT
• World Series of Darts - 'World Championships'
FSW, Fri Jun 03 04:00pm PDT
• World Series of Darts - 'World Championships'
FOXW2, Sat Jun 04 01:00pm PDT
• World Series of Darts - 'World Championships'
FSW, Sat Jun 04 04:00pm PDT
• World Series of Darts - 'World Championships'
FSW, Sun Jun 05 04:00pm PDT"

Deadly (Phil) Taylor has title in sights

Darts: Deadly Taylor has title in sights

The 888.Com Premier League tournament, in association with the M. E. N, reaches its climax next Monday when four of the world's top players clash for a £50,000 first prize.

Taylor tackles Roland Scholten for a place in the final while Colin Lloyd from Essex, who has taken Taylor's mantle as world No 1, is up against Canadian John Part.

Manchester is the last stop on the road for the inaugural Premier League that has played to packed houses since kicking off in Taylor's home town of Stoke.

Dart Resources

The Open Directory Projecthas a tremendous amount of links for dart organizations all over the world. The Open Directory Project relies on volunteer editors to make and review submissions to the database. You can submit a site to the project without being an editor, but it will be reviewed by an editor before it is added. To become an editor you must complete an application, but not all categories are accepting new editors as they have enough.

Planetdarts : The Official Site of the Professional Darts Corporation Ltd.

John Lowe: 30 years in darts

John Lowe will be holding an evening to celebrate his 30 years as a professional on Friday 22 July.

'Old Stoneface' has been touring the country this year to commemorate his lifetime in darts, and will host a special party night at the Family Club in Chesterfield this summer.

That would be something to see.... just not enough TV coverage of events like this here in the states.....

Here we go again......

DARTS NEWS: "ROCK STAR WANTS TO BE TOP DARTS PLAYER




Rock star Justin Hawkins of bestselling band The Darkness is not content with just pursuing a TV game show abbout Darts, he now wants to become a top player according to news reports.

With a nickname of 'The Hawk', Hawkins has signed an endorsement deal with B&W Darts, who will manufacture a range of darts and flights designed by the rocker."

Flashback: Which dart is right for you?

When I first attempted to play the game of darts well meaning friends insisted that I go to the dart shop and buy a set of darts of my own so I could get used to throwing the same darts the same way all of the time. That sounded good and reasonable to me at the time so off I went. After spending a couple of hours throwing one set of darts then the next set of darts from an maddening selection; I walked out with $50 less in my pocket, and a slim set of 19 gram darts, forgive me for not recalling the brand, and went straight to the bar to try them out. For about a month I struggled to make those darts go where I wanted until a fellow I shot darts with a few times commented that I did not appear comfortable with my darts, and offered me the use of his darts for a the night. I felt a slight bit more comfortable and thought I was shooting better.

When I saw him a week later he pulled me aside, handed me a set of 30 gram darts with a knurled finish and said “use these for a while” referring to them as his training darts. I improved rapidly and after about three weeks I knew that I did not want to continue throwing with exactly that weight, but I did like the finish of the barrel. I also knew that I did not like the set I had purchased as they were far too light; so I started my search differently this time. I talked to the dart players that shot darts at the bar about their darts, ask to throw a few games with their darts and after two weeks I had a better idea of what I really liked in a dart. I sold the the first set of darts I had purchased and was able to use my next shopping trip a bit more focused on a range of dart weight, finish /grip, and balance. Again I spent a couple of hours throwing darts in the shop and selected 26 gram Bottleson Hammerheads with a knurled finish which I used for the next 5 years.

Darts in England - A history lesson

The survival of darts as a pub game can be pretty accurately dated. Throughout the Victorian period legislation prohibited "games of chance" (i.e. gambling) in pubs. In 1908 a pub owner named Anakin in Leeds, Yorkshire, was taken to court for permitting darts to be played in his establishment. He offered to prove that darts was a game of skill.

A board was set up in the courtroom, and there Anakin threw 3 darts in the 20. He challenged any of the magistrates to duplicate his feat. When they could not (darts is, after all, not as easy as it looks!), the court was forced to accept that darts was indeed a game of skill, not chance, and the laws were eventually changed.
Darts in England: "Most dart boards today are made from highly compressed bunches of sisal - the same material used to make heavy ropes."

Memorial Day shoot supports Militay Charities

Flier for the Memorial Day shoot a PDF file You are invited no matter what your skill level!

Twenty questions .....

20Q.net If you've every heard of or played 20 questions you'll have fun wiht this site!

It was able to guess "Darts" in 23 questions.

Flier for: 2005 Las Vegas Desert Classic IV

Vegas Classic Flier is in the Bulls Eye News: "The 2005 Las Vegas Desert Classic IV is set for June 27 through July 3 at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino.
Phone: 614.864.3039 / 800.688.3278.
Enter online by clicking the link on the flier webpage.

Oche?

Gross or not I think I believe the legend that defines it by the distance a man could spit. Why else would the glossary define wet feet the way it dose?Glossary-Wet Feet

...the start of something big!

An interesting idea came up in the Phil Taylor forums about having something like a Ryder Cup competition. The idea is in brain storming mode and there have been discussions about making it a grassroots project. Come join the discussion.... this could be the start of something big!

Phil Taylor Forum

Ton 71

Steve of RPB:Victoria Pub scored a 7T1 in Doubles 501 during our match this week.

ADO regional update......

Being a member of this league means they can participate @ $110 per player if they want that opportunity...the qualifier is held to subsidize the winner, but any ADO related player can play in the regional...
The next step forward, National Playoffs, is open only to the top finishers of the regionals.

American Darts Organizations

Just came by email:

FROM: Robert Preston
DATE: May 2, 2005
RE: Regional Playoffs
The Regional playoff for the ADO East-West All Star Challenge will be held on May 22nd, 2005 at The Scarlet Lady Saloon in Culver City,
California at 12:00 P.M.. The winner(s) will advance to the East-West All Star Challenge in Stamford, Connecticut in August.
The Scarlet Lady Saloon is located at:
5411 Sepulveda Blvd.
Culver City, CA 90230
Phone# 310-398-7932
This event is being hosted by the Southern California Darts Association.
Call 858-566-8308 for more information. You can call me at 619-572-5315 on the day of the event.
Please arrive early. This event will begin on time. Entry fee is $110.00 per entrant, in advance – No exceptions.
Sincerely,
Robert Preston


American Darts Organizations

It's not on the ADO site yet, but hopefully it will show up soon.

I don't think our league is holding a qualifier.

The other day the issue of chalking came up...

Not so much about the rules, but the layout of the board when an '01 game is scored...

Chalking:

If you are new to chalking, let the players know and do not be offended by corrections to your math. Even seasoned veterans make mistakes!

Stand within arms reach and angle your body so you can see the darts land and the players can see their score from the line.

Take your job seriously! Wait until the third dart is thrown and never lean in to examine a first or second dart, unless, asked by the current thrower.

Always put the number scored on the outside and the score remaining on the inside.

After you have subtracted the total score thrown, cross off their last score and their last remainder score, leaving only the current remainder not crossed off.

When you run out of room at the bottom of the score board, between turns, erase the numbers from the top, leaving a few scores at the bottom. (this is in case there needs to be a math correction)

Start at the top again, and after both opponents throw their darts and a new remaining score is at top, then you may erase the lower part of the board.

Make sure your hand writing will be large enough and neat enough so the players of the match can read it well and see the difference between a 1 and a 7.

The chalker is neutral, which means no matter what team or affiliation the chalker has, he/she may only call out the total score or the remaining score (if asked). Never may a chalker tell a player that he/she has a double 16 left, only that 32 is their remaining score.

If, per chance, there was a scoring error, that score must be changed before that same player throws again or it stays as is.

Needlees to say I like having the score outside and remaining number inside.

Source: sfda.net

"Stinger" Contributes this option for: Oche

The line behind which darts players stand when throwing.

The classic pub game, darts is the ultimate non-sportsman’s sport—you don’t need any special clothing and little equipment (a set of darts is a good idea, but pubs lend those out), and you don’t need to be fit (the aptitude of players often appears to be in direct proportion to the size of their beer guts). All you have to remember is to count back from 501, end on a double, and avoid putting your toes over the oche.

Oche is the classic bit of darts jargon, even more obscure and basic than double top for a double twenty, bag o’ nuts for a score of 45 (don’t ask where it comes from because I don’t know), Shanghai for a score made up of a single, double and triple of the same number (ditto), mugs away as an invitation to the losing player to start the next round, or mad house for a double one (because getting it can drive you crazy).

Oche is pronounced like hockey without the initial h. Attempts are sometimes made to derive it from an obsolete word meaning to chop off, from Old French ochen to cut a deep notch in something, though the link with darts is obscure. Eric Partridge preferred an origin in hoggins line, for no good reason that one may discern. However, the earliest written examples—from the 1930s—are all spelled hockey and the oche form didn’t become standard until the late 1970s.

But why hockey? One story holds that it’s from the name of a West Country brewery, S Hockey and Sons, whose crates were just the right size with which to mark out the throwing distance. That’s so unlikely as to be merely funny.

After this piece first appeared, Peter Brooke e-mailed to suggest that the word might well come from the Victorian hockey-dockies for shoes. This is an elaboration of hock-dock, using hock as a slang term for the foot. A hock-dock might be a place where one docks one’s hocks, that is, places one’s feet, but is probably a nonsense reduplication.

From the site: Weird Words

Beer makes you clever: official | The Register

While this is not exactly about darts it does focus on alcohol consumption (which may or not be involved in darts).

That's to say, a Swedish team has shown that mice fed with moderate amounts of alcohol grew new nerve cells in the brain. The full implications of the Karolinska Institute research - which appears in the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology - are unclear, but lead boffin Stefan Brene told the BBC: "We believe that the increased production of new nerve cells during moderate alcohol consumption can be important for the development of alcohol addiction and other long-term effects of alcohol on the brain."

He did, however, add that it's possible that "the extra cells might help with learning and memory" - although we reckon the word "moderate" is key here since no-one who has ever drunk 16 pints of ale has been able to recall a single detail of the session come the following morning.

Beer makes you clever: official | The Register