The Random Darts Discussion Thread
This thread made because of the hijack created in the English Premier League thread.
Darts is one of the most popular pub sports in the world, and collects a decent TV audience in the United Kingdom, Europe and around the world. Like snooker, there is some decent money at the top of the game, and the best player in the world, Phil Taylor, made over 1MM pounds this year IIRC, with his prizemoney for winning the last World Championship being a quarter of a million pounds.
Anyway, this weekend is the last day of the newly formed World Cup of Darts, contested in two man teams. Like the world cup of football, it involved a number of countries (24 in this case) a group stage, semi's and a final, and some epic English fail.
In the qualifying rounds the top 8 teams (England, Netherlands, Australia, Scotland, Wales, N.Ireland, USA and Canada) played a weaker team that had won an initial qualifying round in a short, somewhat high variance best of 11 legs match. Spain went on to beat England 6-5 and knock them out before the group stage.
Today is semi-final and final day. In the first semi-final, Netherlands beat Spain 4-0. The second semi is on now, Wales for Australia. The format for the semis and final is 4 singles matches and a doubles match, just like the Davis Cup tennis, but the doubles is played last and worth double. If it ends 3-3 a sudden death leg is played, almost equivilent to a poker flipament. Its good theatre and a decent sport if you have someone to get behind.
Currently Simon Whitlock (AUS) is playing Mark Webster (WAL) the match is locked at 3-3 first to 6 and the tie itself is locked at 1-1 Webster and Whitlock winning their first doubles.
Oh, and LOL darts...
There's a regular bus from outside the venue that goes to Finsbury Park which is on one of the tube lines that runs overnight
'Five Tube lines run a 24-hour service on Fridays and Saturdays'.
I'm going on a Sunday :0
oh
**** off. I've been ordering integrated flights from Taiwan because they're way cheaper than anywhere else. Condor Axe are $10 over there instead of $20+ and you can get the shipping down to almost nothing. Target K-Flex are also cheaper and my second favorite. The Asian dart shops also have all of the weird stuff that's tougher to source here.
Snake is BACK, baby.
Cor Dekker nine darter lol
Who is Cor Dekker
That's the joke
It's alright, mvg has hit one as well
WGP draw sucks. Somebody with some sense needs to step in and fix this system.
Asp back to his gen 1. It's such a good dart they should just release it as an evergreen model.
In terms of Spectator Ratings, it's tough to get excited about the remaining draw when 6 of the top 10 FRH have been eliminated. Allowing the Littlers and Buntings to bounce after a first round cup of coffee with a Top 4 is just disastrous from a watchability standpoint. And as much I'd like to see Schindy break through, his path does not lift any spirits.
trouble is it's so close to the matchplay in terms of who qualifies for it that they need to shake up the draw in some way, otherwise there's just way too much of a risk of seeing far too many of the same last 16 games again. there's been a bit more movement than usual, but not that much. frankly i'm paying more attention to the world masters
I don't know how you can say this has less watchability. To me this has been one of the most fun and exciting tournaments to watch in recent memory and it's still only the second round. I guess it's just the format leads to wild swings and high variance which is what makes it fun to me.
I don't know how you can say this has less watchability. To me this has been one of the most fun and exciting tournaments to watch in recent memory and it's still only the second round. I guess it's just the format leads to wild swings and high variance which is what makes it fun to me.
That's because it was front loaded. There were two matches on the first day that could have been a final. I think Humphries was around -150 against Bunting and then beyond -400 against Pikachu and now Clayton. If Cross can't get through then he might not have another competitive match depending on how the other side shakes out. Given that this isn't the NFL where you can just do all kinds of dumb **** and still print money, it seems imperative that the draws / formats are kind of rigged not necessarily for fairness or process but for ratings.
LOL welp that side of the draw is wide open now.
CDC Continental Cup took place last night in Philly where crowd favorite Leonard Gates (haha) claimed the title. I would still take Gates over anyone from North America to win a high profile PDC match even though he's not the most consistent and can't count.
alex spellman is better
This would be a truly amazing story. Kim Huybrechts was third on the reserve list for Prague this weekend, having not qualified for a single Euro Tour all year, now he's one game away from making the finals having got a first round bye (which the people ahead of him in the reserve list didn't get) and having not played anyone stronger than Jermaine Wattimena. If he beats either Humphries or Littler then good luck to the lad but that this is even a possibility is ridiculous
I for one called the Edhouse/Woodhouse/Wattimena/Noppert semi final line up
That's wild. Definitely hoping for Madhouse here. Seems like a decent cat and Wattimena is ****ing hateable.
Just noticed the Grand Slam has cash bonuses for group wins and nines. Does that money rank?
@ sixfour, gonna be hard for Target to move those really expensive Keane Barry pixels if he keeps getting ridic draws and nobody sees them.
Yes, and true
