Not a sport, but damn good fun (Darts - General)

Member Name: iamasadlittleboy

Product:	Darts - General
Date:	07/02/09 (120 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Entertaining

Disadvantages: Too many fatties >_<

Darts...
...Is, like many things, something I got into due to my gambling habbits, and let me start this with a conotraversial statement, it's not a sport. Thats not to say it's not fun to watch or play, but by no means is it a sport. It's in the same group as Pool and Snooker, for me as opposed to sports like Boxing, Football, Tennis etc. For several simple reasons:
1 it's a skill game-This was proven in court in something i'll mention later
2 the "luck" factor of sport- Look at lets say Boxing, a lucky punch could be an equaliser, or a dodgy goal in football, a dodgy call in tennis. Thats not apparent in Darts
3 too many fatties- Im a big fan of American football, and of course they have fatties too, but those fatties can't half move. Look at Peter Manley can you really imagine him walking up a flight of stairs with out passing out?

Thats Entertainment
Any now I've made my feelings on that clear lets get onto talking about the GAME. Darts has over recent years become more and more of an entertainment form, if we look at the TV schedule of darts since around December 08 we've had:
Celebrity Darts
The Grandslam of Darts
PDC world Championship
BDO World Championship
Players Championship
The Wimmau World Masters (I might be wrong on this but I think it was on BBC)

Which whether we like it or not, is an awful lot of fatties on our telly's, but damnit it are these fatties skillful. Phil Taylors ability to win, win and win some more must be envied by everyone in a real sport, the guy collects world championships like the rest of us collect bills. Andy Fordhams Ability to lose weight must make women who write those crappy weight loss books green with envy.

The rules
The rules of darts are simple, players stand about 7 foot 9 inches away from the board and take turns to throw 3 darts at a board, trying to get the target score as quickly as possible (usually 501). The board is made up of 82 parts, with numbers 1-20 each having 2 single pieces, 1 double pieces (the outer most sections) and 1 treble piece (the inside section) and a two part bullseye (worth 25 and 50 points).
Ideally to get 501 a top player will often try to get it in 9 darts (though they are rare it's the absolute minimum needed to win), usually going with the 180-180-141 option.

The world body
Much like boxing, theirs no single governing body in darts, theirs the PDC and the WDF (which covers the BDO among other regional body's). The PDC is seen as a far better quality of competition, and over recent years has been signing many of the WDF's best players (most obviously Raymond Van Barneveld, Robert Thornton, Mervyn King and now Andy Fordham). The players in the PDC are almost always fully pro, and the top players in it are usually considered the worlds top players, people like Barney, Taylor, Wade and King.
The WDF are the others, which most famously include the BDO, which only has it's very top players actually making it a full time job, one of it's top players Mark Webster, for example, it's a trainee plumber despite being a top 3 player.

Players in the WDF earn less, but the tournements are seen as easier as the very best players aren't in it.
Though there are competitions like The Grandslam, which by invitation, invite players from each to play in a round robin competition annually.

Darts is imo, a fun thing to watch, I don't class it as a sport, but I do class it as entertaining and skillful. Sadly the top players do seem to play each other far too regularly to make the finals entertaining, so often it's the last 16 of a competition where the best games come out.

Note:
The legal case, there was a case where a landlord was taken to court in 1908 for allowing gambling to take place in his bar, as gambling on luck games wasn't allowed in a pub. When taken to court, the pubs top player proved that it was a skill that he could hit the numbers called out by the jury.

Summary: Fun, fun fun