I bought a dartboard last year and during the summer we have the odd outdoor tournament (it gets hung on the shed door) - if we’ve got friends or family round.
I’m shite, but I love watching The Darts - oh and betting on The Darts.
We watched the semi-finals last night and the match between van Gerwen and van Barneveld was something else.
As so often happens when you watch professional sports people*, it’s so easy to forget just how bloody difficult the game actually is.
I’ve never seen van Barneveld play so well. He ended the best of 9 set match with a 3 dart average of about 110 and he bloody lost!!!
Van Gerwen was a machine. Incredible to watch, and with only two outcomes and no draws, and with players having alternative starts in the sets, the odds fluctuate tremendously which makes it a great sport to bet on (backing and laying).
Anyone else watch it?
*Except football where I could have been, and some say could still be, a pro.
Yeah, my plan is to let van Gerwen win a set or two and Anderson will drift more out than that.
Then, IF Anderson gets a couple of sets back at some point the odds will swing back a bit, then I’ll lay Anderson or back van Gerwen with the profit I’ve got from Anderson.
Then I’ll simply enjoy the rest of the game knowing I’m “greened-up” and can’t lose - well unless Anderson thrashes MvG and his odds just come in from the off, or MvG does the same to Anderson.
I went to see the darts in Wolverhampton once. I don’t remember too much about the actual darts, just drinking from two pint beer glasses and writing rude signs to show on the telly. Oh and I got chased by a nightclub bouncer on the way to the train station as I stopped for a piss by their fire exit.
Back in 1981 was living in Barnstaple for a year first year of my apprenticeship, and went to see Jockey Wilson, Cliff Lazarenko, and John Lowe at a hotel exhibition match in Ilfracombe, which eventually ended up a drunken mess with the dart players taking the piss out of the punters. that so enraged a lot of us that John Lowe ended up being thrown in the swimming pool. He was not happy and the local constabulary were eventually called to throw us out.
We were probably lucky nobody was arrested as that would have meant your apprenticeship down the drain.
