Grand Slam Day and Night 2

Posted: 14.11.11 in Tournament Analysis Blog category

After overdosing on darts the after affects kick in starting with an imaginary conversation with "The Count"

It’s a Marathon not a Darts Tournament

It was tough going yesterday, a real battle at certain points, it took mental strength and experience to get through!

Yes a whole afternoon of darts followed by a whole evening of darts sounds like a dream but I did start to wilt as the evening session went on and on. I made it through to witness “Walshy” easily beat Van Gerwen and it was another fascinating day and night.

Middle for Darts

When we are carrying out coaching sessions we do encourage dart players to stand in the middle of the oche. When we ask players why do they stand to the right or the left of the oche they look at us as if they think it may be a trick question? The usual answer is “I don’t know, this is where I have always stood”. Some players have no reference point to the board at all and simply throw from wherever they fancy.

We have had many players, some of a good standard discuss the merits or otherwise of being a right or left winger. One player admitted that he found hitting the lower left numbers on the board virtually impossible due to the position he takes up on the oche. Yet, he persists with his oche location all the same. There is a word for this, insanity-doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.

Part of the logic behind our central throwing location advice is this. If you stand to the right of the oche the distance between hitting say the 10 for example is shorter than going for the 8. This means you have to adjust your throw depending on which side of the board you are going for. Muscle memory is a powerful tool and right and left wingers can achieve great things. However, if you stand in the middle the weight of your throw is identical whether it is the 10 or the 8 you are going for, or the 18 or the 9 etc. My question is would you prefer to learn one type of throw or two?

Take a look at the 5 minute video below. It is an advert for SightRight but does explain the logic behind standing central.

Right wingers can get drift into the 5, left wingers the 1. If you stand in the middle and throw straight there is only one outcome, the 20 bed. There are no such certainties for players taking up other positions.

One right winger is Ted Hankey. He has had a lot of success over the years and produced the performance of the night to beat Barney (another winger) yesterday. Imagine telling “The Count” to stand in the middle as the “old school” dart player cursed and celebrated his way to a fine win over Barney suggested Mrs Darts Analyst:

Here is one way this ficticious conversation could go:

Me: Hello Ted, my name is Paul from the Darts Performance Centre, we run a darts improvement website and coach dart players.

Ted: (Glares menacingly)

Me: I just wanted to discuss your position on the oche.

Ted: (Glares, really very menacingly, bordering on manic)

Me: I just wondered if you would try something for us, a darts experiment if you like, can you stand in the middle of the oche and have a throw?  You can try out our SightRight to help you get perfectly central and we can have a chat about the potential benefits of doing this.

Ted: (Glares in a psychotic style) ****/ ***, **** ! (Fill in the blanks to create a well known phrase). There are two way to look at this after Ted's win last night. First of all you may argue he would be  right to "send me on my way", or, the other side of the coin is "you can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink"!

Harvest Time

 Wayne is keeping our other experiment rolling along nicely. He was looking as rosy as a bramley apple plucked from a tree in the autumn and as expected by our “performance indicator colour chart” beat Nigel Heydon. Gary Anderson is up next, will “The Wanderer” leave him “red faced” too? 

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