A Study In Darts - Grand Slam Night 7

Posted: 19.11.11 in Tournament Analysis Blog category

We have how darts is evolving, Sherlock Holmes and the refuse collector who bagged a double double finish!

A while ago we accused Paul Nicholson of not being very smart. This was our reaction to his attempted mind games with the King of mind games, “The Power”. Hindsight does of course make it easy for us to dismiss any plans or ideas that go wrong as doomed from the outset. If Taylor had become riled and “Nico” had gone on to win maybe we would have changed our tune?

Anyway, fast forward from that episode and Nicholson was explaining last night the reason he turned down the chance to go for double 15 to win the leg and instead opting for a big 14 and one of his favourite outshots, double 8.

Nicholson has worked out from analysing his throw that his technique and the way his darts land in the board leaves him vulnerable to blocking the double 15 bed. If he hits the single 15 a dart is wasted as he has to hit another fat number to get on his next double. Some players may argue that Nicholson is wasting a dart by going for the single 14 and not attempting the double. However, he is playing the percentages. He most likely knows his success rate of hitting double 15 against his success rate of 14 followed by double 8.

This raised two issues for us. The first is the conundrum we set about players deliberately leaving a 170 outshot. We ran a small survey and had around 100 or so players reply. We asked, would you switch with your last dart to 18`s to guarantee a 170 checkout or stay with your 20 and treble 20 already in the board and try and hit another treble 20? If you did you would be on 128. The risk being if you hit single 20 you would be on a 168 bogey number.

The vast majority opted for the 170 finish. Some respondents were quite vehement in their response due to their perceived stupidity of the question in the first place! Oh well, we do like to spark a debate. We then asked everyone that had voted to come back again and let us know how many times they had actually hit the “holy grail” of 170 in a match. The enthusiasm for our survey waned and only a few players responded. We will go into this in more detail next week now but to give you a clue of the consensus, “blue moon” sprung to mind!

“Nico” analysing his outshots and our attempts to encourage players with a chance for a 170 outshot to also consider their options or “not to lose sight of the alternative” as Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle famously wrote, are all part of how darts can move forward.

I was discussing the evolution of darts with one of my Twitter pals @lenny_boyle. We both agreed that the double, double outshot must now be an accepted part of the game. The catalyst for this agreement was when “old school” BDO player, refuse collector and captain of Wales Martin Phillips bagged a double top, double top finish. “Old school” commentator John Gwynne even echoed our own sentiments from a blog a few days ago that once that style of finish would have been deemed as “showboating”, but now it is accepted and another way darts is evolving.

This is of course exciting news for the Darts Performance Centre. The whole reason we set up our website was to give dart players access to sports science knowledge a lot of other sports take for granted. When we started out a year or so ago challenging the conventions, traits and rituals of darts it was most definitely “a three pipe problem”. This is the term used by Holmes when he faced an extremely puzzling case. Times are changing and we will continue to attempt to provide evidence of how sports science can help you play better darts.

We believe we have a “watertight” case!

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The Darts Performance Centre is a resource to assist dart players of all standards play better darts. We are also committed to researching all aspects of darts to provide players with information and solutions that most other sports take for granted.

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