Premier League Week 4

Posted: 27.02.13 in Tournament Analysis Blog category

We have dart trimming, poker tilts,tips on this weeks's darting action and do you fancy some Barney darts?

Get him a swing doctor!

Adrian Lewis had a poor first day at the UK Open pro tour event on Saturday, but he did manage to get to the 4^th round on Sunday before going out to John Part. So much for the Crawley boost he was hoping for! Lewis has struggled this year and for some of last year too. He even shaved his darts down to try and solve his darting woes.

He is of course looking in the wrong place by amending his darts. I say of course but perhaps this theory hasn’t been contemplated by Adrian and his management team yet? The problem will be that he has inadvertently changed his technique in some way and playing and playing hoping it will correct itself is not the way forward!

If Jackpot was a golfer he would have been banging the door down of a golf coach for a video analysis session and rectified the error by now. But he isn’t! We of course do offer a video coaching service of the kind that I have just eluded to and it has worked and helped a number of grass roots players. Not everyone is convinced though, far from it, one day it will be the norm in darts, as it is in other sports, and dart trimming will be a thing of the past!

Going down, going down, going down!

I do actually have an interest in Lewis staying up, some personal pride is at stake. I scoffed at the notion of some tipsters advising punters to back Lewis at 7/1 to get relegated from the Premier League. Slowly but surely his price has plummeted although he is still odds on to stay up! On Thursday there is a relegation four pointer! Newton V Lewis. The bottom two!

Last week we discussed our reasons for nominating The Warrior as our tip for relegation. We suggested that when the pressure is on during the latter stages of tournaments, Newton’s pronounced tilt in his technique makes it difficult for him to sustain his usual high standard of throwing. He underpinned this for us by squandering a 6:3 lead last week to The Thorn, whose late rally also landed our most 180’s tip five to four!

I have used the description of Wes’s lean as his tilt for good reason. I am reading an excellent book at the moment called The Signal and the Noise, it is about the the science of prediction by Nate Silver. One of the chapters is about poker players and the skill of knowing when to back your hand or when to fold (stop playing the hand).  It also describes the poker tilt. A tilt in poker refers to players getting into a state of emotional confusion or frustration and then not playing the best they are capable of. The tilt can take many forms:

One poker player, Tommy Angelo, described some of his:

Too aggressive tilt

Too passive tilt

Annoyed tilt

Injustice tilt

Frustration tilt and my favourite description, the demolition tilt!

I noticed some annoyed tilt when The Warrior had some bounce outs a few weeks ago and maybe some injustice tilt last week as he couldn’t close out the game .  It is unfair to pick on Wes in some ways as what dart player can’t relate to the range of “tilt” emotions and frustrations every player goes through on the oche, from the Dog and Duck C team to the Premier League?

Two more things: the term tilt apparently came from the pinball machine and that helpless moment as the ball is gliding between the flippers or down the side and in your frustration you try and direct the ball by shoving the pinball machine but only end up disabling it and the “TILT” light appears  on the back screen.  Secondly if you search tilt in Google the page leans to one side! It really does! It is a Google joke, haha! It made my day, does anyone have any others, please let me know if you do!

Back to Newton V Lewis, a must win game for both in the relegation battle, for the loser it could be game over!

Tips:

Wes to hit the highest checkout V Lewis Evens – Newton fired in three ton plus checkouts last week, Lewis’s best so far 72

Barney V The Wizard Over 11.5 legs 6/5 Both players had a drubbing last week but played well at the weekend, should be close!

Competition

We have recently received some of these Barneveld Machina darts, we have them priced to sell at £17.99! Take a look at them here!

Would you like a set? We have a competition running with Team Barney on Twitter-Follow Team Barney and then look out for the details! Or enter here!

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Fixtures-February 28 - Westpoint Arena, Exeter

Robert Thornton v Gary Anderson
Andy Hamilton v Michael van Gerwen
James Wade v Phil Taylor
Wes Newton v Adrian Lewis
Raymond van Barneveld v Simon Whitlock

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