Darts: a game where participants compete with one another by throwing small arrow like devices at a target that is round and has numbers and sections and an inner bull with an outer bull and so on. Darts now refer to the standard game with a specific bristle board design and a set of rules. Rules that are general to the game and rules that govern games like, “501,” “301,” and “Cricket.”


Darts is a traditional pub game that was and is commonly played in the United Kingdom as well as other places in Europe and across the pond here in the America’s.


Wikipedia tells hits history in a terse form, i.e., “The dartboard may have its origins in the cross-section of a tree. An old name for a dartboard is "butt"; the word comes from the French word but, meaning "target". In particular, the Yorkshire and Manchester Log End boards differ from the standard board in that they have no treble, only double and bullseye, the Manchester board being of a smaller diameter, with a playing area of only 25 cm across with double and bull areas measuring just 4 mm. The London Fives board is another variation. This has only 12 equal segments numbered 20, 5, 15, 10, 20, 5, 15, 10, 20, 5, 15, 10 with the doubles and triples being a quarter of an inch wide.”


There have been a variety of darts created over the years but the most common today is the tungsten dart. There are electronic darts but for this blog and for my efforts in tossing darts I remain a steel dart fan and enthusiast. I am recommending a book for novice darters but only because it appealed to me and my studies and rest assured most of the dart books out there are outstanding. In short, find one if this one does not fit your needs and get it. I can tell you when I started to play over twenty years ago, before I laid down my darts in 96, I tossed darts for several years without knowing some very important and critical mechanics, etc., of the dart game. As I take up once again my steel darts I have found a fountain of information to help make the game both enjoyable and competitive. Enjoy, diddle for the middle and let the darts fly!

Thursday, November 17, 2016

Perspective: Reference Points

Dart Arts Article/Post Caveat (Read First Please: Click the Link)

When I started back up in the dart arts I still held no real perspective as to my abilities, i.e., in those days with no Youtube you only saw Darts played on certain sports channels or you observed players at local and intermediate tournaments. If you didn’t play well and were taken out early you often, as I did, left and headed home. 

Sometimes you become frustrated especially when three darts hit hight scores and the immediate followup three hit something like 44 points, i.e., one twenty, one trip one and a single one. I can’t tell you how many times I got angry with myself and could not figure out the why to how the darts would fly.

Well, today, as a newbie boot darter I have way more reference points to observe in order to get a better perspective on my dart ability as it stands with other players and especially the professional top dart artists in the world. How you might say? Well, as we are all aware there is way more material and references out there due to the techno-revolution we live in at this time, this moment. 

As a part of my practice I put my highest dart score in a picture, thank you for cell camera’s, and put it on my cell phone desktop to see every time I answer my phone then I put my email in to the PDC site to receive notification of top player youtube video’s so I can watch how the top players actually toss darts.

One guy many years ago said the sports folks often cut out the bad dart throws and only presented the best but today the full video’s are presented for our viewing pleasure and you can readily see those top ten players throw awesome darts interspersed every now and then with some really low scoring poor darts. In short, they are pretty much just like me and my fellow dart artists but with two distinct differences, i.e., first, they have developed greater consistency in throwing great throws with the fewest bad darts; two, they are able to demonstrate both a math ability and a set of steel nerves playing tournaments to include those played in front of hundreds in the audience and millions via media like television.

Yes, there are some other traits they develop that put them at the master dart arts levels but these two stand out for me. When I now throw good ones then some bad ones I have heart and confidence that what I am doing is normal and along with integrity, discipline and hard practice those darts are normal and I will improve, etc. 

In short, the frustration and disappointment now are so low, and mostly rare in expression, feeling and stresses, that I throw, ignore the bad and then come back and throw good again. It allows me a certain mind-state that lessons the stress-conditions of my throws in competition and allows me a calmer dart attitude, a good start. 

Being able to see that your darts are not all that far away from what is normal darts for everyone at every level then you can focus on achieving a mastery level that puts you up there with the few who achieve such goals, i.e., all things are possible; all players endure the same things; all players have the same potential. 

Use the material you have available to see, feel and toss good darts so you can understand that things are not even close to being as bad as they use to seem - to me and my mind anyway. 

Get some perspective from reference points of fellow players, others and the professionals/master darters. All part of getting the game on!



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