Mistakes

There was a bit of interesting discussion on Twitter a few days ago between Chris and a few of the other usual suspects about the worst decisions you can make playing darts, following on from a video High Roller Radio made with the guy who runs the Premium Dart Data Twitter account, I weighed in in a minor way to Chris commenting on people using T17 early to "round off to a zero" when covering, which I think is more to keep on the correct remainder when dividing by three if you hit a single to avoid leaving bogey numbers, i.e. if you hit 99 instead of 97 in the opening visit, a typical follow up to 402 instead of 404 is going to mean you need to switch at some point rather than just keep pounding the trebles.

But somewhere in the discussion, which I think might have come from Burton at some point but I can't find it, is how much difference does something coming up early in a leg actually make? Let's say we followed up on that 402 leave with a ton, and then didn't use 18's on 302 and left 162 i.e. a bogey number. In this sort of spot, it would make a difference in the exact spot where:

- the opponent is in a position to kill in six darts, which if we've only thrown six ourselves at this stage isn't that likely, especially if we have the darts
- the opponent does actually finish in six darts
- we would have taken out the huge checkout to finish it

That's not going to happen very often if we think about it. Taking out a 161+ is only a 2-3% shot for the world's elite. If it's a spot where the opponent does finish in six darts, he's either hitting a very low percentage combination himself, or we're so far behind we're probably fucked no matter what option we take.

So what do I actually think? I've got to think that in reality it's waiting too long to utilise the bullseye when setting up or finishing checkouts, the utility in edging down to, say, 116 rather than 121, or knowing that you're going to hit bull rather than 25 and not waste a dart (e.g. with 121 left and one dart, if you go T20 and hit with the intention of going 25-D18, if you hit bull you've wasted a dart to clean up 11, so go bull on 121 and then you can switch to T13/T17 on 71). It's a tough one to call.

Don't expect anything before the Gibraltar draw is out. We know all the qualifiers except the domestic qualifiers, so we should get odds for everything pretty quick outside of those games, which I wouldn't be touching expect for a comedy fourfold given the likely odds involved. One thing I did find slightly interesting from Oche Balboa on Twitter was a rumour that many of the BDO's top lot might give the World Masters a miss on account of the top 16 not getting the stupidly deep bye they've got in previous years. When you get to the point where you give your organisation's second biggest event a miss because you might need to play some extra rounds, words fail me.

And hey, Nitin Kumar's back in the worlds again! As is Benjamin Pratnemer! I don't really know the second guy but he's had some success in some of the continental opens, so maybe he'll do alright - but you'd have had to think he'd have punted at some of the Euro Tour qualifiers. See you Thursday evening.