Tuesday, January 31, 2006

The Coveted 9 Count.. er.. Points

Here is a quick pic of a score I have been hoping for for a long time, but never actually achieved. I aimed at the trip 20 and missed into the trip 1 each time! Yeah! 9 points.


Thursday, January 19, 2006

Why I like Pears

I threw a dart at the board the other day and then could not find it. At first I thought it bounced out and so I looked around on the ground for a split second before I glanced up and saw it. It was the most perpendicular dart I'd seen in a while. It virtually disappeared on the board. (So of course I snapped a pic.)



This is why I like my Black Poly Pears. The shape of the flight seems to fit with my dart preferences and throwing style for really good perpendicular lands in the board. Having your dart land this way helps a lot. You see less of the dart so it is less of a distraction, and you block your targets less so you have to 'go downstairs' less for a good shot. This is why I like my Pears.

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Awesome Dart Poster

Check out this hilarious dart shoot poster:


My friend Barn is in charge of this kinda stuff in his league and the stuff that leaks out of his mind sometimes floors me. He is a real creative guy and a fine darter too. But the bastard is sandbagging the B League. (That's because he's a bastard.)

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

2 Darters Cannot Be Wrong

Surfing I just saw this pic:

I don't know who is holding that dart, but I copied it from some website somewhere that was talking about the Lakeside competition. I would hope that it is a current photo of some professional dart player who is actually in these competitions but the cynic in me says it is a stock photo and is probably not someone famous at all. Just a random hand.

Anyway, what is neat is that this is an exact copy of my grip. That person is holding their dart the same way I hold mine, middle finger barely touching the point, pinky sticking out a bit to the side, everything. So at least now I feel validated. If some pro out there is using my grip then it cannot be all that bad, right?

Sunday, January 08, 2006

EZChalk Rocks

I would like to call everyone attention to an awesome online service available to darters everywhere. It is www.ezchalk.com First, you should know that I have no affiliation with it other than that I use it. There are a lot of good utilities out there for us dwellers in dart forums to get together and duke it out with tungsten and silver. Unfortunately most of them are not websites, but programs written to download to PC's. PC's running Windows, that is.

But there are those of us who hold their computers to much higher standards. We run Unix, or Unix varients, such as Linux and Mac OSX. I run a Mac and I love it. Everything is easy and everything is safe (well, more safe). So things like DartPro, and CricketScorer are awesome utilities but do me no good. Thus websites that offer these services are the answer. Websites, when well made, are cross platform and cross browser. So people like me can run Firefox on a Mac and still play darts online. So I encourage all you people reading this to go there and sign up and find a sparring partner. Here is aa pic of the game play interface:


It isn't obvious from the pic (which you can click to embiggen) but you can either enter your scores by clicking on the dartboard or you can just type the numbers in at the bottom. But in either case the scores are not official until you hit submit, which is a cool feature, especially when you are entering by clicking on the dartboard. From the pic below you can also see that ezchalk will keep track of your stats too, to some degree. I have aan inkling thaat I have lost more than I have won but who cares about that. The important stat is points per turn. Mine is sitting at a humble 58.08 but maybe that will encourage people to challenge me.



It is a nice site. It has been much improved from it's old version and I think that if more people were to use it we would have a game anytime we felt darty. And do me one more favor. Once you sign up at the site (it is free by the way), send an email to the admin of the site asking for these additions and improvements:

1. Add Cricket as a game option. (I wrote some perl code for cricket and offered it to him.)
2. Add an option for 1 Set of 5 Legs. (right now it is only 5x5 and 1x1.)

You can email him here: webmaster@ezchalk.com

UPDATE: He has already added the second feature so you can now play a 1x5 match. Also, you can now post suggestions at this location within the Steve Coote site: EZchalk Forum Section

Friday, January 06, 2006

Good Times at the PLMS

My dart teammates and I had a chance to play darts with More_Cowbell and his posse last night at their home club, the PLMS. We are considering joining it (private club) so that they can sponser us in the next dart season. I hope my teammates like it as well as I, but there may be some objections based on travel time. Good times were had by me and my teammates but we proved to be no match for them. They can each throw a good dart!

I hit a total of four Ton-40's last night but no max's nor any hat tricks. Probably the best night out I have had in a while in terms of performance but I faded by the end. As Yogi Berra would say, "It got late early."

Stick won a cricket tie-breaker against me after opening with a White Horse (which was quite impressive), and I saw Tater Bob hit a 160-IN to open a game of DIDO 301 (but I was not playing against him).

So, Stick, taterbob and More_Cowbell, thanks for the games. I hope to see ynz up there again often. Here is a gratuitous photo:

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

The Faux Ton-80

jsobo119 touched on this a bit in one of his posts (here) but I wanted to post a couple of pics anyway. For a B Leaguer like me a Ton-80 is quite rare, so when two of your darts hit the triple 20 and then the third dart bounces out of the board entirely it is quite frustrating. So the pic below may look like a ton-80 but it is really a score of 120, and then a re-thrown bounce out.


It just seems so cruel to have that coveted score escape. I don't really know if the third dart would have been in the sixty, but it would have been somewhere near it, for sure. Perhaps a single one perhaps not. I hit ton-40's often enough now that I simply do not take pictures of them anymore. So even if it had hit another single 20 I don't think I would have broken out the camera.

Here is another that I hit a while back and has just been sitting on my hard drive for a while. I wasn't quite sure what to do with it. It felt like a 180 when that third dart finally sunk into the board, and sure I aimed all three at the sixty and all three hit their target, but... It just isn't the same, thus they are not included in the official Ton-80 count. They are separate, they are false.

They are Faux Ton-80's. And I've hit two so far.

Sunday, January 01, 2006

Consolation Prize for 2006 Sweeps

Even though I am not a dart dealer nor a peddler of any dart supplies whatsoever, I have decided to contribute to the prizes that will be awarded for the 2006 Sweeps which take place over at the terrific and always spectacular Paul Williams site.

And since I don't have tons of inventory in and out my door, I will contribute one of what I happen to have plenty of...

My Favorite Stem!

But it will not go to the first place winner. Instead it will go to the person with the fewest points but who has participated in all (okay most) events. So this is a consolation prize for the one person who is persistent, yet persistantly unlucky... Unless that person happens to be me, then it will go to the next in unluckiness. Here is the stem set:


The Sweeps I am referring to is a fun thing run by the operator of the Paul Williams website. He runs a year long contest where participants are randomly assigned to various dart players in the major competitions and then we accumulate points based on how they do in real life. In 2005, I accumulated the second most points of all the people who played and I won a nice little prize doing so! (Which will be blogged upon arrival.) The generosity of the people offering gifts from their inventory has inspired me to kick in a little tid bit.

Happy New Year

Well, I have few dart related resolutions this year. I want to hit more Ton-80's of course, but I also want to hit at least one more Deadeye. I would also like to attend more Luck of the Draws and be more active online. And despite what seems like a lot of dart resolutions and a potential for more dart activity, my primary resolutions are all health related (i.e. less junk and more fresh air).

The performance related resolutions should be easy to measure in terms of success. Afterall, there is a number associated with them:

1. I resolve to hit more Ton-80's this year (6 last year).
2. I resolve to hit more Deadeyes this year (1 last year).

The online activity is easy to track too. For example,

3. I resolve to blog more this year (91 posts last year - (131 total)).
4. I resolve to forum more this year (your guess is as good as mine).

But socialization in darts is more difficult. I know I only hit one LotD last year and I'd like to hit more this year, but my life is only 5 to 10% darts and I have so many more interests it is unlikely LotD's will play a huge role. Only when I move back to Seattle will this change (not likely this year).

5. I hope to hit more Lucks this year.

But in the end, this year is really the Year of the Dog. Literally. In Chinese astrology the year of the dog will start at the lunar year and I got a new dog a couple of months ago so it is more likely you will see me holding a leash than my darts!

Happy New Year folks.