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I've had the Unicorn Ecipse dart board for a few days now, and I now have a new personal best to break it in with - a 13 darter in a 501 game, which is an average of 115.62 per throw. The scores were 140, 140, 100, 81, and a D20 with the first dart. This is by far the best leg I've ever played. The other legs I played tonight were rubbish, but these brief highlights give me encouragement.
There have been no bounce outs whatsoever from the Unicorn Eclipse yet. The wiring is superb, and it is a huge improvement over the Winmau Blade III I've been using since August 2005. There are design problems with the Blade series which cause the wires to become raised from the board, and the treble wires can become flattened in a strange spider's web pattern.
My trial of the Harrows "Silver" Short Titanium stems didn't go too well. They were too short for me, so I'll have to try the Medium ones to give them a proper airing. The short length caused inbalance on my 27g 5cm darts, so as mentioned I'll need the longer version to get a fair result.
Until then there are just a couple of observations ; some of the stems I received were not perfectly machined and did not spin "true" in the hand, so for every couple of packets you may need to bin the odd one. Also, the thread on the stem to attach the flight holder was incredibly fine and I'd prefer a chunky thread. I just didn't have confidence that these replacement tops would survive any sort of serious punishment with such a fine thread.
One very surprising positive is that you get a nice reflection on the dome part of the stem which acts as a strong guide for subsequent throws. I find this really helpful, as it allows you to concentrate on the throw and block out distractions. No other stem I've tried gives this type of reflection.
We got off to a great start against Wheatsheaf up in Leadgate last night, but we couldn't maintain the pace and they pulled the scroreline back to a more realistic looking single point victory for us.
I thought we played well against a team with so many strong players, and as expected following our battle for 5th place last season which Wheatsheaf eventually won nothing will be decided until next Tusdays return match.
We had a slightly different format on the night : Two teams of 8 players (a good turn out) played 1 1001X Team Game, 4 Doubles games, and finally 8 Singles games.
Great hospitatlity was provided by the managgement, and thanks to Jay and Lena for arranging these games.
The 4TH America’s Cup in Darts took place at the Cascadia Hotel this weekend beginning a on Friday 25th and ending yesterday, Sunday 27th July. Eleven teams participated ranging from Canada to Brazil.
Once again the Caribbean teams were unable to take the Americas Cup from the Americans as they won for the fourth consecutive time ousting Canada in the finals on Sunday.
Kim Whaley- Hilts of Canada took the Ladies Title winning over Maureen Shepherd of Barbados. In the Men’s category, Gary Mawson of USA beat Canadian, Jerry Hull to take his place as top male player of the event. Mawson also won the award for the most 180’s scoring an impressive 17 in the Tournament.
While the T&T team played extremely well in the first round, qualifying at the top of their group after beating Barbados, Cayman Islands, Guyana and St. Lucia, they were edged out by Jamaica in the knockout quarter finals. However, the local team hopes to successfully defend their Caribbean Team Title in the next event.
The main competition, the 17th Caribbean Darts Championships, will begin on Monday 28th at 5pm. with the opening ceremony and parade of teams, to be followed by an Open Luck of the Draw Doubles. Team games will begin at 10am on Tuesday with 12 competing teams which include Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Brazil, Cayman Islands, Florida, Guyana, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, St. Lucia, Turks and Caicos and Trinidad and Tobago. The public is invited to come and support their National Team at the Cascadia. Further information on this event can be found on the darts website at www.ttdarts.com.
I've completed my one week trial of Alloy Stems, and the results are positive. I didn't break or bend any of them, and after a full week of play that is quite a surprise to me following my earlier experiences with them.
My DartPro stats for the week showed an improvement of 2 percenatge points against the rolling 28 month average, and I scoreed two 180's with them - well above my usual average of less than one per month.
The problem with them loosening during play disappeared, so it seems a few good tightenings make the thread work better with the tapping within the dart.
I'm almost a convert to the Alloys, and I'll take them to tomorrow night's friendly game against the Wheatsheaf before moving on to trial the Harrows Titanium Stems later in the week.
The action has started in the 4th Americas Cup being hosted by Trinidad & Tobago.
The results and fixtures appear here.
The Derwentside are holding a Motor Neurone Disease
benefit evening on Saturday 2nd August to commemorate their Landlord Ken, who sadly died earlier in the year.
Tickets are £5, and the featured bands are The Toxic Pixies (pictured) and YIC/DC, which I assume is a local AC/DC tribute band ("why aye" is local dialect for "yes").
I'll be attending with some others from The Chelmsford, and I'm sure it'll be a good night. They always have good music nights up there, and of course we'll be remembering Ken and supporting the cause.
This week I'm trialing the "Silver" Short Alloy 35mm stems from Pure Darts. I'm going to give them a try for a full week and see if they offer anything over the Deflectagrip Nylon Original stems I normally use.
I'll post the results next Monday, but in the meantime there are some general observations I've noted following the first session with them :
- Although labeled "Short" they are actually in between the "Short" and "Medium" lengths of the Deflectagrips. This caused my first few shots to land in the board at a steeper angle, but after a few minutes I seemed to have sub consciously adjusted and the angle of attack is now perfect.
- Those "holes" you can see in the picture allow you to put a dart point through them to tighten them up firmly. Despite this I found that they became loose a couple of times, so you'd need some Silicone "O" Rings to stop this from happening.
- They look great. I'm sure there's no silver in the alloy, and I notice they put quotes around the "Silver" description. They're probably mostly aluminium, and they look really slick. it may sound irrelevant, but it's good to have kit which looks the part.
So, I'll now give them a full week's work-out and post the results.
Trinidad and Tobago Team Pictures
The Trinidad & Tobago Darts Association was formed 25 years ago, and to coincide with the anniversary they are to host the 4th WDF Americas Cup and the 17th Caribbean Darts Championships. Running from the 25th of July to the 3rd of August at the Cascadia Hotel and Conference Centre the competitions will involve 13 teams, including Brazil, Florida, Canada and U.S.A. with a total of approximately 200 players.
After meeting the T&T team in 2006 and 2007 I am very interested in their progress. I've been in constant touch with Nannette Brooks (T&T Ladies' No 1) over the last two years, swapping tips and advice, and generally sharing our progress in our respective leagues. Although we play at vastly different levels it's great to have someone to share darts issues with as well as just keeping in touch.
Full details of the competitions are available at the official web site including photos of all the competing players and a timetable of events, and I'll post any additional news which Rosemarie Duff sends me. I'm certain Nannette and Vivekanand Dyal (nicknamed Rabbit due to his large family!) will do very well in the Womens and Mens titles. Good luck to both of them, as well as all of the players from the other teams who were such great company in Barbados (Barbados, Guyana, Cayman Islands, and T&T themselves). I really wish I could be there this year, but I think it'll be 2009 when I can next make it.
None of these on Tuesday
With no league games to compete in until September and only two friendly games arranged we had a fairly low key practice night on Tuesday. It was interesting to see the same type of things as on some match nights ; really slack shots from most of us, with only Alan P being on target.
That's OK on a practice night, but not when it happens in a League game - when it matters. It's hard to learn anything from it though.
Towards the end of the night I was getting plenty of good shots in, but had it been a league game this would have been at the point in the night when the opponents had left and we would be just winding down with a few friendly games. I would also be the time when you'd hear lots of "Why didn't you do that in the game?" type comments, and if only I knew the answer . . .
Now the 2007/08 season is over our Tuesday nights will just be practice games until the new season starts in early September.
To break things up a bit we have arranged two friendly games against The Wheatsheaf in Leadgate :Tuesday 29th July : Wheatsheaf V Chelsmford
Tuesday 5th August : Chelmsford V Wheatsheaf
Click image to enlarge
Whoa - my new shirt from Toffs arrived on Friday, and I think it may use it for next season's games.
It's a Middlesbrough "Away" shirt from the 1970's in thick cotton, and it's really comfortable to play in.Note how the lighting set-up has been altered to be dog proof. If he'd have chewed the other side of the mid cable off switch Bracken would be in dog heaven now, so lesson learnt. Hey, he wouldn't do it again, would he :o)
As suspected, we dropped to 6th position on the last day of the season, but we're still really pleased to appear well up in the top half of the table.
Congratulations to The Cricketers on their title, and they'll be collecting their trophy on Presentation Night, Delves Club, 08/07/2008.
On the table of leading Individual Singles players the Chelmsford's Peter McLean and myself both made it onto the leader board, in 13th and joint 15th position respectively. It was quite a buzz for me to see my name on that list of the top 24 players for the season. Peter would've been even higher if he'd been able to play more games.
Congratulations to Alan Parkin for achieving joint fourth in the 180's table. This blog was useful to Alan in tracing one of his “lost” (unrecorded) 180's. By using the SEARCH BLOG option at top left we were able to find the details of all three of his maximums. One of these had not been recorded on the post-match game card, and we were able to rectify this.
Interestingly Phil Borthwick notched only a single 180. He went through the season undefeated to top the Individual Placings with 28 wins from 28 games, and he also won the Singles cup. This seems to be a prime example of “180's for show, Doubles for dough”, but I'd still have loved to get my name on the 180's list, and well done to Alan for being our only representative.
Picture from Roger's mobile phone
Our League's “Finals Night” was held at Leadgate Cricket Club on Tuesday night.
The Chelmsford's only representative was Jimmy, who lost in the dominoes final to Joe of The Commercial.
The darts were of a really high standard. The big hitters in the league contested the Singles and Doubles semi finals and finals, with the action relayed on big screen. Here are some brief notes on the way it went :
Doubles 1st semi : Neville and Stevie beat Stu and Gary. S&G did well to pull back from a 2-0 deficit before Neville sank the D9 to make it 3-2 in a close game.
Doubles 2nd semi : Tim and Davey were in top form to overcome Graham and Phil 3-0 (18 darts, 14 darts, and 19 darts gave them an overall average of 88 per throw including the finishing).
Singles 1st semi : Phil beat Davey in a game where he was twice trailing, but got to grips with the darts he'd had to borrow due to an earlier emergency to take it 3-2. Most of the legs were 17 darters, with a 15 darter at the beginning.
Singles 2nd semi : Stevie had a bye due to his opponent being unavailable.
Doubles final : Tim and Davey were in great form and were righting any lax shots with 140's. They beat Neville and Stevie 3-0, with Davey taking out 25 (S9, D8) to clinch it.
Singles final : Phil was a very popular winner to beat Stevie in the final. Stevie has been a champion in earlier seasons and looked gutted to lose both the Doubles and Finals, but Phil had been getting stronger as the games went on and had totally found the T20 by the time he played the final.
Bob's 27 is a great little practice routine I've been using for the last few weeks. It was devised by Bob Anderson and concentrates on Doubles accuracy.
You can keep a note of the running score on paper, in your head, or if you have a laptop handy DartPro handles it nicely with it's usual stats and graphs to help you identify the doubles you have the most trouble with.
You start off with 27 points and go round the board throwing three darts at each double from 1 to 20 in sequence, finishing on the Bull if you prefer. Every double you hit earns you the double's score and is added to your total, but missing a double with all three darts means you must subtract a single double from the total. Once you're down to zero or less the game is over.
I've only ever been right to the end of the game once, but for me it's a good bit of practice on the lower value doubles. That shot on D7 (pictured) is my best ever shot in Bob's 27 - I've not managed three in a given double before or since.
I get a lot of visits to this blog from people Googling the term "tommys darts". I've always praised them for their good customer service, and this week has been no exception.
They delivered the wrong flights, but immediately posted replacements when I queried it with them on their Pure Darts site.
I'd asked for the R4X flights (left), but they accidently sent the Amazon ones (right). I'm sure the Amazon range is for female players, so I didn't want to be seen using them after that business with the light purple (allegedly pink) flights from last year :o)Incidentally, I've proven the Ruthless claim of them being 33% thicker than ordinary flights by clumping 18 of each type together and measuring the width. The results were 8.25mm for the R4X against the 6mm of ordinary flights. No wonder they are so durable.
. . . I just wanted to brighten things up a bit.
Don't be fooled by the curls - she can hit a 123 under pressure :o)
I don't get many big finishes, and this 138 is definitely the best I've hit for months. I was playing 501 legs on DartPro, and the first dart was perfectly in the T20.
This left 78, and I prefer 18's on this as hitting the single leaves 60, for a prospective D20 finish next time round.
Luckily the T18 just crept in, and instead of my usual trick of fluffing it on the 3rd dart I hit the D12 fairly centrally.
I've had the Unicorn Ecipse dart board for a few days now, and I now have a new personal best to break it in with - a 13 darter in a 501 game, which is an average of 115.62 per throw. The scores were 140, 140, 100, 81, and a D20 with the first dart. This is by far the best leg I've ever played. The other legs I played tonight were rubbish, but these brief highlights give me encouragement.
