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Best Of Luck!

Any experienced player will tell you that winning a game of darts is mostly in your head. Yes you need some ability and a little bit of luck always helps, but being in the right frame of mind for your game and a real belief in yourself, with the confidence that you are going to win, will go a long way to actually winning a game. When players depart their home pub for an away match, the bar staff/pub regulars will try and give their player’s spirits a little bit of a boost, by saying something like, “Best of luck, hope you win – you can beat them, etc.” Sometimes if teams are on a losing streak it is not always so easy to lift their spirits and instill confidence though.

One team that I play for on a Monday hasn’t been doing particularly well. In fact they have only won one match all season and we are near to the end of the league, so our confidence is not too high. A week or two ago, my mother wished me the best of luck and said she hoped that we won, before adding that we couldn’t do any worse than on the previous Monday as we had lost 8-0.
Now this was on a Wednesday night and a different league, so after a brief moments thought I said, “Actually we can do worse as we play 9 games on a Wednesday, so we could lose 9-0 nil!”
I always say that if you prepare yourself for the worst and it doesn’t happen then anything else is a bonus. Confidence is not one of my strong points on the dartboard these days! Incidentally, we didn’t lose 9-0. Lady Luck must have been on our side as I think it was only 8-1, so we still lost 8 games! (The same as on the Monday!)

The next little anecdote concerning luck may well have involved a little of the “Luck Of The Irish,” although it wasn’t actually on St Patrick’s Day, but it was close. St Patrick’s Day fell on the 17th of March this year with the Irish Bank Holiday, the day after on the 18th. The 18th was a regular Mondays darts match night and one player in the league had been on about getting a mention in “Dispatches,” for a good finish for weeks. That night he got an important leg in the match with the magnificent finish of double 8. (16) His Captain took the “Mickey,” on the result sheet by registering it and signing it to witness his “High,” finish that was subsequently commented on further in the match reports. The next week, the 25th, after the wind up had been done to death, a certain Lady Captain rubbed salt into his wounds as she went out on 48 by hitting 3 x double 8. Now, some players will go for two double twenties for an 80 finish and likewise two double 18’s for 72, but I have never heard of a player going out on 3 doubles the same! The first double 8 had obviously been a miss for a big 8, or big 16 next door and the second a miss for a double 16, again next door, with the third well and truly meant for double 8! All credit to the Lady for getting the last one, but I certainly think she had more than her fair share of luck to finish like that!

 

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