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Match Etiquette.

There are many un-sportsmanlike ways of unsettling your opponent before and during a game and here are a few of the more popular ones;-

Darts often bounce out of the board and if they come near to you, treading on the dart/flight will cause a reaction in your opponent. With any luck you may break the shaft in the barrel and he may not have a spare forcing him to change his darts.

Blowing smoke over the board when your opponent is about to throw or coughing can also put them off their stride. Tapping the barrels of your darts whilst you are standing, waiting, behind the thrower is also to be recommended as are banging glasses and slamming of nearby doors.

Another trick that I am forever being accused of is standing too close behind the thrower on the oche. Quite often I accidentally step on his heels because I am so eager to have my throw. When I do throw I am usually very fast, not accurate, just fast. A lot of people have the ideal response to my sort of playing and that is to slow the game down by walking up to the board slowly to remove their darts. They then pull them out slowly one by one if even if they are well grouped and for added good measure accidentally drop a dart or a flight and then stand on the lay while they put the flight back in. Walking straight back up the lay in front of the thrower after retrieving the darts instead of stepping sideways always has an extra bonus effect.

If you are throwing for nearest to the bull before starting your game it is sometimes useful to aim for your opponents flight if he is throwing first, because with the cheap flights that most people use these days a good hit will shatter it and with any luck your opponent won’t have a spare. This tactic was fantastic in the old days when everybody used feather flights, because even if your point missed his flight the barrel hitting it would often be enough to strip off a good chunk of the feather from the shaft and few people ever carried spares then.

Perhaps the oldest is still the best and has almost guaranteed results. This tried and trusted gambit is a firm favourite of one of my beefier friends, although he swears he does not do it deliberately. He has rather chunky hands and usually gives a very firm handshake before the game resulting in many players massaging their fingers before they can throw their darts.