Sad as it may be, Tuesday nights I play in a local darts and dominoes league. Last night we played at a small pub called the Bay Horse and managed an epic 5-2 defeat in both the darts matches and the dominoes games. Having only won two games so far this season the darts team needs a bit of work but generally our dominoes players do a lot better.
The format is simple there are seven players on each darts and dominoes team. The night starts with the ‘individuals’ which are drawn out at random and the first team to four points wins. Then there is a doubles darts and dominoes followed by a captains darts and captains dominoes. This is then followed by food which is provided by the home team and a hot topic of conversation, more on that later.
Last night I played first in the individual darts and lost. The guy I was playing was OK but I’d beat him over 1,000 games by at least 650 to his 350. This is our hypothetical yet widely accurate way of measuring how good people are at darts. He ran god like and checked out 70ish finishing on double 7 leaving me stuck on 61. The rest of the games played out and we only managed to win two which was pretty shit considering we beat the team top of the league the week before.
Usually I play in the doubles with someone selected at random by the bloke who runs our team. We have won five doubles games this season and I’ve played in all of them. The ones I haven’t played in we have lost. Four of the five doubles games we have won I have played with a guy called Neil. We played again last night and owned it as usual to keep our highly impressive unbeaten run going. We dicked on them actually, first game Neil left me on double 1 which I hit first dart and the second game he left me on 15 which I checked out with 3 double 6. Winnar! I’ve actually been nicknamed Dave ‘One Dart’Lenton because of my freaky ability to hit a double with my first dart, I guess it’s better than some darts players nicknames; MR Glitter (Bobby George), Lamp Chop (Ritchie Davies), Excellent Dude (Niels de Ruiter).
I had to play Dominoes last night because we were short. I managed to win what was my first ever game thanks to the help of Jono who explained the rules and some classic tactics on the journey there “You pick seven dominoes up and then put them down if you can, play your highest ones first”. This seemed to work extremely well as I beat their captain who is meant to be their best player. He was actually pretty pissed about it afterwards, some of the oldies take their dominoes very seriously. Dominoes is serious business! He spent the rest of the night moaning about how the music from the juke box was too loud and people playing dominoes couldn’t concentrate…. what a douche.
Every week, after the games, the home team puts our a spread. At our pub we always have hot food and it’s usually some kind of curry which is always well good. Food varies from place to place but you get scored down if you don’t provide owt hot lyk! Last night was just sandwiches and crisps. A valiant yet pretty poor effort. 3/10.