Practice

Dear Advice,

I started playing league two years ago and I’m one of the better players on my team. My problem is I can’t get good enough to beat the best ones. I play league once a week and even go down to the bar once or twice a week to practice too. I practice a lot. Sometimes I try to shoot darts at home but I have a hard time getting into it because its boring and after a few games I quit. You got any tips?

Eager and trying

Dear Eager,

Boy have I got tips!! But where to start? First, I don’t think you know what practice is, and I don’t know what you think good is.Seems to me you’re not really serious, you’re just playing darts and will probably end up like 80% of all darts players, being mediocre - not that there’s anything wrong with being mediocre. I don’t have time for fakes, or whiners, or blowhards but just in case you might be the real thing, not some wanna be champion, I’ll take a little time to deal with your situation.

A lot of people like playing darts as entertainment and aren’t what I call dart shooters. Dart shooters are competitive players who play to win and winning is their enjoyment, not simply playing. Darts players derive their pleasure mainly from participating and winning is not their primary motivation. A comment to darts players: you can play better, and add to your enjoyment of the game by making good shots and winning games without being one of the obsessed. It’s just that you will get out of your game what you put into it relative to skill level, but enjoyment, like beauty, is in the eye of the dart shooter and a person doesn’t have to be the best to get enjoyment out of my sport. That’s beauty all by itself.

There’s a difference between playing well and being good. You see, how well you play and how good you are depend on your understanding of what playing well is and what "good" is. Which you want to be and whether you are, by my definition, a dart player or dart shooter will determine how much of the following you will tend to use and will determine how much you put into your game. I think dart players will find what I have to say entertaining at least, while dart shooters will find it informative and useful, so read on.

OK, Eager, since I haven’t seen you play I can’t comment on your mechanics I’ll just assume you’re like practically everybody else and have a lousy follow through along with a bunch of other things you could be doing that limit how well you can play. But, first things first. Simple stuff, since I’m that kind of guy.

Lets identify those "best ones" you can’t beat. How good are they? Do they play well, or are they "good?" My perspective of what "good" is comes from a different world than yours and you probably can’t comprehend my view point so let me explore this some.

Playing well is getting darts into the board where you want them, being good is doing it under pressure, right now, when it needs to be done - consistently and against someone who believes they are better than you!! There are lots of dart players who make good shots and win games but when faced with a good dart shooter they wilt under the pressure. They choke!!! There is a world of difference between missing and choking and you will be the only person who will truly know which was the reason you missed a critical shot. Overcoming choking will be what determines if you ever become a "good" dart shooter. With this knowledge in your hands I ask you these questions: When you say you want to beat the "best ones" who exactly do you have in mind? The people on your team, so you can be the best there? Or maybe the best in the league division in which you play? Winning on league night or after the league games? Or both? Oh, and there are different kinds of "good" dart shooters too. Let me use an example to explain the different kinds of dart shooters.

I knew a couple of brothers, Bob and Harold "Ducky" Dillon, who were two kinds of good. I played on the same teams with them for a few years while I was growing up in darts and took advantage of the opportunity to learn stuff. Ducky was the league player and won lots of trophies and holds records for best games, most high shots, things like that. Bob, on the other hand, played for what he called "little green trophies." He was a money player. Not that Bob was a slouch in league play, or Ducky was a push over for the little green trophies, it’s just that when it got down to it they each had different levels of good they could reach under different circumstances. Thing was, they were big fish in a relatively small pond and they didn’t venture out of their pond. That’s two kinds of being "good." I, being different than either of them, wasn’t content with being the big fish in that small pond (I eventually took over the positions from both of them). I went looking for bigger ponds, then still bigger ponds until I ran out of ponds to look for in the good ole’ US of A. I don’t claim to have been the "best," but only the very, very best could beat me, then only sometimes. Only made one venture into the world sized pond and that turned out well since I played on the American team which beat the Brits and I won the tournament which followed too. There were 40 of Britain’s best, hand picked, who came to the US to play against the "Yanks," team against team, and in the tournament. There were, as well, the best this country had to offer. That is the kind of "good" I chose. Winning once does not make you best at anything, ‘cept maybe hand grenades or atom bombs. So if you want to enjoy my sport, at any level, I’ll be glad to help, and am able. You see, each tavern, league, and town, has its hero, its "good" player. No matter which "good" you’d like to become, I can help you, right up to the world sized pond, if you want. Just don’t bother me with crap about how you want to be the best if you can’t back it up with effort. Remember, it requires near obsession to get to the highest level of competency.

Here’s a perspective on the Bob Dillon kind of good. Before I went into the national pond, when I was hustling a few bucks back in the day. I traveled the Delaware Valley looking for people who were the local heroes and supplemented my income that way. Success was like this: I’d be leaving a place, after buying good night drinks for the dart players with the money they’d come in with, and I’d hear something like this. "You won’t be so lucky next time. You get your ass back here again." And I did "get my ass back there" with same result but no body knew exactly who I was or where I came from, they just knew I got lucky, again. I played a pattern: I’d win two then loose one which would let me go through their cash slowly but steadily, I had that much control of the outcome. They thought they actually had a chance to win and they never knew they had no chance. Then there were pre arranged "matches." They came in different forms but all the participants knew each other. There were guarantees or freeze outs. A guarantee required each shooter to put up an amount of cash and play would continue until someone had lost their "stake," or we agreed to just give up and quit. Ah, the morning light into which I squinted as I left the tavern following one of those marathons, pure nostalgia, that memory. A freeze out required a specific number of games to be won for a set amount of cash and didn’t take 12 hours or more to play, like best of 51 or some such. The pressure of your cash going to the other guy is a whole other world and that’s the other kind of "good."

At the risk of beating this to death, I’ll finish like this. I’ll stick with basics in this article. Stuff you’ll need to improve to a level that will make you the person people will least likely want to play in a league match, then if you want to move on from there and you think a word or two might be helpful as you go, get back to me.

OK, here we go.

Practice! What’s it for? What do you practice, really? What is it you want to get right? Well, practice is for discovering, developing, refining, perfecting and maintaining your "stroke" and that’s all. That’s the totality of it. If you buy into what I suggest you will step in line at some point along the path I’ve just laid out. Maybe at the beginning, discovering, or at the end, maintaining, but you’ll fit in somewhere. Practice as I recommend will develop your mechanics to the best you can get them, then keep them sharp. Becoming a "good" dart shooter involves much more than the mechanics though, and will take another article.

If you disagree with what I have to say, that’s your prerogative and you have the right to your opinion. But, if you can’t demonstrate a history of achievement at the highest levels of competition, or aptitude for the game through playing a consistent 9 to 12 dart 301 double in, double out game, then challenging my opinion would be akin to a high school grad challenging a professor. Better to just sit in the corner, listen and keep your opinion to yourself!! There are so many know it all's with little talent I just had to get that off my chest.

Back to the good stuff. Your stroke. Fluid is a description that comes to mind which is something all great players have in common, in any sport. The well shot dart just seems to happen, and in some measure that is how it occurs, but you can believe there is a lot of refinement that goes into the finished product. "Stroke, when it’s there you don’t even notice it, when it’s not you may not know it, and while it’s being developed can ruin your concentration on the game." (That’s a quote from my book). Suffice to say you need a stroke, and in fact already have one if you play my sport, but it might be hindering your progress. How would you know if your stroke might be holding you back? You can’t seem to beat the best ones - that’s how. That’s the complaint you have in the first place. In the worst cases, you can’t even beat the worst ones. I’m an absolute advocate of a refined stroke, which I’ll describe: The dart is drawn toward your face along a flat plane, not yanked or jerked, then held briefly within your vision range while you focus on your target, then launched (or pushed if you prefer) toward the board along a flat plane and released at the farthest point of your arm’s length. I’ll not spend any more time on "stroke" since that’s a different subject than practice. If you wish I’ll visit that at another time for you. For now I’ll assume you’re content with your stroke and want to know about practicing with it.

I’ll keep is simple, since I’m that kind of guy. Practice comes in two phases: stroke development and accuracy.

Practice for developing your stroke:

The goal is to shoot each dart exactly the same so when the darts are in the board all three barrels are touching: a group shot. A group shot is a great thing, especially when the first dart is in the triple twenty, but it is really three separately shot darts. Developing this repetitiveness requires a practice session which does not pit yourself against yourself nor requires you to hit any specific target. It is one which allows the stroke you have to become ingrained in your brain so you don’t have to think about it. And it’s not muscle memory, muscle doesn’t have memory. The person who thought that gem up must be the same one who came up with atheticism, which isn’t even a word (my spell checker confirms that). I suggest you set aside a length of time you can be alone in front of your dart board. The length of time you choose is up to you. No kids, no wife, no TV, no music - silence. Silence so you can "hear" your stroke. Silence so you can "feel" your stroke. Above all darts is a "feel" thing. Whether right or wrong a dart shooter can "feel" the shot before it leaves their hand.

Training regimen for your stroke: You will shoot at frames 15, 17, 16, 18, 20 & 12. You will look at the triples but keep in mind the object is not to hit the triple, it’s to gauge how well the darts group. Of course you’ll want all three in the triple, otherwise what’s the point, right? You want to develop the confidence that if you put that first dart where you want it you can follow it with the next two and that requires developing a repetitive stroke. You will shoot at those frames for the length of time you’ve aside, as a minimum. This is an exercise, like playing the scale when you were taking piano lessons (piano lessons?). It’s repetition. You can use this as a warm up for actual accuracy practice too. Or before you begin a league match, or any time you want to "smooth things out," or get into the "zone." During your practice session get used to "listening" to your stroke, "feeling" it. Feel it when it’s right, and feel it when it’s wrong. Burn the thing into your brain. The groups you first shoot will show you how much work you need, I’ll bet. Retrieving your darts may be an exercise in reaching and stretching, at first, but it can turn into plucking all three out within one hand’s grasp, and how good will that be? I think you will, by now, have recognized that practicing and perfecting your stroke will be time consuming. You have no idea, yet! It tends to be boring, that’s why you set a time limit. If you find yourself bored, stop, stop it. You are no longer practicing, you are merely "throwing" darts. You are accomplishing nothing positive and in fact may be doing harm. I suggest that every dart you shoot will either contribute to your consistency or detract from it, it is never neutral. When I was growing up in darts I had the habit of completing a turn of darts during league play even when the last one or two darts meant nothing, like busting on the first dart but finishing the turn in spite of that. Looking back on that in preparation for writing my book I realized I was really still practicing even when I was in the middle of a game. How’s that for being weird?? I prefer committed to weird, thank you.

OK, now you have a regimen for managing your stroke, lets move on to perfecting accuracy with practice.

It seems, Eager, you need some help with dedication or at least with a scheme of practice which does not bore you so, here it comes. Unlike stroke practice accuracy practice is not timed, it is goal oriented. You will establish a given set of objective targets and not quit the practice session until all have been hit.

Assuming you are not practicing an imperfect stroke we’ll say you’re ready to work on accuracy when you are grouping darts at least within a 3 inch circle. Anything worse than that and practice for accuracy probably will not have much affect. You’ll get the satisfaction of hitting your target on occasion but you will not really be a player to contend with and certainly will not be confused with a dart shooter. A three inch circle is nothing to write home about but it is a good start.

Any practice session should build toward over all consistency and confidence. This comes from a state of mind which sometimes can be forced but most times not. If you don’t feel like it you probably will not get it done in a positive sense. If you can’t perfect your game in solitude, you will always be limited in what you can achieve. If you have the will I can give you the regimen.

Lets keep it simple, OK? Your practice will consist of hitting a set of numbers five times each within a loose time frame you choose. Before you head to the practice board will have to commit to finishing the session. You must discipline yourself to get through the whole session, all the numbers. The timing is merely a gauge for about how much time you want to devote. Never play against the clock. Never play against yourself, in any form. Set up a score board with doubles and triples which you think will take about the length of time you have decided to devote to practice. In the beginning you will be guessing so start with six. You can adjust the quantity as you get used to the regimen and learn how many numbers you can close within the time you’ve given yourself. I suggest the numbers you pick be the ones you most often need to hit while competing.

Your session will end when you have hit each of the numbers five times. Shoot for the first number with your first dart. If you hit it shoot for the second number with the second dart, if not, continue at the first number until either you hit it with one of the three darts of that turn or run out of darts. The object is to use left over darts from one turn at the next number plus the three darts that constitute the next turn, if you need them. You can "close" three hits in one turn: three darts, or you can blow five darts and not hit the blasted thing at all but you never shoot more than five darts at one number unless it’s the only one remaining. Imagine that!? Mark each hit on your score board and once a number is hit five times you are done with that one. You will end up with the numbers you find hardest to hit being the ones you finish last and shoot at the most. The numbers you have most difficulty with vary from session to session.

Good things come from this regimen if you discipline yourself and don’t give up when you begin missing. Stay with it, think about your stroke and what is not working. You will learn to "feel" the shot. Great stuff. Think about concentration, focus on a particular spot within your target double or triple. Your object is to finish the numbers, so finish them. You will learn about why you miss when you stretch yourself. You will learn how to overcome what ever is interfering with your accuracy. You will find you need to add numbers as your accuracy improves. You will be able to see yourself getting better. You’d better be patient with yourself, it takes time and the improvement is incremental.

As a guide: I used to finish 14 numbers in 40 to 50 minutes when I was really at it. I’d get toward the end of the session well ahead of my allotted time and get stuck on one or two numbers. I just couldn’t seem to hit them and that would add 10 to 15 minutes of struggle and agony. That was where the learning really occurs.

I’ve only touched on some of the things I could. There is more on practice mind set, stroke work and the whole mental thing but this time I dealt with your question: how do you go about beating the best, and gave you a starting place. Get back to me if and when you want more input.

Take this to the bank: playing at the bar with friends is not practice for your stroke, it is playing the game and getting better at it, granted, but it is no substitute for genuine practice.