Games Over 3 Legs.

As with most sports the higher that you go in competition the longer the duration of the match. At the very highest levels of darts you not only play over many legs, but the game is broken down into many sets, each consisting of a number of legs. County and Super League matches are played over 5 legs for each player and there is a trend to make ordinary pub league games run over 3 legs per player. Bearing in mind that the standard of some grass roots players is not very high, to put it politely, this can cause problems of over running the allocated time for the match.

Only a few weeks ago I played in an ordinary pub league match that would normally be finished by half past ten, sandwiches and all, and it was 11pm before the game was even over, never mind when the snapping was gone. In this particular league we used to play 6 singles and 3 doubles games each of one leg, but the last couple of seasons we have gone over to best of 3 in the singles. In an attempt to reduce the time of the match the doubles games of 501 were left as single legs. Even so the match could consist of 21 legs if all the games were to go to 3 legs each instead of 9 legs as it used to be. The difference in duration of the match is not quite as much as it might seem though, because I must point out that it is quicker to play 3 legs than 3 individual games because the players don't have 15 or 20 warm up darts between each leg.

One of the main reasons given for switching to 3 legs instead of one straight leg was that it would give players a much better night of darts and as was pointed out single leg games are often over in 12 or 15 darts giving the players only 3 or 4 minutes on the board in a night.

Some leagues have reduced the number of games to accommodate the extra legs per player. This has had the added benefit of making it easier for teams to fill a side because they need fewer players. From this has come another minor benefit in that it means that a whole team can travel in one car to a match. Some leagues have thought that with less players needed for a side more teams would enter the league. But this is not always the case as one men’s league found out when they went down this road a few years ago. They did have more teams the first year, but the second year a lot of teams decided that they did not like the format and dropped out leaving the league much smaller than before the change.

Landlords have also commented that with fewer players in the teams there would be less beer drunk on the night. I know that one Landlord used to comment on the amount that the smaller pool teams used drink. We are not in darts to benefit the landlords, but a lot of them now pay the match fees and contribute to the league in other ways such as providing free sandwiches for the teams and free prizes for presentation nights. Some also permit the free use of their function rooms for the leagues larger events.

To facilitate a larger number of legs per match some leagues start their matches earlier than they used to, but a lot of players like a later start to give them time to get home from work (specially farmers in the summer) and get ready for the match.

P.S. After watching the new Bullseye TV Prog on the Challenge channel on SKY last night I don't understand why there is a problem with the time taken for 3 legs of darts. Keith Deller, who admittedly was the youngest ever winner of the Embassy World Championship at the age of 23, said on Bullseye that he had completed 3 games of 301 on Roy Castle's Record Breakers some years ago, in 97 seconds. I know he used to be quite good, but the lads in our Premier division tell me that they are good darts players and they take about 12 to 15 minutes on average for 3 legs. Perhaps they are not as good as they think!