A Good Marker Always Beats A Good Player:
(Or So They Say!)

This little gem of a darts saying is born from the inability of many team members to mark a board accurately. There are two ways of looking at it; The first is one that almost certainly never happens and is when a marker deliberately records the wrong score to give his home team an advantage and help them to finish. In the great sporting world of darts the second possible origin is probably the true one and that is when the marker simply gets the score wrong through miscalculation giving one side or another a little extra on their score. This happens all too often with large scores that people struggle to work out as they are not hit that frequently in pub darts. That brings me to my match the other night when my doubles partner and myself almost lost due to a “Good Marker” for the other side.

The match concerned was at my old home venue against one of their teams that had been there when I played for one of their other sides, so we all knew their players well. In fact I had known some of their players for twenty odd years including the said marker who’s brother and partner I played!

My team had already won the match in the singles by taking 5 out of the 6 games which meant that my captain decided to put on the reserves in the 2 doubles games. Drawing for partners, I played with my buddy and we got off to a quick start that put us at our ease, but we still managed to screw up the finishing and lose the first leg. We started a little slower in the second and were struggling towards the end. They were on a smallish shot for out and I needed 95. Very un-confidently I went for the treble 19 hitting a single, but then dropped in a treble twenty. A lucky double 8 right in the corner of the wire evened up the score. Up for the third and final leg my fist dart went in the tops to break, followed by two treble twenties, a beautiful 160 start. My partner followed up with a very nice little ton and we were flying. We then hit a couple of smaller scores and I thought, “Not too worry, they must be a mile behind.” I was so out of it I hadn’t even noticed one of their side had hit a 140 and got quite a shock to see that they were not far behind. Suddenly everybody went quiet as we came down the last few points and my mate went for our last free shot at tops before they had a go at an easy finish. Luckily he dropped it in first dart just like a pro, but afterwards, as hands were shaken, my opponent’s brother, who had been marking, came up and said, “You didn’t notice the 240 score that our player hit did you,” roaring with laughter he continued, “I thought I would give them a bit of a chance as you were so far in front!”

He was joking of course and added that in the heat of the moment he had mistakenly taken an extra ton off! The orange marking pen for the infamous “White Board,” was drying out so badly nobody had been able to see the scores in the rest of the room to spot the deliberate error.

Perhaps we wouldn’t have laughed about it if we hadn’t already won both the match and our own game! This was one occasion though, when, "A good marker didn't beat a good player!"