Well, we faced off with the league leading gents from XOX at Friends Bar last night. It was a bit of a grudge match for us as they had destroyed us 28-9 earlier this season. We came out with a 20-17 victory which satisfied our thirst for revenge.
I contributed a 6-6 effort, which although middling, I feel pretty good about. I drew YK, their top ranked player, in both of my singles matches and came out 2-4. For the most part I threw strong darts, but YK is tough to beat when he is on his game, and he was pretty much on his game last night.
The highlight of my night was in the final mixed doubles (501/cricket) match. Dan and I took on HK and Mr. Lee and we beat them at their own game. That is to say we pointed mercilessly in both cricket legs. XOX is a Korean team and their style of play is more aggressive than most. Generally speaking, most players will not continue pointing after they have a “comfortable” lead. For me, that’s one bull (25+ points) for others it’s a two bull lead. The XOX guys will continue pointing until you’ve closed the number. I’m not sure it is a good strategy (although as mentioned, XOX is leading the league), but it can be damned disconcerting if you let it get into your head. So, I think we surprised them a bit last night by giving them a taste of their own medicine.
Anyway, it was a sweet victory indeed.
I said in my earlier post there was a lot of darts on tap this weekend. There was, but not as much as I had anticipated since our Sunday make-up match against Kaibigan was once again postponed (this time at the request of Kaibigan). The cancellation did not occur until game time, and we had been warming up at Gecko’s for over an hour so that kinda sucked. Since the Rubbies were all dressed up and ready to play we played a little 301 game amongst ourselves. DIDO, but with a little twist in that once you were under 100 points you had to double out on one throw. Failure meant going back to 301 and adding another thousand won to the pot. I really hated that game after a couple of hours of frustration.
Saturday’s league doubles tournament was a bit of a disappointment as we only had 8 participants. So, the league leaders decreed that we would shift to a round robin format instead of double elimination. That meant we got to play more darts which is a good thing. Even better, all four teams would finish in the money (1st=120,000, 2nd=80,000, 3rd=60,000 and 4th=40,000). The teams were David and Lonnie, Seung Youb and Chris H., Mike and Ron, and me and Lucky. It turned out to be a very competitive match. Seung Youb and Chris finished with 6 legs won and 1st place, while David and Lonnie and me and Lucky had 5 legs each and a playoff round for second place. Which we won 2-1. Yeah baby!
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention we picked up a new player on Rubbies to take the recently departed Dave’s spot on the roster. While Dave was and is irreplaceable, we scored a major coup by picking up a former Rubbie–Billy. He is a great darter and more importantly a good and comfortable fit for our team. We are all feeling and playing with more confidence and have high expectations for success in the playoffs.
And that’s the way it is darts-wise.