Something a little different in the Friday night dart routine at Dolce Vita. Tom C. and Doug are on the first leg of their farewell tour, so the tourney was held in their honor. Yes, two more darters/Soldiers are leaving the land of the morning calm soon as they complete their tour of duty here. Both have been regulars at Dolce and their presence will certainly be missed.
The opportunity to bid them farewell in the darter tradition (a tourney) brought out the biggest crowd ever in the history of the Dolce Friday night competition. And the two kegs of free beer probably helped too! Lots of new faces, and it was also good to see the Goat out and about again. 32 players in all, so the bar was packed. Which was good, because it was damn cold last night. Hell, its been bitingly cold all week, with the high temperature hovering in the mid-20s F.
I drew my former Take it Easy teammate Matt as a partner. He’s currently ranked #1 in B division, so I thought we had a fair chance to finish in the money. We played some good darts, most notably against Alestair (a great player from Scotland) and his partner Natalie. He tried to mess with our minds with some psychological warfare techniques, but I just kept telling him “fook you”. Of course, his ability to pound the bullseye 5 at a time was a little more difficult to overcome, but Matt and I pulled it off to advance in the winners bracket.
Which led to our first encounter with Petro (number 1 in A division) and his partner Eric who is also a strong dart thrower. In the first cricket leg they jumped out to a huge lead in closed numbers and points. We fought back and were one bull from the win, but wired it and Petro closed the door. We took the ’01 game, but I lost the diddle and Petro called cricket. He then proceeded to throw a 9-mark and that was pretty much our ticket to the losers bracket.
We then faced the Goat and his partner Rod, a team I was surprised to see in the losers bracket as the are both outstanding players. Me and the Goat have a friendly rivalry going and our games our always close and hard fought. He has it in his head that he has beaten me one time more than I’ve beaten him, but I don’t think he is counting our tourney matchups. Regardless, he’s playing A division this year too, so I’m sure we will get the chance to face-off again soon. Last night Matt and I dispatched them 2-0 (although it took some great darts to do it).
That brought up Natalie and Alestair again. Pretty much an instant replay of our first match: three tough legs of back and forth leads. Alestair was itching for a chance to win the last cricket leg on the bullsyes (they had 3 to our zero, and needed two more to catch us on points). Matt burst his bubble though by throwing three single bulls for the victory.
Which led to our revenge match against Petro and Eric (who had inexplicably been beaten by Jay and Kyle). Well, revenge will have to come another night because we didn’t get the job done, being eliminated 2-0. That gave Matt and I 3rd place and W60,000.
Petro and Kyle went on to beat Jay and Kyle two times to take the tourney title. Petro also won the drawing for a bottle of Jack Daniels, so he went home very happy. Some guys have all the luck! But congrats anyway.
Alestair was spoiling for more darts and wanted another shot at me and Matt. He pulled out W50,000 and said let’s play winner take all. I was tired and had consumed my share of the free beer and wasn’t willing to play for those stakes, although I said I would go W25,000. Natalie had the good sense to say let’s keep it friendly, so we all put in a mahn won. Which me and Matt collected two legs later. And that was all the darts I wanted.
Had a late night meal of samgapsil and soju on the walk home and a final beer at the Opry and that was the end of a fun night.
The second leg of the Tom/Doug farewell tour is Sunday at Bless U. Petro talked me into playing in my first soft tips tourney next Sunday, so we will see what that is all about.
Ok, that’s about all I have to say on the subject. Yeah, yeah, I know I said too much. Deal with it.