Cricket Strategy & Being Predictably Irrational

There are few dart-related subjects that will generate more debate than cricket strategy. For my non-U.S. readers, the dart game that we call cricket is called Mickey Mouse in England. I just received my new issue of Bullseye News and there were re-prints of Tony Payne's articles entitled "Thermonuclear Cricket."

What many of us enjoy about cricket is that it involves more strategy than the '01 games. Strategy counts a lot in cricket when players are scoring at close to the same level. What you hit on any given turn can effect what your opponent has to do. Tony Payne's old articles describe how he learned to best maximize his advantage to win the close games.

Now I will make a connection with what I have learned to call being predictably irrational. Don't worry- I will make a connection to darts soon! I am borrowing the term from a man named Dan Ariely, a professor in behavioral economics at the Massachutses Institute of Technology. Mr. Ariely wrote a book called Predictably Irrational, which I found fascinating. He also has a website (click here). He looks at common irrational everyday behaviors that people do in all sorts of areas, and conducts scientific experiments to figure out how often and why we do them. Some of the answers are surprising.

Now, the connection with darts. In cricket, people have many conflicting theories about what strategies are the most efficient for winning. Often, they are very wrong. Players decisions on when to point and when to close numbers are often misguided, and Tony's articles point out how you can exploit players who use irrational strategies.

One that I particularly like to use in a close match is the concept of not wasting marks. Let's say, for instance, an opponent hits 3 marks on 20 the first turn to close it. What should you shoot at? Many players would immediately try to close 20. Not Tony, because that is the "predictably irrational" choice. Tony points out that if you go single, single, triple (five marks) on the 20 that your opponent already closed, you are only getting credit for three marks. If you do the same on 19 (which is still open), you get credit for all five, closing and scoring 38 points.

So why are so many people fooled into taking the "predictably irrational" choice and closing 20's in that situation? Something in us wants to close the big number. It seems to make sense in our brain somehow, that if the opponent scores one 20 on his next turn, you will need two 19's for score to better it. That is clearly a bad strategy in our example though, because the one-point per mark deficit that you avoid by closing the 20 is very small compared to the 38 point advantage that you get by scoring the extra marks on the 19.

Using Tony's strategy, it is clear that the player should not "waste marks" by shooting at numbers that the opponent has closed early in the game. If one player is wasting the marks in such a fashion, and one is not, the player who is not wasting marks will soon build an insurmountable lead if both are hitting equally well (of course, as Tony mentions, if one player is hitting many more marks than the other, even perfect strategy will not make a difference).

I remember when I was finally getting decent in cricket and averaging over three marks per round. I can recall plenty of practice games with Scott Wollaston where he would close 20's, I would close 19, he would close 18, I would close 17, etc. One would have all the odd numbers and the other the evens. We both knew Tony's cricket strategy and employed it. Luckily, very few others do. Until then feel free to exploit their predictable irrationality!