The GHS Tournament was held at Joker's in Philadelphia on Sunday, and I had fun participating. Everyone was divided into three groups, A, B, or C based on qualifier scores, as mentioned in the previous posts. With a qualifying score of 779, I ended up being the last person to miss the "A" group, which put me at the top of the "B" group. We each then played four matches, with the top four in each group advancing to group knockout rounds.
My first round match was against an A group player, John Newsome, who is a good dart player out of South Philadelphia and one of the top shooters in the Old English Dart League. John was hitting the triples well and easily beat me down to the double in each game. However, he was having trouble hitting the doubles, just enough to let me catch up. Fortunately for me, I hit my doubles right away and took an undeserved 3-1 win.
My scoring improved in my second match and my confidence with the doubles was still high, and I won 3-0. My third match against Erik was a mirror image of my first match against John. I beat Erik to the double easily in the first leg and kept wiring the inside of the doubles until I got stuck on double 1. Erik eventually caught up and took the leg. In the second leg, I again got to the double first, and after two rounds of misses Erik hit a nice 72 out (T12, D 18) to make me pay. I battled back, winning the next two legs and forcing it into a tiebreaker. I had a look at a 121 out but missed the set-up shot (T20, 14 instead of 11), and left myself 32. Unfortunately I did not get a shot at it, as Erik hit a big 94 out (T18, D20) to win that match.
Even though I came back with a 3-0 win in my fourth round match, it was not enough to finish in the top 4 of my group to advance. Four others had won all 4 matches. Close, but not quite.
It was a great day of darts. Everyone got to play at least four rounds against players of different calibers, with a handicap system in effect that spotted points. That made even the top players have to work for each game.
Jokers put out a nice lunch buffet for the dart players, incuding chicken, vodka penne, pasta salad, and baked ziti with cheese. George kept the tournament running smoothly and efficiently (see picture above) with every match laid out on a ticket in advance for each player. Once I get the final results, I will pass them on. After that, all eyes turn to Connecticut and the Mohegan Sun Casino for the PDC U.S. Open and the North American Darts Championship on May 16-18. Until then, good darts!
5 comments:
Sounds like you had a lot of fun and the tourney was well run... and they kept you well fed.
Just curious, with 33 dart scores of 675 and 713 what level (B,C, etc.) do you think those scores would have put me in?
Thanks for the update!
Dartdawg: those scores are decent and show an average of between 60 and 70 per turn. They would have put you square in the middle of the B group. My 779 was tops in B. Tops in A was a little short of 1100. The C group was for lower division players, and you would have needed a score in the mid 500's or below to land there. The system guarantees money to players in each group, and the handicap system gives everyone a chance. George's idea is to encourage new players to come out and try tournaments, and this seems to work better than other ideas that I have seen for that purpose.
Thanks Kevin.
Just short of 1100... long ways for improvement.
It really sounds like a smooth system to make everybody feel comfortable.
Good to see you had an enjoyable well run tournament to make the travel worthwhile.
I managed to get 867 in the 33 dart thing the other night with a really strong first 4 throws.
An 867!
Alright, that is my new benchmark the next few days.
Post a Comment