[TheDaddy]

Originally Posted by Anonymouse

Depends on your own point of view, as Obi-Wan would have it.

I used to play in a pub team, started when I was (conspiratorial look) 16. This was years after a somewhat shaky start...and I was the one doing the shaking. Even at the age of 3 I had a scientific bent, and a yen to ask questions such as "What happens if I do this...?"
For no reason I can recall, I decided to find out what happens when you stick the point of a dart into a wall socket.
It goes without saying that I found out.
Never again, I swore (once I'd stopped shaking). But I still played darts with my Dad.
He was always a good player, and I picked up a lot from him - so much so that when a slot opened up in his team he suggested I fill it, and so I did. I think I won my very first match, 2 legs to 1.
We were never very good, usually the bottom of the league or thereabouts, but as the old cliché has it, we didn't care 'cause we enjoyed it - played more for the game than the win, though of course a win was extremely welcome and we always did our best.

Except one night when we were playing against the top of the league - a foregone conclusion, one would think. We certainly did, not that we cared much. We were pragmatic about it: if we lost we lost, and if we won...well, that would certainly upset the league.
Of course, as a Hollywood tale would doubtless have it, we were bound to win as we were the underdogs. I think I made a joke in that regard. "Yeah, but really, that sort of thing just doesn't happen in real life."

Oh yes it does.

In my X-Men fanfic, Rebirth, Wolverine growls to a guy, "There's a reason why clichés become clichés, bub." Sir Terry Pratchett was fond of million-to-one chances and the underdog, so he'd have loved what happened.

Against all the odds, we won. Made the front page of the Buff, a publication for our leagues as well as dominoes, pool etc. It came down to the last darter, and Kevin was generally not the most reliable of players, to put it mildly.
But he won 2 legs to 1. That gave us 8-7 (a bad start; Vic, our first and oldest player, lost 0-3, though Dad evened it up by winning 3-0) and a win!

The Buff, it sounds like a paper version of The Indoor League, I loved that show, Fred Truman with a pipe and pint, shuffling over to the bar skittles table or darts without the trebles

Originally Posted by Paul

I used to play Darts & Dominoes for our local club in the 1990's.

It would be fair to say I wasnt that good at darts, and was generally always the last player.
Even so, I certainly won as many as I lost (the opposing last player was usually as bad, or worse).

I was better at dominoes, I (we) won the local league pairs competition one year, and I won the singles another year (still have that trophy in the loft).

They weren't expecting it back for next years winner then

My daughter got one for horse riding that we kept, it was so battered it only had one handle left so they bought another and let her keep it