Darts People - Wayne Baker
Darts501.com first featured in the November 2005 issue of Darts World Magazine under the title of ‘Darts People’ written by Wayne Baker. This small article gives a flavour about this site and how it came to be written. But if you want to know a little more about the site and about me then read on.
Darts501.com web site and me!
I have played darts from a very early age. My grandmother and my uncle were very keen dart players and my grandmother in particular treasured the pub darts medal she won many years ago. I remember playing darts against her when I was about seven on an old paper coiled dart board pinned on the outside of the shed in my parents’ garden. I was using old brass darts with a dowel stem and feather flights. I believe my grandmother played with the same but also with paper flights (the ones you folded up “origami” style
- see flights page).
Picture of my grandmother Alice Pearson with my one of my bothers Michael aged
four months. This picture was taken in Stourport-on-Seven in August 1958.
Darts seems to run in the family but above all my uncle George King was very
keen player. He was a regular pub league player and won many a trophy within
south London and Croydon area.
My uncle George was very generous and I played darts against him a few time but
I will always remember him for giving me one of his medals as kid for a birthday
present. He had it engraved with my name and added the words ‘house champion’ on
it. I still have today.
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The picture to the right is of my late father (left) and
my uncle George. The picture was taken in the early 1970's at our family
home in Earlsfield, Wandsworth SW London.
George used to throw with very light brass darts, he
swapped them one night for a set of tungsten's and a fiver but admitted
afterwards he made the wrong decision. He said although he played very well
on the night of the swap he could never find consistency with them. |
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My First Experience of League Darts
I joined my first league darts team when I was eighteen. I played for Young’s & Co Brewery Tap, High Street Wandsworth, London SW18. It is now a brewery tour pub. At that stage darts was very popular and although my standard of play was reasonable, beating most of the players in there, I had to start in the third team. Most of the first team players were also district players who I loved to play against on a Saturday night.
Darts in London twenty plus years ago was played in most pubs until the late eighties when a lot of them either closed or turned into themed pubs. The traditional games were moved out in favour of pub restaurants and wine by the bottle. Teams disbanded and leagues reduced.
On a few Sunday afternoons I would play in a knock-out competition regularly winning a joint of meat for the Sunday roast. It was never beer; but this always seemed to go down well at home.
I moved to Lancashire in 1993 and I found the traditional pub games still very much alive. The themed pub had not got here yet and darts, dominoes, crib and dom were played regularly. The standard of play was also better than I was used to. You could see names chalked up on the chalk board and with the rules winner stays on you didn’t want to lose, it meant a least a forty five minute wait! This certainly made you concentrate and my standard of play improved no end.
I have played in several local leagues in Lancashire but confess I prefer
playing just for fun. I have never hit a 9 dart leg, but I have come close
missing double 12 on the 9th dart! later to complete the leg in 11 darts.
I will keep trying and some day I will manage this feat.
Development of Darts501.com
Although I have been a keen player I didn’t initially set out to write a site about darts. I was undertaking a City and Guilds web design course at college and I felt I needed to practice my web design skills prior, to taking the end of year exam. I thought of first writing a site about the village area I live in listing local shops, business, places to eat etc, with a view of possibly expanding this by writing sites for local business. But I realised this would be to big a project to do, so I thought I would write a site about the game of darts.
There are many well constructed and maintained dart sites on the net. Many of them are dedicated to professional players, Counties and local leagues. Most of them also report on dart events but there are few that speak about the equipment, dart boards of the past and present, how to change the points on darts and where to get a checkout chart for my local club. So I thought there was a missing gap which needed to be filled.
Initially I e-mailed all the major manufactures and the main governing bodies asking for graphic and link support. All were extremely helpful, Harrow’s and Winmau in particular providing me with many graphics and Harrow’s with their entire catalogue range they had at the time. I must have been a pain as I was taking up their time and their only reward was a link back to their main sites.
The one thing I wanted to do was to make sure the information I provided on the site was as accurate as I could make it. To this end I had contacted Patrick Chaplin (Dart Historian) and asked him a number of frequently asked questions. He was kind enough to allow some of his text to be used, but being quite tenacious, I some times question what is being presented as fact. I still feel we have come to accept a number of historical things regarding the game i.e. the existence Brian Gamlin
from Bury Lancashire and the truth or not behind the dart board numbering
system. Did he exist; did he invent the numbering system? If so for what board:
the Manchester board or London board? I haven’t read the claims presented the Darts World
issue 232 (1992) about Thomas William Buckle’s claim to invent the numbering system but I use both accounts on the site. I live near Bury therefore I believe I am best placed to make enquires, (time permitting). Patrick as been extremely helpful to me, not only is he also tenacious, he has been helpful in providing a copy of the rules to the old Winmau casino 301 board that I have reproduced on the site. I hope one day I may be able to help Patrick with his research and help answer some of the outstanding questions in the world of darts.
The Darts501.com site covers a lot of information that can not (at the time of writing) be found on other dart sites. One of the topics “how to change dart points” is a popular page read by many viewers. The most commonly used pages on the site is the dart checkouts, averages.
practise routines and rules. The site also contains over 80 other dart related pages; 28 pages dedicated to games alone.
The last thing I would say about the site is that it is easily translatable by clicking on the nationality flags available on all pages. I have also been contacted by other web site designers in the Netherlands and Russia asking for permission to translate and use some of my site content in theirs. I have duly said yes so hopefully the information available on Darts501.com will become more accessible to
more nations in the future.
I hope you enjoy the site feed back is always welcome.
Darts501.com was again mentioned in Darts World in May 2007 issue No 414 for my
work with the Oxford English Dictionary. I managed to supply enough evidence to
secure the popular word 'Dartitis' entry into the dictionary. Dartitis was
listed as a new word in December 2006, although the word as been used for more
than 20 years!
David King
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