What, No Handicap?
The second week of darts, I was the first to arrive followed by Jason and Josh. Then to my pleasant surprise were two of my friends who had nothing else to do that night but drinks some beer and to cheer us on. Next came Heather and Brian and even though Brian had not drank his six beers before showing up he still seemed ready.
We threw some warm up games and we stacked the jukebox before the other team even showed up. Chris, the owners of Trio’s had placed 14 free songs for us in the jukebox and we added our own dollars to fully control the music for the evening.
The other team appeared and did their warm up games. They were a nice group looking to have fun and like all hoping to win tonight. We would do what we could to make sure they did not come out the winners tonight for we want to see our stats push us up to first place this year. We see the possibility of being number 1 this year but we are not going to let that get in the way of having fun.
The evening did start out with a problem. It was none of our doing or the other teams but it was definitely going to change the evening. The league had not updated the states for the week and here we were ready to play handicap league with no handicap figured in. We were the better of the two teams so we should have given up some points at the beginning of some of the dart games. As it was we were still playing with everybody at the same level. Mostly unfair to the other team and they may have won more than three games but who knows how the handicap would have affected how we would play the game.
The other team protested the match for the evening and I did not blame them. If I were in their place I would have done the same. We wrote one the score sheet what was wrong and I put a note on the envelope as well. They also said they would call the league office the next day. One thing they did not do was to place $10.00 in the envelope for protesting. If the board of the league upholds your protest they refund the $10.00, if not you lose the money.
Was I wrong not to notify the other team how to protest a game? I would have gladly given them my rule sheet for them to follow but they never asked. More to the point the captain of that team should have known the rules. I would have told them if they asked. But I felt I did not have to volunteer this information which could only hurt my team. I say you need to know the rules or at least have a copy you can read handy if there is a question. I do feel somewhat sorry about keeping my mouth shut because they are nice people and I do think this is all about fun. For me though I saw where the line of my loyalty to my team and fair play was drawn. If you disagree please email me for while I have lost no sleep over this I still feel not quit clean for this action.
This brings up an important concept: what supplies do you take to a dart league night. 1. Money to pay for the league dues, for the jukebox, and to buy beer. 2. Quarters, now this is not the same as money. You need six quarters in our league to pay for a night of playing and then there is always the warm up games before hand and wind down games afterwards. 3 Darts, now this should go with out saying. Pretty simple really.
May Your Darts Always Fly Straight,
Dave