Submitted by Dupes on July 31, 2008 - 10:24am.
Tagged:

• Soft-tip
• Opinion

There’s always been a dark side to our fun game of soft tip darts. Doesn’t seem to matter what league it is in either, but there’s always been those players that feel that they have to cheat in a way to be competitive. In Anchorage, once upon a time, the boards in control of those leagues used to issue out suspensions and try to keep things at a level playing field. That was a while ago, in my opinion the boards now days barely know how their leagues operate, not to mention all that goes on in them. Well, it’s time for that to stop, and I’m glad to see that NDA has drawn the line in the sand.

At the 2008 NDA Team Dart event, a CA team felt it was necessary to falsify their written stats so they wouldn’t be re-ranked. The team (not just the player), and the operator (oh yes, every one that plays under the operating business) has been suspended from playing in NDA Team Dart for the next 2 years. That’s a huge price to pay for a region. In fact, let’s say for the sake of argument, that a Vendalaska team did such a thing. That would mean no Team Dart for all its teams in Anchorage, the Valley and Fairbanks 2 years. All because of one person or a teams actions to try to “be competitive”.

It’s no longer in the interests of the players to allow cheaters within their leagues. If the boards controlling these leagues don’t stand up for themselves, they need to be replaced. Still it goes further than that, if the boards don’t police their leagues, the operator must protect its self from these leagues and cheaters. We’re talking about lost revenue for the operator, the bars that sponsor these teams / people and the lost chance for people to compete in Team Dart. Though, there’s many that would say that the pay outs aren’t worth going to Team Dart anyways, I don’t know why a whole league would risk it’s self to allow a cheater to compete for $500.00 anyways.

Lock these people that choose to cheat with high stats, forget what they’re capable of. If they think that cheating is their solution, we should offer them the other end of that window and lock them with a mandatory 30.0 / 3.0 for 2 years. If we loose that person and they stop playing darts, so be it, it’s not really a loose? Now that the operators are on the chopping block, I bet you’ll see a lot more interest in getting things policed again. Well at least I hope so……

“Dupes”