There was in interesting article in the paper the other day. It was about the world champion dart player, who happens to live in San Bernardino. His name is Paul Lim and in his career he's earned well over a million dollars. He picked up the game in England's pubs and then moved around quite a bit, ending up recently in Hong Kong where he won $130,000 in one competition alone.
I was never particularly good at "the arrows," when I used to go to the pubs in England. For a start I was a saloon bar fellow and mostly dart boards hung in the public bars. I did play from time to time and although not a total fool at it, it was not my game. It also required a certain dexterity in the arithmetic department which made it doubly difficult for me. All that counting back from 301 and having to start and end on a "double."
The game has changed a lot these days. No longer are the darts sharp-pointed or the board made of cork like the one here. Today, soft-nosed darts are thrown into a rubber electronic board that keeps the score for you, and for international matches scores are automatically logged onto a central computer to keep all the stats. It seems that even in the lowly world of the dart player, progress is all around. We have a big dart competition held locally every year at Nottinghams in Big Bear, and one thing I have noticed that has not changed - dart players all drink like hell!
