Thursday, August 22, 2024
Column HR464
Gambling on darts?
Yes, darting fans, there is gambling on darts. Some may take the attitude of Captain Renault from the movie Casablanca. A little background…
During World War II, Casablanca, which is in North Africa, was under the administration of the French Vichy Government which cooperated with Germany. Technically, they were neutral but definitely pro-German.
Capital Renault, as the Casablanca police chief, was forced by the Germans to close down Rick’s Café for gambling. While receiving his table winnings, he said: “I’m shocked, shocked to find out there’s gambling going on.”
For years, betting has been a part of darts. Now it has become an important and integral element of the game. Whether it was “play you a game for a beer” or “I’ll play you best of 25 for $100” gaming has always been present.
Currently, one could argue that the rise of the PDC is partly powered by gaming interests. For the fans, being able to dress like every day’s Halloween and party like it’s New Year’s Eve also played a part. NO problem.
As PDC events are on TV they also cater to the international betting public. It’s no wonder as wagering in Europe is usually limited to footbol (soccer in civilized countries), horse racing, snooker and dog racing. Darts is on almost weekly.
While embracing gambling has many benefits there are also dangers. The dangers? The suspicion of “fixed matches” or “final score lines.”
The upside, at least for the PDC, comes with sponsorship which then equates to increased prize money for players. This has made players rock stars and rich.
The allegation of altered matches, whether true or not, can cause havoc in any sport. Recently uncovered were fixes in both footbol (soccer) and cricket (the one with bats and a wicket, not arrows). For darts it would be a stab in the heart.
There were always some suspicions of fixed matches and jiggered score lines. Gambling officials and dart organizations work together to eliminate this danger. As an example, say the Old Dart Coach was playing a top player best of 5. If money came in for the ODC even Ray Charles would know that something fishy was going on.
Darts is difficult to monitor as even great players can have trouble with those “dastardly doubles.” When this happens, the win may end up recorded as 6-4 when, because of one player’s ability, it should have been 6-nil. The losing better may yell fix.
Look at the recently concluded PDC New Zealand Darts Masters. Rob Cross was in a first-round match against Kiwi Haupai Puha…
Puha is a player of considerable talent. They were tied at 3. Cross then got to 40, missing the d20 with 2 – leaving 10. Puha then missed 3 from 24 followed by Cross missing 3 from 10. This allowed Puha to win the leg in 22 darts. Cross finally won 6-5. One not familiar with darts might question the final 6-5 score as fishy, especially if they had bet on a Ross win with a 6-3 score. “Cross should have won the match 6-3!” Nope.
Who won in New Zealand? That would be Luke Humphries who took down Dimitri Van den Bergh (6-4) and Michael Smith (6-4) to reach the semis. There he had a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot battle with Luke Littler. Humphries led 1-nil after a Littler missed bull.
Littler took advantage of a Humphries miss to level at 1. With a T42 Littler made it 2-1. Level at 2, the “fit hit the sham” as Littler rolled 4 on the trot to go up 6-4, getting to within two legs from victory. Humphries then took five in a row for the 7-6 win.
In the final Damon Heta took the first leg in the race to 8 but then got freight trained losing 8-2 as Humphries averaged 102.21 and checked at a 53% rate.
Gaming on darts came up last week with the suspension of 18-year-old Leighton Bennett. In August, Bennett was suspended from all DRA (Darts Regulation Authority) events, including PDC events, for allegedly suspicious betting patterns, which breach betting and integrity rules.
Bennett was one of those tabbed to be the next great thing. He was the 2019 BDO Youth Champion, gaining his PDC Tour card for the years 2024-25. Using his PDC tour card, he had little success in three events.
The suspension came as Bennett was playing in Modus Series events. Modus is a management company for many star players including Michael van Gerwen, Fallon Sherrock, Peter Wright, Joe Cullen, Mikuru Suzuki and Gerwyn Price, among others.
The Modus Series joined with the Amateur Darts Circuit to present a weekly full meal of darts on Sporty Stuff TV and YouTube. Each week they have 12 players Monday through Wednesday in round robin play with group winners playing Saturday night in the weekly finals. Saturday winners qualify for a grand final, held once a year, where the winner collects £25,000.
The Governor (Roger Nickson) posted the following on the Bennett situation: “What I never understand is the lack of knowledge of the betting world people who try going bent. The bookies have the best early warning system in the world and when people try to get big money on for minor events that don’t usually attract that amount of interest they smell a rat straight away. Yet they still try it on, and you can bet it was not the player who came up with the idea.”
As usual, The Sultan of Sittingbourne (Dave Whitcomb), took a realistic view of the situation: “I would have thought a substantial amount of money was involved otherwise match fixing is extremely hard to prove. However, he is innocent until proved guilty and I hope he is innocent. If not, then he’s a very silly boy”.
Here in the Colonies, legal gaming on darts is minimal. One main reason is that it’s impossible to bet on ADO events, mainly because of the format. The CDC has the format with limited “legal” betting the CDC.
One can only imagine what gaming and sport had to say when they partnered. Perchance they looked back at Casablanca. The movie closes when Rick (owner of Rick’s Café) says to Captain Renault: “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
Stay thirsty my friends.
