Those of you who watched 18 year old Luke "The Nuke" Littler (18, MBE for "services to darts") win the £1,000,000 first prize at the recent World Darts Championship and then sign a £20,000,000 sponsorship contract must see we are missing out - contrast the couple of hundred pounds our players might win at a weekend tournament. The darts is moving out of the "Ally Pally" as it's too small so we need to think beyond the "LostpawnDudleyCopthorne" situation for chess.
Here are the basic rules for Chess/Darts 501 - they will, of course, need some polishing;-
- Each player to win with either have to score 501 at darts or checkmate his opponent in 5.01 minutes (no increments or resigning)
The darts rules are as now - start with 501 and finish on a double
The match starts with each player having three darts and then immediately move to the chess board where the arbiter starts the clock
As soon as one clock reaches 4.00 the players return to the dart board for another three throws.
This continues until a clock reaches 1.00 (by which time each player will have thrown 12 darts)
At that time we enter the "free for all" finale when the two opponents are either at the chess board or throwing darts.
The game ends when either player has scored 501 at darts ending with a double or checkmated his opponent or a player loses on time
I've noticed that in the darts most of the players seem to be male, overweight and resplendent in tattoos (incidentally that applies to the few female professionals as well). Chess has the opportunity to counteract this in every department.
Consequently I ask the ECF or more probably the 4NCL to immediately draw up proposals to put to the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) for a meeting to discuss - possibly on 1/04/2026.
