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The response to the “Darts at Work” article was, in one word, unbelievable! We thank those who responded. We’re pleased to announce the winner, drawn at random – ADA member, Jim Kahre! Jim works for Fleishman Hillard a worldwide Public Relations firm. Jim provided the following information about his trials and tribulations of playing darts around his busy work schedule:
Darts at Fleishman Hillard – St. Louis
—By Jim Kahre
Larry introduced us to soft-tipped darts early in 2003. He put a dartboard up in his office and several of us tried throwing at it. Larry gave me a “free” board for my office and then proceeded to sell me and several others better boards plus other dart paraphernalia. Mark, Paul, Larry and I started playing darts after work regularly in my office soon thereafter.
 The first darts we played were x01 games. We keep score traditionally but we were computer guys with computers sitting all around so I built a score sheet in Microsoft Excel. The first version of the sheet counted down our scores to zero but we soon began adding extras like; PPD, darts thrown, rounds and then a message displaying the winner’s name when someone reached zero. After about a month or so, Larry introduced us to Cricket and of course we needed a score sheet for that too. I could make a sheet display a slash and an X but the circle with the X through it wasn’t part of any type font. Larry would never let us use anything but the correct marker so I modified a type font to include one.
Our score sheet continued to grow with our playing. We added buttons, spinners, macros and the cricket sheet displayed green symbols when a number was opened and red ones when it became closed.
We liked to play in teams of two and Randy began to play when one of when one of us four were missing. A couple of times we actually had six people playing at once but that is awfully crowed in a 12 by 12 office. Plus as Kathy our boss likes to say, “That is way too much testosterone in one place”.
For Thanksgiving of that year, our office had a party. We had games to play with prizes for winning them. One of the games was to throw a little dart at a turkey target. Mark couldn’t play but Larry and I both won turkeys that year.
At that time Larry was by far our best player so Mark and I thought it only fair to start compiling our wins after I sent Larry away to training. By time he came back, we had a big lead over him and because of the combination of our early lead, Larry not playing every day and our improved play, Larry has never quite caught up with us.
Our dart scoring system finally out grew Excel and I re-wrote it completely in FileMaker Pro. It is much easier to use now. The x01 scorer is an image of a dartboard. Clicking on a segment scores that value. For Cricket clicking on the number adds marks and scores where appropriate. There is also a Cutthroat version for three players and all three systems display and speak the winner’s name at game end.
Some were along the way smack talk entered into our games. Sometimes its funny, sometimes it’s crude but it is always designed to keep the opponent a little off their game. We know that we could never use smack talk in a league but we figure we are better prepared to play in a bar than anybody. Nothing can be more distracting than Mark talking like Larry’s mother.
Our little band of dart players continues with only a few changes. Paul moved to Chicago, Bryan started playing with us for almost a year before moving to San Francisco. Josh joined our organization and group last June and now he and Randy play regularly.
The only statistic that we regularly track is wins. Since March of 2003, we have played over 2,600 games…
Thanks, Jim. According to contest rules, you’ve won a Michelob AmberBock walnut backboard, a custom AmberBock bristle dartboard, a set of AmberBock darts, a one-year subscription to Bull’s-Eye News and a 2005 ADA annual membership!
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