heywoodu

No Grand Slam, so Halep can play well and take the 1st place

Oh yeah, well that's actually not so difficult Once upon a time, there was a big darts family, the BDO (British Darts Organization). Then there was a fight about money and stuff (what else is new), and a handful of players (including now legend Phil Taylor) broke off and formed the PDC (Professional Darts Corporation). For quite a while, the PDC was more obscure and, apart from Taylor, the BDO had the best players. This, however, changed, and more and more players switched to the PDC simply because there's a whole lot more money to be made there. Especially since 10-15 years there has been a mass exodus from the BDO to the PDC, resulting in now basically all of the world's best players playing in the PDC, their tournaments being shown on TV and the BDO being the obscure one. BDO has the Lakeside (formerly known as The Embassy) as it's world championship, the PDC has the, well, World Championship as it's world championship. The level in the BDO is way lower nowadays and maybe 1-2 of their players would have a shot at being a top-20 player in the PDC. Also, whenever someone in the BDO is playing well, the rumours about him switching to the PDC start and in some cases turn out to be true. The advantage of the BDO is seeing players from more countries, the big disadvantage is that quite often these players bring a level that, for someone who is used to the PDC, is almost painful to watch (imagine watching Diamond League athletics all the time and then watching national events with 100m being run in barely under 11 seconds by the men). WDF is the darts federation that's part of SportAccord (or whatever it's current name is, GAISF?), but doesn't have their 'own players' like the BDO and PDC. Mostly it's BDO players in their tournaments because PDC players are busy with serious stuff (like the World Grand Prix of this week), but I do think PDC players are welcome as well (two Russians who played in the WDF World Cup this week are PDC players). So, in very short: - PDC and BDO are arch enemies - PDC is the top level, this is where the action's at - BDO has a way lower level, but does have some more attention to women's darts (PDC has no women's tournaments) and to youth development (PDC does have a Youth Tour, but only for the best of the best, BDO is more about 'spreading the sport') - WDF is the body that, if darts would ever be Olympics, would probably represent them at SportAccord/GAISF/IOC etc Fun fact: Every year there is the Grand Slam of Darts. The best PDC players in their ranking + finalists and winners of majors play against 8 BDO players (finalists/winners of majors and so on), which leads to some always interesting direct PDC-BDO matchups, outside of this event rather rare/non-existent.

Meh, Gurney and his annoying act through to the final, Henderson is out

Henderson got to 7 perfect darts

This is.....not very good.

Whitlock in the final after beating Suljovic, that was a beauty of a match. Now, let's go Big John

In Iran you mean? Cool that there's a lot of tournaments there, the Dutch commentators were briefly talking about that they're working hard especially on the junior's side to get some good level there It would definitely be nice to actually see some Iranian(s) on the major tournaments now and then, even if it's 'just' at the BDO (the low level professionals and the arch enemy federation of the PDC, which is where all the good stuff is). Every time a new country pops up that gets a +1 from me

I very much remember when they were really close to qualifying for Euro 2004, 'we' kicked them out in the play-offs and mostly the second match is remembered for being the breakthrough of the generation with the likes of Wesley Sneijder (I believe it was his first or at least one of his first international matches and he just took all of the team and led them in the 6-1 carnage, that was pretty cool )

Don't know if it was mentioned before, but Syria's 1-1 draw against Australia puts us all one step closer to seeing a USA - Syria play-off for a World Cup ticket

Those last two are just really bad luck, that first one looks more like an act of stupidity on the side of him and the goalkeeper So I vote for that one too

That's interesting and surprising

Plus next time own-goal-scorers like Skrtel might be retired

How about the chances for the Netherlands after Denmark beat Montenegro today? I know 'we' have to win both matches, of course.

Check these junior women results at the WDF World Cup, Iran is on fire http://worldcup-darts.jp/kobe2017/result/ @MHSN New obscure sport for you to know more about than 99,99% of Iranians

Henderson

Come on Big John

Suzanne Schulting collected 4 penalties last week and now on day 1 in Dordrecht she already has had her first one again..

Benito being great yesterday and awful today, surprise

A bit of darts history in the World Grand Prix. These are the quarter finalists: Note the complete lack of English players, that has never happened before in the quarter finals of a PDC major.

I'm not (well not anymore, I now know 'Banga' because I find the name funny) 1-1 against Zürich doesn't seem too bad though today. Do people at least know Gintra themselves by name, or is that an unknown as well? Here in the Netherlands the only women's teams people know by name are probably Ajax, PSV, FC Twente and sc Heerenveen but that's just because they are top tier teams in the men's league

Well this women's team, FK Gintra-Universitetas of Lithuania, is fun I happened to see them while checking out today's CL matches and holy moly, talk about dominance. The last time they lost a league match was in 2011, the last time they didn't win was a single draw in 2013. Last season and this season they score an average of 11 goals per match, including some results like 21-0 and 25-0 and quite a lot of 10+ matches (plus a rather mediocre three goals against per season) @Werloc Lithuania might have the most dominant team in a European 1st tier (men/women) football league http://nl.soccerway.com/teams/lithuania/gintra-universitetas/5399/

Apparently Iordache has suffered a very serious injury during warm-up and is out entirely

Olympic champion Sanne Wevers seems likely to miss out on the balance beam final.

Didn't they find abnormal values in his blood passport that needed investigation? That doesn't automatically mean someone used doping, but of course one can't compete while an investigation like that is going on. It's what can be called rather bad luck, and on to the future.

Oh well, getting a medal on the ice (not figure skating) is no unrealistic goal for France in Pyeongchang, so let's see how that goes.