Mine's a Double

Last night saw an amazingly close double's battle to see who will represent Selecta in the Double's Competition to be held next week. Go Rampage!

Our old favourite is now even better!

That's right: The Horse & Groom on Great Portland Street has a new board! Plus there was an addition next to the electronic scorer - a how to finish table. Fantastic! With nice cheap beer and lovely food we were onto another great Monday night.

First off we all downed an initial pint to summon up the gut's to persuade Dave to move some locals out the way so we could play. Cheers Devastating.

Next came the complicated part - how to choose the pairings. Random? Everyone choose? No-way. With 6 of us there: Naked, Rampage, Gigolo, Bags, Devastating & Houses we went for the well known triple-way cross-over round-robin into final standard tournament.

Stage 1:

The first stage involved spitting into two groups of 3. Via a high-quality bull-off we had in group 1:

Rampage
Gigolo
Devastating

and in group 2:

Bags
Naked
Houses

In each group the players played each other twice (home & away) at 401. The singles games were of a good standard with Rampage hitting a 138 High Score, Bags a 97 Checkout and best-of-all Gigolo a 3 Low Score.

The results were as follows - No. of games won and then points against decided the order.

Group 1:

Rampage - 3 wins 1 loss
Gigolo - 2 wins 2 losses
Devastating - 1 win 3 losses

Group 2:

Naked - 3 wins 1 loss
Bags - 3 wins 1 loss
Houses - 4 losses

Some surprise results there! It should be pointed out that all the games were pretty close. Great fun. Devastating's form was all over the place with him crashing to third place!

At that point Psyche turned up to make the evening even more complicated: 7 players - what do we do? We had decided that the third place people in each group would form one pair. There was going to be a playoff between them and Psyce to decide but at that point Houses called it a day.

Sadly the 4 losses had taken it's toll and Houses was still clearly recovering from the Houses House House party from the previous weekend. With so many women turning up to it, Will was quite exhausted by the end apparently!

Therefore the bottom pair was decided: Devastating & Psyche.

I hope everyone is keeping up with the selection process. It's all very simple.

Stage 2:

The next stage involved the first vs second playoffs to decided the top pair and middle pair. Each game was a single leg 401.

Rampage vs Bags

Another close game saw Rampage getting the double very quickly. No messing.

Naked vs Gigolo

Gigolo showed some good form to take the victory.

So we had our other two pairings:

Top pair: Rampage & Gigolo
Middle pair: Naked & Bags

Stage 3:

Finally we were able to have the round-robin doubles tournament. Best-of-3 301.

Match 1:

Naked & Bags vs Rampage & Gigolo

A close couple of games saw Bags & Naked (with a nice 3 darter) bag the two doubles to take the match 2-0.

Match 2:

Devastating & Psyche vs Naked & Bags

Aftre being very confident about their finishing all night long Bags and Psyche fell to Earth. Dave and Mark winning 2-0. Nice.

Match 3:

Rampage & Gigolo vs Devastating & Psyche

An on fire and determined display saw Rampage and Gigolo win 2-0. All that the other pair had to do was get one leg but no! With the pressure on the Rampage & Gigolo showed their stuff (not literally).

Crazy! We had a tie! How to decide which pairs should be in the final? Gigolo knew: The famous 6 darter! Drawing random turns to throw everyone threw 3 darts and the pairs added the total together. It got to the point that Naked & Bags were safely through and Rampage was left with the final throw. He had to get 33 or higher to put Devastating and Psyche out. But disaster! First throw: 2 Second throw: 1. At this point no-one could quite believe it with most people having to sit down they were laughing so hard. A valiant last throw at the bull saw Rampage hit the outer ring: 25. It was a sad way to drop out and see Selecta's No 1 miss out - but he has got the high score trophy to collect next week!

The Final:

With 10 minutes to go and some spectators (2 guys who came along to play table footy but were so impressed they stopped to watch!) watching it was time for the final (at last). It was to be Best-of-3 301.

Naked & Bags vs Devastating & Psyche:

Once again Bags & Naked just couldn't find there doubles that had come so easily earlier in the evening. With Bags sure it was something to do with 5 pints and not his ability he forgot that they had already lost 2 legs thinking there was one more left! Pathetic. A close D1 battle was well taken by Psyche and Dave. Well played lads. We'll be cheering you on next week!