Pub Darts Tournament

This year during BritWeek, Ye Olde King’s Head is pleased to present a traditional British Pub Darts Tournament! Qualifying games will take place on Tuesday, April 28th at pubs including the Cock & Bull, The White Heart, The Fox & Hound, Ireland's 32, Sonny McLeans, Scotland Yard and The Robin Hood. Winning teams from each pub will play in the final at Ye Olde King’s Head in Santa Monica on April 30th. Scroll to bottom of page for participating pubs, and check back soon for complete details!

ALL ABOUT DARTS

The game of darts dates back at least to the middle ages. The sport purportedly has its roots in contests between bored warriors who, during respites from battle, hurled spears at the upturned ends of wine barrels. As the pastime grew in popularity, so too did the need for a more critically marked target. The natural growth rings in tree stumps provided a built-in means of determining which spear was closest to the center, and as the tree dried out the cracks provided radial divisions within the target.

When winter forced the sport indoors, shorter darts and basic indoor rules were adopted. So popular did the new game become during the medieval period that it was taken up by nobility; in 1530 Anne Boleyn presented Henry VIII with a set of ornamented darts. Pilgrims are said to have played darts on the Mayflower (1620).

Darts maintained a strong military appeal, and its worldwide spread is credited to the British army, which took the game to every corner of the Empire as it grew.

The survival of darts as a pub game can be pretty accurately dated. Throughout the Victorian period, legislation prohibited games of chance (i.e. gambling) in pubs. In 1908, William "Foot" Anakin (a publican in Leeds, Yorkshire), was taken to court for permitting darts to be played in his establishment. He argued that darts was not a game of chance, but a game of skill. To prove his point, he set up a board in the courtroom, threw three darts in the 20 and invited any magistrate to do the same. When they could not (darts is, after all, not as easy as it looks!), the court was forced to accept that darts was indeed a game of skill rather than chance, the case was dismissed and the laws were eventually changed.

From the turn of the century to WWII darts grew in popularity as a pub game. Regular leagues were organized and competitions took place on a regular basis (the most prestigious of these competitions was that organized by the News of the World newspaper in 1927). A National Darts Association was formed in 1954 and today it would be hard to find a pub in Britain without a dartboard.