[Johnny K, how are you? Guess who’s sitting here with me right now? George Silberzhan. He wrote that book “How to Master the Sport of Darts,” yea, yea, you’ve seen him down at the Ray Chesney I’m sure. He’s sitting here interviewing me about American Darts, the leagues. No. yea, you should get it today or tomorrow. Two O’clock? OK, now you know what it’s for, that’s me. Specialty. I didn’t put a note in there or anything Yea, yea, yea, OK. He cut his teeth on American Darts. Oh, yea. I was just telling him you shoot every Thursday in the North Side League. Do you shoot electronic darts somewhere? Occasionally, or you still do? At the Towers, right? OK. There’s no organized bristle boards up there, right? Not that I know of. You all go over to Richie’s or you go home to shoot, right? You go to a tournament to shoot bristle right? So your skill level comes from where? You know right where it comes from, absolutely, here tell him.]
Hi Johnny K Congratulations on your shooting. Ah, I think I know the answer to this but I need you to tell me. Where does your skill level come from, how did you get to it? That’s what I thought. Uh huh, I undertand that. Can you speak for Darin about this? You both have the same background, right. OK, that’s terrific, I won’t hold you up any more. Thanks very much. You need to talk to George Haines again? OK, hang on.
OK Johnny, hey, good luck in Vegas next week. You’ll qualify. Bear down, OK, have a good one, right see you now.
He has to go out to Vegas Sunday to qualify. He didn’t get a free ride this year.
I read in your book, and you’re absolutely right, in American Darts there’s no strategy to it, at all. It’s repetition, it’s all offense. And the good thing is, you can tell if you’re getting better, strictly by the numbers, ’cause you can’t beat anybody any other way. It’s just the more points you score, the higher your average will be. Obviously Johnny K’s skill level comes from American Darts. He’s played since he was a kid, his dad taught him and his brother, and when he got older his dad would take him to the fire house. You know, he got to playing with the guys, he couldn’t shoot in the league at first, you had to be 21 in order to soot because they generally serve alcohol at these establishments. Then when he got to be 21 he joined the league and he was pretty good right out of the blocks.
Some others who came out of there were Jerry Umberger, Jim Watkins, Rick Nye. Rick shot in our A.B.D.A. tournament last year. The first time I met Jerry was at the PA State Dart Tournament. He was the player I was supposed to cover. I didn’t know who he was, really, and I was shooting one of my better games, ’cause I wasn’t intimidated, I just didn’t know who he was. Then finally somebody said, you know who you’re covering here, Jerry Umberger. I said, who’s he and they said well, he’s the winningest active professional dart player in the world right now. Our world wasn’t really the whole world, of course, just America and mostly American darts. I think he only beat me by one dart the first game then I fell off to my normal kind of average after that.
