Queen of Darts | Hacker News Reader

Queen of Darts

victoryjournal.com

15 pointsaxiomdata3166 comments

Do men hold any sort of competitive advantage over women in darts (physical or otherwise)?

Do professional mixed competitions exist (where women actively face men in competition)?

I understand that on average there are differences in eye structure that make women better at color differentiation and men better at hand eye coordination, but I've never checked with a real source on that

Simple solution: Rainbow Darts! Gender-balanced, prettier, and adds LGBT representation right into the game!

Almost certainly, the bigger factor is that the league darts, is totally dominated by large groups of partially-inebriated, sometimes hostile, men. A woman who sets off to become good enough at darts to play and win at the tournament level has to spend time in league darts learning strategy. During her time in league dart she will spend some time beating guys who react poorly to the thought of "losing to a girl".

Two women qualify for the PDC’s world championship every year (https://www.pdc.tv/news/2019/06/10/womens-qualifiers-dates-c...). (I think they are free to qualify through the normal tournaments, too)

I’m not aware any of them ever won a match (but I also don’t follow this closely)

Also, this article seems to be about the top women playing in the BDO. Like in boxing, darts has multiple organizations organizing a world championship. Most of the really good male players play in the competing PDC. Comparing http://www.dartsdatabase.co.uk/PlayerDetails.aspx?playerKey=... (profile of one of the players featured in this article) with http://www.dartsdatabase.co.uk/PlayerDetails.aspx?playerKey=... (best female player I could find) that may not be the case here, but Lisa Ashton at her peak seems to have been a better player than Mikuru Suzuki is today.

Regarding competitive advantage, I don't think so but that's just an opinion without any backing in data. But that is an educated opinion, which I'll justify later. Regarding Mixed competitions, at least in the US, the answer is yes. There are traveling American Darts Organization (ADO) tournaments that feature mixed singles and teams events like the Witch City Open.

I played league darts for about twenty years in the U.S. I had the privilege of knowing the First and Second ranked woman darters in the U.S. ten years ago. Either of them could tell you about games where they frustrated a male opponent who thought he was "just playing a girl".

To reverse that opinion I'd have to meet a Female darter who practiced as much as the highly skilled Male darters I know and still had a lower point-per-dart average. But in the US, that's not likely because everyone starts in league darts. league darts can be a "boys only club" depending on your team so the nature of the lower levels can be a little off-putting for woman.

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