Maximus Decimus
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Posts
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Posts posted by Maximus Decimus
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On 19/12/2023 at 19:59, Gerrumonside ref said:
It’s surprisingly cheap too given the bill.
I’m unsure which provider to go with out of TNT or DAZN as both offering the same PPV.
If only all boxing PPVs were like this.
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What a great night so far.
Wilder was absolutely appalling! He's got to be done after this.
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Littler wins, and at one point the bookies went to 8-1.
Think they got uncharacteristically carried away and sure his odds will lengthen now.
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9 hours ago, Gerrumonside ref said:
Hes 10/1 and one of the favourites now with the bookmakers
This shows just how impressive it was. I was shocked though, after 1 game to be that short.
Tonight should give an indication whether that was justified or rather silly.
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There's often a criticism of round 1 that it's boring and predictable and tbf the first couple of days went that way.
This afternoon's session has certainly changed that. All 4 English players lost to foreign opposition including Wade losing to a much lower-ranked Canadian and Ian White losing to an unseeded Japanese player.
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1 hour ago, DavidM said:
I always try to work the scores and finishes out but my maths is rubbish . Some players like MVG are outstanding at it without even pausing and some are pretty average . I heard an interview with Anderson and he said he still struggles with scoring . John Part and Mardle are pretty hot on the complicated maths to , although it does make me laugh when commentators rush in to tell us … 16 , that’s double 8 . 8 , that’s double 4 etc !
I just finished listening to Mardle on the PDC podcast.
He said he knows the maths, but he actually personally never used it. He said he learnt it like a series of patterns. Something like if you hit this segment you go to this segment, if you miss it you go to this segment etc.
I've always been good at mental maths, but I can't nearly keep up when I'm playing. I often have to stand back and work out the best way to go. I suppose if you play a lot of darts you just learn it.
I remember the first time I heard that some ex-players get jobs as spotters for TV. They basically tell the TV people where to point the camera during checkouts etc.
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Wow Leung vs Van Veen was a surprisingly good match.
Leung is an incredibly straight thrower.
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8 hours ago, gingerjon said:
Interesting piece about darts away from the World Championships https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/dec/16/checking-out-the-slow-decline-of-the-london-darts-scene
Good piece.
Funnily enough, while the early rounds are on, I'm always surprised by the continued British/Dutch dominance at the top level.
For a sport that is so individual, there seems no reason why an American/Canadian/German player hasn't truly kicked on. There have been flashes like Part and Clemens but they never feel permanent.
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-48.
BIDMAS
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As it's the world championship, I decided to dust off the Granboard the other day to play a few games while it's on.
Had a cracker today. Playing some American guy and I'm in a deciding leg with 90 left. He's on about 70 odd. Because my arm is sore from playing (yes it happens after the first time in a while) I'm playing pretty badly.
I decide to go for T20 and D15, rather than the alternative and more favoured T18 D18 because I can't hit 18 for toffee. I throw my first dart so badly, I end up hitting T18 and then nail the double.
That's the sort of high quality victory you won't see at the worlds
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5 hours ago, Mumby Magic said:
Dare I ask what you googled for this video.
Haha, it was recommended, I thought it might be a high-quality ladies darts league, hense why I clicked on it.
The consensus appears to be that it's some betting thing.
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Check out this darts mystery. Eastern European girls throwing very slowly for 11 hours. Every night for two years.
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11 hours ago, Gerrumonside ref said:
I’ve had a 5er each way on Dave Chisnall at 50/1 and a 5er on Josh Rock at 33s.
10er on MVG, he's overdue a win.
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2 hours ago, Irish Saint said:
My biggest gripe with the modern game is the pass interference call. Tho you rarely see this called on a " hail mary" pass at end of the game when there is all sort of shenanigans going on. Look at last week's Mahomes haul Mary against the Packers with Kelce virtually pushed to the ground at any other time of the game I'm sure pass interference would have been called.
Anyhow today is D day for me. I bet the 49ers at the start of the season to win the Superbowl with a smaller bet for them and the Bills to reach the final. Bills virtually have to win out to reach the playoffs.
As for the Jets as a long suffering fan they are a basket case. I fell for the hype of Rogers i( it's been so long I'll clutch at any straw) even if he was fit it would have made no difference. They hired Nathaniel Hackett as offensive coordinator having been let go by the Broncos after his 4-13 record. Watching the Jets now you can see even their much acclaimed defence have had enough. Coach Salah may be kept for another year being able to fall back on Rogers injury if so he can thank the owner as other coaches have been sacked with better records.
I heard plenty of off-season gripes about the O-Line and it's painfully obvious now. Rodgers would of course have been better but he wouldn't have turned them into contenders.
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On 05/12/2023 at 16:52, Gerrumonside ref said:
Agreed - maybe it is the return of the D?
Theres been some chat the old saying that ‘defense wins championships’ could be coming back.
Something to do with drawing inspiration from College Football schemes and wide eyed NFL defensive coordinators.
I’m yet to be fully convinced we’ve seen a full change from it being a ‘quarterback’s league’ - the next few weeks and the playoffs will reveal all.
As a relative newcomer to NFL, my observation has always been that the balance is with the offense, and it seems easier to score than to defend. I've seen many games go basically back and forth, and often in the last couple of minutes teams find it easy enough moving the ball down field. Also, coming from watching RL, there looks to be a lot of space to exploit.
However, watching the Jets the last few weeks has made me realise how hard it can be. Not only do they find TDs hard to come by, but a first down is like a mini-victory.
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A regular feature in my house now.
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22 minutes ago, gingerjon said:
Oh no.
People are enjoying themselves in ways that you don't approve of.
The horror.
What if I'm enjoying myself moaning about it?
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On 23/11/2023 at 17:59, The Masked Poster said:
It’s great to bring a bit of joy. But for 2 months? This just makes it watered down and pretty boring. I actually saw a house fully decorated for Halloween in early September. Like, what’s the obsession with this?
Middleton in Leeds is bad for this in my experience!This exactly. As someone who often vocalises my feelings on this, I get accused of being a killjoy and I should just let people be happy.
My answer is always to do with when actually is ridiculous then? Is it not-ridiculous if somebody puts up their decorations in June or even April? They have the right to do so, and I have the right to say it's ridiculous.
I can remember being a child and it being a talking point because somebody who lived on my nan's street had put them up on the first of December. This is now somewhat late.
The Covid Christmas year was one where people went really early, and a lot of people argued about how they deserved a bit of joy after a tough year. I argued that they would then just do it that early every year and so it went.
I don't really blame the masses, who just incrementally follow the crowd. It is the outliers I get annoyed at, who end up pushing it closer and closer to early November and then making others feel like they should too.
In my experience from a teaching perspective, it tends to be parents who are incredibly soft and baby their children.
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On 08/11/2023 at 09:34, The Masked Poster said:
I saw three, in near proximity in Bradford on November 1st. Fully lit up, the works.
What is wrong with people? And what is wrong with advertisers? They are spoiling a nice time of yearYou can tell I'm getting old by how much this annoys me. It's been getting earlier and earlier and feels like we're slowly but surely heading towards Halloween decorations down and Christmas decorations up for half the population.
My official justification is that it ruins Christmas by stretching it out to the point that everyone is sick of it when it finally arrives. There is truth to this. After the 25th, there is very little tolerance for Christmas music and people want the decs down as soon as.
In reality, I think I'm actually being very judgemental and think it means you're an idiot if you can't have the patience and self-control to not put up your decorations in November.
There I've said it.
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Things only get worse for Fury. Strong rumours that the PPV sales for the crossover fight were terrible. I've heard 70,000 but as few as 10,000 reported for the US. For some perspective, Mayweather-McGregor got 4.6m.
When I was in the states recently, the fight was being advertised on FTA TV. That can't have been cheap.
Judging from Twitter and the like, a lot of people were watching the fight but clearly on streams. I was never going to pay for it, and even though I don't have a dodgy stick or anything like that, I watched nearly all of it live.
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2 hours ago, StandOffHalf said:
I agree that Wilder would be a bad boxing match-up for Francis, but I'd quite fancy his chances against AJ.
I wouldn't be surprised if we saw Joe Joyce or Chisora up against Ngannou next.
I agree that Fury wasn't terrible. We've seen him box his way to victory before and manage an opponent without looking spectacular.
I think there was just such a shock that Fury wasn't winning easy.
But that's down to Ngannou doing way better than anticipated. If you treat it as Fury being up against a rock-solid big puncher, he doesn't look that different than usual. Like I said, if he'd known what he was in for he probably would have won easy.
Oddly enough, Ngannou might be the biggest draw in boxing right now. Everybody is going to want to see if it was a one off. He's simply too big for Joyce or Chisora. If he boxes again, it'll be one of the big 4. I could defo see a rematch with Fury happening.
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9 hours ago, StandOffHalf said:
I had the last round level as well. They were both pretty gun-shy and stand-offish in that one as the clock ran out. I gave a couple more rounds to Ngannou but it was one of those ones where Fury by a couple or a draw would have been understandable.
All the moaning from MMA quarters is because they are applying MMA scoring metrics to this fight (significant strikes, damage, control). Points-fighting is what got Fury over the line.
Like Fury in the first Wilder fight, Francis is very much the moral victor here. One judge giving him the nod is a big win for him.
Against a pressure fighter (Chisora might angle for a shot at him), Francis might be in for a a more challenging boxing experience. He did really well on the night and, as an MMA fan, I was massively proud of him.
This is a good point about the different way of scoring. Personally, I would prefer something like this myself. I know the sport is boxing but it's also a fight, and hurting the opponent should be factored in better IMO as should effective punches. That's why I thought calling Fury-Wilder 1 a robbery wasn't quite right; he had after all been on the canvas twice and in serious trouble. I've also seen plenty of other fights where I've felt like they didn't really win the fight but output gave it to them, like Hopkins-Calzaghe. In that fight, all the effective punches were Hopkins IMO.
I'm going to be controversial and say that Fury didn't actually look that bad in hindsight. He had a couple of main problems IMO, firstly he wasn't hurting Ngannou at all and secondly Ngannou was heavy-handed. This resulted in Fury's feints and big punches having basically no effect and Ngannou was clearly hurting him, making him reluctant to commit. Compare this to Fury-Wilder, where he knew from minute one of fight one to be wary of his big punches. He trained and prepared to stay away from getting hit but didn't with Ngannou. If they fought again, he would no doubt be lighter and just do an AJ-Ruiz 2 on him.
I don't want to do Ngannou a disservice, but it wasn't massively dissimilar to how Joe Joyce used to have some success. Fighter's would hit him with everything and he would just keep coming, before eventually getting demoralised and letting Joyce have success.
IMO Ngannou would be trouble for anybody that is quite big and slow with limited power. He'd be trouble for a Chisora or Whyte etc. A bad fight for him would be Wilder (at boxing) IMO. You can have the greatest chin in the world but if he can land it, and he would against Ngannou, then you're going down. I also think AJ and Usyk would find beating him easy now as they they know what to expect and would come up with a game plan to win.
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I purposely didn't check the real judges scorecards so that I wasn't skewed and after looking at them, my scores are almost identical to the 95-94 judge, who gave the final round to Ngannou which I can understand.
Also, I just read that after rewatching the fight (and after previously declared Ngannou won), Teddy Atlas has scored it 97-93 Fury.
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On the night, I certainly felt like Ngannou was having the better of it and that he'd probably done enough to win. However, I was aware that part of this might be because it was so unexpected and the fact that he'd not been easily beaten had led to a false image of how well he actually did.
I decided to watch the whole fight again and score it. I decided to try my best to score it objectively, imagining that they were both neutral boxers of a similar level etc. Here's what I came up with as to who won the round:
Round 1 - easy Fury (10-9)
Round 2 - slight Fury (20-18)
Round 3 - easy Ngannou with knockdown (28-28)
Round 4 - slight Fury (38-37)
Round 5 - slight Fury (48-46)
Round 6 - easy Fury (58-55)
Round 7 - slight Ngannou (67-65)
Round 8 - easy Ngannou (76-75)
Round 9 - easy Fury (86-84)
Round 10 - very slight Fury (96-93) - I'd probably have given it 10-10 tbh.
I noticed a few observations during the fight which might not have helped. Every half-shot that Ngannou gets was cheered like a knockdown, any similar shot of Fury's was greeted with very little. Fury did seem to struggle with Ngannou's power and was more bothered by his shots, but he did catch Ngannou more often than he was caught.
Funnily enough, it's a bit like Fury-Wilder 1 in that everybody came away believing Fury had been robbed. However, that was another fight where he wasn't expected to last a few rounds and did way better than expected. Morally Fury won, but Wilder actually knocked him down twice so a draw was a fair result IMO.
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World Darts Championship 2024
in Any Other Business / Any Other Sports
Posted
First couple of rounds are always a bit uncompetitive, but there've been a good few upsets.