Legal cases for pub solicitors often involve licensing and liability, but there was one very infamous case where the fate of Britain’s biggest pub game was determined in court by one of darts’ early heroes.
A common aphorism in the darts world is that as a game it takes “luck as well as skill”, placing emphasis on the skill element of the game rather than the luck side.
The reason why this is so important comes down to how the history of the game was nearly snuffed out before it began thanks to a questionable interpretation of the law in Leeds.
In the early 1900s, much was made about the divide between games of chance and games of skill, mostly because the Gaming Act 1848 banned the former but not the latter.
Darts, at the time, fell into a legal grey area in the minds of many magistrates, as whilst it did not involve cards or dice, they felt when they observed people play that it was more luck-dependent than billiards, a game that in itself had a connection to gambling.
In 1908, darts had become big in Leeds and so Adelphi Inn owner Jim Garside fitted a board and welcomed local players. This display of goodwill was rewarded with a trip to court and an accusation that his pub was a gambling den.
He was granted the opportunity to prove, as he claimed, that darts was a game of skill, and to that end, he recruited the man considered to be the best darts player in Leeds, William “Bigfoot” Annakin.
Mr Annakin (nicknamed “bigfoot” not because of the cryptid but because of the size of his feet) was a regular patron and preferred dominoes initially, but became the pub’s best player very quickly.
He came to court, where a dart board had been fitted, and was asked by the Justices of the Peace to throw the darts at selected numbers. When he did so without faltering, he proved the game was based on skill and not chance, making it legal to play in Leeds.
Had it been deemed a game of chance and banned in Leeds, it might have had a ripple effect depending on whether local authorities followed suit with their bans.