"147" V "9 Dart Finish"

[dantuck_7]

Good gap of 3 years on this thread. I'd probably agree a 147 is harder... you often hear of decent pub players that get 9-dart finishes - but a 147 is really only achieved by pro's or people good enough to be pro's.

[bricktip]

Having played both darts and snooker to a similar amateur level, In my opinion a 147 is harder. Even if i never achieve it, i feel that a 9 darter is possible, whereas I can't see myself ever getting close to a 147 in a proper frame of snooker, and i'm not talking about practice routines. One of the things with a 147 is the building pressure, that i imagine becomes overwhelming at a certain point. The only time you would feel the pressure on the nine dart leg is the final two or three darts.

[tony9ball68]

9 darter in my opinion. I have played snooker and darts at a reasonable level and reckon the 9 darter is. I am rubbish at golf but had a hole in one on short course and "fluked" an eagle on a par 4 when holing my 2nd shot, so it can be a bit of a fluke.
I have had centuries and a 147 on line up and have seen many 147s by good amateurs. Played darts for much longer and never seen anything close to a 9 darter, the best I have seen is the first 7 darts (which was by me in practice haha), apart from that I have never seen anyone even get the first 2 180's.

[gem]

The hole in one should not be mentioned in the same topic. A very high percentage of people that have played golf have at some point had a hole in one. Skill only plays a small part in achieving one of these.
Most tour events have someone getting a hole in one.
A 147 and 9 darter are far harder.

[deant1982]

Add another 9 darter to the list. Brendan Dolan did one earlier. Double start as well. Top quality!

[jaffa.johnson]

Add another 9 darter to the list. Brendan Dolan did one earlier. Double start as well. Top quality!

Absolutely brilliant it was.

I think they are both equally tough and not really something which can be compared.

[Csmith]

The amount of knowledge required to run a 147 is staggering. There are so many things that can go wrong and as mentioned earlier lots of amateurs have at least come close to the 9 dart finish. Many club snooker players have never even run a century let alone a total clearance and definitely not a maximum. Heck, I've only played darts a couple of times and after throwing by myself for 30 minutes I managed a 180.

[deant1982]

The amount of knowledge required to run a 147 is staggering. There are so many things that can go wrong and as mentioned earlier lots of amateurs have at least come close to the 9 dart finish. Many club snooker players have never even run a century let alone a total clearance and definitely not a maximum. Heck, I've only played darts a couple of times and after throwing by myself for 30 minutes I managed a 180.

Difference is, you are comparing one good visit at darts to a maximum at snooker. It is not really the same by any stretch of the imagination. Yes, some people can hit a 180, it doesn't completely involve luck or skill, but a mixture of both. It is similar to a 50 break at snooker. You can a bit lucky along the way, but does require consistant technique to achieve. Back to back 180's are a lot harder. To my opinion they are the equivilant to a century break. They both require a very consistant technique and it requires a lot more skill than luck to do. While a dart may take a deflection to land in the T20, it is similar to getting a nice split on the reds or that nice kiss on a red etc.
The 9 dart finish is the holy grail for dart players as it is extremely difficult to do. Luck goes out of the window to hit a 9 dart finish, as after the 2 180's, you're then going for 141, which is an all around the board shot whichever way you go (T20, T19, D12, or T20,T15, D18, or even T17, T18, D18 are the most common). People argue that this is easier as "there are more ways you can achieve it", but they don't realise that although yes, to get a 147 you have to pot 15 reds and 15 blacks + colours, you are able to pot the reds in any order you wish, which gives a much larger variation of ways to achieve it than they realise.

To my mind, they are both as hard as each other, but we'll never know for certain, one way or the other.

[Gerry Armstrong]

7 out of the 9 shots required to complete a 9 dart finish in the standard 180-180-141 form is hitting a treble 20. It's always in the same place and so are you in relation to the treble 20 so it's much MUCH easier to get good at hitting treble 20's than if you had dozens of different shot types to try and master or dozens of different targets to practice hitting. In simple terms, for a 9 darter it's only 3 shots you have to master, 2 trebles and 1 double.

There are far more shots you have to be able to play to make a 147 as no 2 frames of snooker are the same. 22 balls on the table, cushions, canons, splitting the pack of reds etc. etc. None of these complications with Darts, the only thing you need to negotiate are where your 1st and 2nd darts land in the treble 20 bed when throwing subsequent darts.

And in addition, a 147 at snooker requires 36 consecutive shots where as a 9 darter requires 9, so 4 times the opportunity for something to go wrong, pressure, twitching etc. And time wise it takes much longer to make a 147 than a 9 darter so that also adds pressure as longer to think about it etc.

As for the skill level required to achieve either, I think they are both incredibly difficult to achieve and impossible to compare skill wise, but for someone with the skill required it is easier to do a 9 darter than the equivalent 147.

[andy carson]

on reflection on this as i have never been close to either, i will say they are both just as difficult as each other

and as for whoever brought golf into it, its mainly luck in getting a hole in one.... wind gust, big bounce off something on the green etc, too many variables involved that you can not control.

[cueman]

Going slightly off topic today I achieved a holy grail with darts, hitting 3 bullseyes! Chuffed to bits because I've tried to do this for a long time and finally did it. Its hard enough just getting two bulls, though I have done that countless times but to get that 3rd dart in with the pressure and with such a small gap to aim for and with the high percentage chance of a deflection. I've had numerous tons at snooker but this actually felt like a bigger achievement for me.