BACK IN THE DAY WITH: Magnus Caris, best known for that missed World Championship opportunity against Bobby George

In this column we regularly go back in time to reminisce about a darter. Today we do so with the Swede, Magnus Caris.

Magnus Caris was born on November 15, 1968 in Stockholm. In 1988 and 1989 he managed to qualify for the BDO World Championship, but did not get further than the second round. A year later he reached the quarter-finals after victories against Antaro Rantala and Brian Cairs, where he eventually lost to Eric Bristow.

In 1991 and 1992 Caris nicknamed 'Poker Face' lost each time in the first round of the BDO World Championship, in 1993 he did not manage to qualify, but 1994 had to and would be his year. After victories against Wayne Weening, Leo Laurens and Martin Adams, he reached the semi-finals for the first time. The stars for the semi-finals were aligned favorably, by the way, as opponent Bobby George was playing with a fracture in his back and could barely walk.

Yet it was crowd favorite George who sent the Lakeside Country Club into an uproar by taking a 2-0 lead in sets. Caris was not impressed, however, and took the next four sets, needing only one more set to reach the World Championship final. In the third leg of the seventh set, however, he missed a matchdart at double 18 to grab the win and in the end it was George who managed to come back to 4-3. More to the point, George won nine legs in a row to take the win 5-4.

Caris never really recovered from that disappointment. A year later he was eliminated in the opening round of the BDO World Championship and then it took until 2010 before he played in a World Championship again, this time the PDC edition. In five appearances at the PDC World Darts Championship, however, he never got past the first round at Alexandra Palace.

Caris, to whom I should add that he also reached the semifinals at the Winmau World Masters in 1992, played his last official match at the World Cup of Darts in 2019, where he lost 4-0 to Gary Anderson. Since then, he has been enjoying his darts retirement.