Portela reveals another example of cheating during online lockdown tournament: "It brings the reputation of our sport down"

Online darts has been a staple of lockdown with it being a game which can be played at home but among the excellent stories, there have also been some examples of those blatantly cheating and also match-fixing.

This has been seen with Kyle McKinstry and Wessel Nijman in the MODUS Icons of Darts League and as Diogo Portela has revealed, there are suspicions that it stemmed to a whole tournament he has been involved in.

The King and Queen Caribbean tournament which was played in by not only Portela but also other well-known players including former World Championship qualifiers Sudesh Fitzgerald and Norman Madhoo and World Cup teammates for the Brazilian in Bruno Rangel and Alexandre Sattin.

Portela spoke to DartsNews about the competition and revealed that he had blatant cheating against him; and that rules to add players were changed during the tournament.

“The tournament director excluded a player but he didn’t mention why he was excluded; he said this player is now a bye and that was quite weird because only the players from my group knew he was excluded. He said they wanted to keep it quiet and he wouldn’t show it to anyone and that started raising questions.”

As Portela revealed these rules on the subsequent round robin were changed through a vote which initially didn’t go through: “He changed his mind and put it to a vote to make it the top four players to go through. He put a condition that the vote would have to be unanimous for all the countries. The vote wasn’t unanimous; it was 13-1, 14-1. One country voted against it.”

“When this rule changed, Florida which is not a country but it was representing the US; it was the most beneficial country. They had four more players going through. It used to be only two.”

This Round Robin saw the 1st player playing third and second player playing fourth; which saw him withdraw from the competition alongside the other well known names.

The fifth and sixth place took the number one and number two spot from those who withdrew and with these being from Florida, with their manager helping to organise the tournament who subsequently resigned as a result of this, it began to raise even more questions.

“I managed to express myself and said listen I qualified in 1st and I think I’ve got the right to play the lesser player in the other group not the second lesser. They were just like we’re not changing these rules and because of before I started to wonder why; so I went to the qualifiers and the second out of four groups was from Florida and Florida was running the tournament.”

“So I quit the tournament at that stage and they had two options; they could have given that bye in the knockout stage or they could have replaced me and put a second player from my group who was from Florida and everyone goes up one position.

He continued: "They didn’t; they kept all the positions and they put the 5th player as the top player.”

Thoughts on examples during lockdown including McKinstry and Nijman

In terms of further cheating during lockdown in online darts as a whole, the Brazilian admits that it damages the sport in every case.
“It brings the reputation of our sport down. If you don’t actually treat each case as it should be treated; it’s just going to bring our sport down. No matter who’s doing it; if someone’s caught cheating it should be exposed.”

“That happened loads of times in the UK during this lockdown. Even if it’s any person; not even an association or an organisation.”

This includes the aforementioned one involving the MODUS Icons of Darts League and for Portela, it was one he couldn’t get his head around.

“I think it’s just ridiculous, the intention of MODUS (Icons of Darts League) during this lockdown was to bring entertainment to people and it was a great opportunity to develop our sport even more and to get two good guys, I get on with both of them; and I couldn’t believe when I saw the news. That wasn’t even for you guys; that was for the people during this pandemic.”

“It’s just terrible for this sport, I hope they learn.”