Keith Kelvin Deller is an English retired professional darts player, who won the Embassy World Professional Darts Championship in 1983 and Unipart British Professional Championship in 1987. He was the first qualifier ever to win the championship and remains one of the youngest champions in history. For his world championship win, Deller used 18-gram spring-loaded darts, later banned for tournament play but now legal again. He no longer uses these darts.
Career
BDO
Deller's victory over Eric Bristow in the tournament by 6 sets to 5 was probably the biggest upset in the history of the championship. He also beat world number 3 John Lowe in the quarter finals and defending champion and world number 2 Jocky Wilson in the semi-final to become the only player in history to defeat the world's top three ranked players in the World Championship. The champion's prize money in 1983 was £8,000. His checkout of 138 to clinch the trophy is amongst the most memorable in darting history. Bristow had left himself 50 to stay in the match, but decided to throw for single 18 to leave double 16 instead of a more difficult attempt at the bullseye. Deller then hit treble 20, treble 18, double 12 for the title, and even to this day commentators often refer to 138 as the "Deller checkout" if a player is left with that score. Despite a meteoric rise to World Champion, his career results failed to maintain that level. On the defence of his world title, he lost in the first round to Nicky Virachkul, and he only won three further matches in the BDO World Championship in subsequent years. He did win the British Professional Championship in 1987, but generally his world ranking continued to fall, and he even failed to qualify for the World Championship between 1989 and 1993. One of his more notable achievements in the years following his world title win is his 100.30 average in his quarter-final match against John Lowe in the 1985 World Championship; this made him the first-ever player to record a three-figure average in a world championship match.
Deller was one of the players who broke away from the British Darts Organisation in 1992 and joined the WDC, now the PDC. This saw him gain some more television exposure, and he did produce a few resurgent performances to reach the semi finals of the 1998 PDC World Championship and also the semi finals of the 1998 PDC World Matchplay. Deller dropped out of the top 32 of the PDC's World Rankings around 2005 and therefore has to attempt to qualify for their major tournaments – which he failed to do for the 2006, 2007 and 2008 PDC World Championships. He now competes much less on the circuit, including around half-a-dozen UK Open Regional events during 2007, preferring to perform in more lucrative exhibition matches with fellow legend players such as the late Eric Bristow and Lowe.
Records
Deller's name has been in the record books on a couple of occasions. He held the Guinness World Record for the fastest 3 legs of 301 in 97 seconds. On 13 October 1984 he was on the wrong end of a piece of darting history when Lowe hit the first-ever televised nine-dart finish against him in the quarter-finals of the MFI World Matchplay. He became the first player in history to achieve a match average of 100 in the 1985 World Championship quarter-finals; he did, however, lose the game to Lowe. Deller set another World Record in darts as recently as 7 August 2012; Deller smashed the World Records set by Dean Gould of hitting the quickest 301 at 36 seconds, which Dean beat at Olympia Great British Beer Festival on the same day by making it 33 seconds. Deller beat that record on the same event by becoming the World Record holder by taking out 301 in 25 seconds by taking out a 130 checkout by hitting the bullseye. So Deller now has the World Record of the quickest 301 in 25 seconds.
Spotter
Deller has for many years been part of the Sky Sports broadcasting team acting as a "spotter" for the cameras. His knowledge of the players and scoring shots helps the director and cameramen anticipate where the next dart will be thrown.
