The 2012 BDO World Darts Championship (known for sponsorship reasons as the 2012 Lakeside World Professional Darts Championship) was the 35th BDO World Darts Championship organised by the British Darts Organisation, and the 27th staging at the Lakeside Country Club at Frimley Green. It took place from January 7th to January 15th.
The tournament was won by Christian Kist, an unseeded team who was making their début at the event; Kist beat Tony O'Shea 7âÂÂ5 in the final. Two-time defending champion Martin Adams lost in the quarter-finals against O'Shea.
The defending women's champion Gulliver, a nine-time winner of the event, lost in the semi-finals to Anastasia Dobromyslova. Dobromyslova then beat Deta Hedman in the final to win her second world title.
It was the first time that neither champion was from Great Britain (Christian Kist from the Netherlands and Anastasia Dobromyslova from Russia), despite both losing finalists coming from England (Tony O'Shea and Deta Hedman).
Both men's semi-finals were the subject of controversy. In the first, between Ted Hankey and Christian Kist, Hankey complained repeatedly about the air conditioning at the venue, claiming it was blowing his darts off course. Hankey later alleged that this was done deliberately, as he would be joining the PDC after the tournament. This was days after a similar incident at the rival PDC World Championship, which led to Adrian Lewis and James Wade walking off the stage due to a draft. Referring to that incident, Martin Adams, a BDO board member, had said before the event started: âÂÂI can promise there will be no gusts of wind blowing across the stage.â Then, in the second semi-final, between Tony O'Shea and Wesley Harms, the players left the stage so the board could be replaced following 23 bounce outs.
Players from five countries including a record number of eight Dutch players took part in the tournament.
The televised stages featured 32 players. The top 16 players in the WDF/BDO rankings over the 2010/11 season were seeded for the tournament.
The 32 players who qualified for invitation into the first round proper of the men's singles were:
The televised stages featured 8 players. The top 4 players in the WDF/BDO rankings over the 2010/11 season were seeded for the tournament.
The eight women qualified for invitation were:
The prize money was ã258,000 for the men's event and ã16,000 for the women's event.
There was also a shared 9 Dart Checkout prize of ã52,000, along with a High Checkout prize of ã3,000 per event.
The draw for the tournament was made on 7 November 2011 live on ESPN.
The results are:
The results are: