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800 club

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The 800 club is inhabited by those players from the 15-round era who amass a total score of at least eight hundred in their heat games. This is significant because it implies an average score of a century or more. Currently there are 90 members of the club, all of whom are octochamps.

Scores

Old Format

New Format

Four games in old format, four games in new format

(Aggregate score over 8 games, average score over 8 games, series in which octochamp run was completed)

Progression

Those in bold are also members of the 850 club, a more elite subdivision of the 800 club. When Tom Hargreaves set his octochamp total of 850 at the start of 2002, Damian Eadie remarked that it would "stand for many moons". It didn't, but any player to reach that benchmark can certainly consider themselves among the all-time greats. The 850 club has been discussed very little in the post-Richard Whiteley era, with Apterous and other easily accessible resources pushing the standard of the top players ever higher.

Four 15-round series – Series 46, 49, 56 and 67 – have featured no players with heat-game totals over 800. (Though players in Series 46 were restricted to a maximum of 6 wins instead of 8 in heat games, all totals from this series would still be below 800 if they were to be multiplied by 8/6.)

To date, 20 octochamps, in addition to averaging over a century, have scored 100 points or more in all eight of their heat games. They are shown in bold italic above.

Although it is in theory possible for a player to join the 800 club without completing an octochamp run (in particular, if he or she were to win seven games and lose the final one), to date this has never happened, with the highest non-octochamp point total – made by Philip Aston of Series 78 – still falling 40 points short of 800. Philip Aston, Chris Hunt and, in Series 69, Zarte Siempre averaged over 100 points in runs that featured losses, but only played seven, seven and six preliminaries respectively. Again, this is primarily as a result of the ability of skilled 15-round contestants to build up momentum and greater absolute leads over less skilled opponents, especially as compared to those in the 9-round era.

Evolution of the highest-scoring 15-round octochamp

Old Format

New Format

See also

480 club, the equivalent under the 9 round format.

External links