Barrie Bates

Barrie Bates (born 17 October 1969) is a Welsh darts player who plays on the Professional Darts Corporation circuit. Born in Merthyr Tydfil, he currently resides in Bedlinog, Mid-Glamorgan. His original nickname was Batesy, but has since 2007 has been known as Champagne, because of his bubbly personality.

Bates made his PDC televised debut at the 2003 UK Open reaching the third round. In 2005 he narrowly lost a last-32 match to Lionel Sams at the UK Open and made a superb run to the final in 2006 before losing to Raymond van Barneveld.

He made a great impression on the circuit in 2006, winning the John Smiths Singles in February and May's Le Skratch Sarantos Retsinas Memorial event in Montreal. He also reached two Regional Finals of the UK Open in March (losing to Chris Mason and to van Barneveld in November. He reached two PDPA Players Championship finals in 2006 losing to Colin Lloyd in the Isle of Wight in June, but beat Phil Taylor to take his biggest title to date in the Netherlands event in November.

He made his World Championship debut in 2007 as the number 17 seed, but suffered a surprise first round defeat to Canadian Brian Cyr. In the 2008 World Championship, Bates got to the third round only to lose to Kirk Shepherd. In the 2009 tournament, Bates defeated Northern Ireland's Felix McBrearty and American Bill Davis to reach the third round again, this time meeting Mark Dudbridge, winning 4-0 with checkout percentage of 60% to reach the quarter finals for the very first time. He lost in the quarters however, falling to twelfth seed Mervyn King by five sets to two.

His success at events away from the television cameras during 2006 helped him to win the award of "Best Floor Player" at the first PDC Awards Dinner. It refers to the non-televised events which feature many boards alongside each other on a smaller arena floor.