Dart Game Bets Land Three in Jail : Gambling: Vice officers arrest men after watching them play a few dollar-a-match rounds in a North Hollywood bar.

Michael Kilby and two friends were preparing to leave the Royal Oak bar in North Hollywood after a few rounds of dollar-a-game darts when two shabbily dressed men approached.

One flashed a badge and said: “I’m sorry, gentlemen, but you’re not going anywhere right now.”

The men, both undercover police officers who were joined by uniformed officers, told the players to sit in a corner of the bar and ordered other patrons out, according to Kilby, his companion Chuck Donato and a Royal Oak bartender who asked not to be named.

It appeared that San Fernando Valley vice officers--who set off nationwide amusement when they cited five Valley housewives in 1989 for $15 bets on bowling matches--had a new target:

Dart gamblers.

Kilby, 34, of Burbank, who manages a storage company, and Donato, 42, a North Hollywood real estate broker, theoretically face up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine for the citation last Friday. The city attorney’s office, however, said it is highly unlikely they will have to pay more than $10 each.

The third player, Eddie Hansen, 40, was arrested on an outstanding traffic warrant, and was still in jail Wednesday, according to county jail officials.

Both Kilby and Mel Katz, president of the 1,400-member Southern California Darts Assn., said they knew of nobody who had ever been cited for dart betting. Kilby, who said he has been playing for 15 years, is in the association’s A League, the top players.

Although his association does not condone gambling, Katz said, “We know that it goes on.” After league matches, “people will challenge the board for either a beer or a dollar or nothing.”

Said the Royal Oak bartender, “These are good guys. They just play darts. That’s their life.”

Said Kilby, the police “have nothing better to do, so they go out and bust people for a dollar a game.”

In fact, the officers did have something better to do, according to Lt. Al Corella, head of the Los Angeles Police Department’s North Hollywood vice unit. They were part of an investigation into more serious wrongdoing--which Corella declined to discuss--and just happened to notice dollar bills changing hands among the players.

“We don’t go to these places to seek out that type of activity,” Corella said. “But . . . it was a violation that was visible, so consequently we had to take some type of action.”

Quoting a report by one of the undercover officers, Corella said the officers saw at least four games and that the wagering totaled from $3 to $6 per game.

The men were cited under an amended 1917 section of the Los Angeles Municipal Code that makes it a misdemeanor “to play or bet at . . . any game . . . which is played, conducted, or carried on with cards, dice, billiard balls, pool balls, cues, or other device, for money . . . or for any other thing of value.”

“Other device,” in this case, includes darts, Corella said.

The law appeared to be the same that was applied in the case of the self-styled “notorious five” housewives cited for gambling in October, 1989, by undercover officers after their weekly match at a Granada Hills bowling alley. But police withdrew the misdemeanor citations after the incident drew national headlines. The women wound up telling their tale to Johnny Carson on television’s “Tonight Show.”

Like the bowlers, Kilby and his friends argue that they weren’t really gambling but were competing for a prize, as do players in sports tournaments.

In fact, Kilby said, he had won about $20 in a bar-sponsored tournament earlier that evening at the Royal Oak. According to Katz, payouts go as high as $8,000 to $10,000 for singles tournament winners at the North American Open held annually in Las Vegas. (The highest payout in the annals of dart throwing was $50,000 to Paul Lim for shooting a perfect game on television in January, 1990.)

So what’s the difference between tournaments and a friendly bet among friends?

Ted Goldstein, spokesman for the city attorney’s office, said organizers of large tournaments must obtain city permits to stay within the law. But there may be very little difference, legally, between smaller-scale tournaments, such as bar-sponsored dart games, and buck-a-dart games or dollar-a-hole bets among golfing buddies.

“It happens all day, every day at every golf course in the city of L.A., but no one has made a complaint,” Goldstein said. “This has come to the attention of the Municipal Court because the LAPD brought it to the Municipal Court’s attention.”

For his part, Kilby said he will make sure he never attracts attention again.

“Maybe next time we can pay off in the bathroom,” he said.