Ronnie O'Sullivan and Luke Littler have made both a 147 and a nine-darter look easier than it is

What's more difficult, a nine-dart finish or a 147 maximum break in snooker? The debate that never goes away takes a new twist

By Chris Hammer

Darts

Sat March 23, 2024 · 8M ago

What's harder, a nine-dart finish or a 147 break?

You'll no doubt have heard this question passionately debated countless times down the years and it's one you've probably got a strongly held opinion on.

Regardless of whether you're Team Darts or Team Snooker - or even if you're apathetic about both sports - we should all be completely sick of it by now, especially because fresh 'evidence' rarely comes to light.

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The 147 backers will always focus on 36 pots being 'obviously' more difficult than nine darts purely because there are 27 more perfect moments required while they also feel it's possible - albeit highly unlikely - for the latter to be fluked.

Shaun Murphy's ridiculously bold claim about achieving the 'Holy Grail' of a nine-darter with Phil Taylor's darts, a 147 break and a hole-in-one at Royal Worlington did the rounds on social media again recently (sorry everyone!) and unsurprisingly it was met with plenty of ridicule, including darts star Joe Cullen branding him a 'Liar' on Twitter.

However, whether you believe his highly-entertaining story or not, he also stressed why he felt the 147 was undoubtedly more difficult and claimed that 'all civilised people' would agree. He told Sporting Life: "There’s just so many more variables in snooker than there is in darts. The target never moves in darts and you could hit a nine-darter in every leg.

"Snooker isn’t like that and the way the balls break, if the black moves towards the cushion then the 147 chances are almost impossible before the first red is potted.

"The reds are always in a different position and no two frames have ever been the same – it’s like a fingerprint. Because of that – and the fact there’s 36 shots to complete instead of just nine – all civilised people agree that the 147 break is by far the harder."

'The uncivilised' stance

So what about the other 'uncivilised' section of society that think nine darts at targets that don't move is harder?

Well, before going on the attack with cold hard statistics, it all starts with defending the notion that the perfect leg is fluke-able by a random person. It's not. Neither of these incredible feats are. Only the highly skilled players of either sport who have dedicated thousands of hours of practice to their chosen craft stand a chance.

And even then, it becomes a test of mental strength to hold your nerve, especially in tournament conditions with factors such as prize money on the line and the pressure of crowds and a TV audience.

Anyone who achieves a perfect leg will play serious darts and have plenty of experience, even at amateur level. And the same can be said for snooker players. It's not only the famous names who have achieved perfection. But you do have to be the equivalent of a scratch golfer.

Let's take world champion Luke Humphries as an example here. In the last 12 months across all competitions he has a 'treble 20 hit percentage' of 43.62% - and that's extremely high compared to everyone else as you'd imagine it to be. For context, the current world number 32 Kim Huybrechts has a percentage of 36.85%.

To achieve that seven times in a row followed by a treble 19 (which he hits 43.69% when aiming at it) then his finishing double (his last dart in hand doubling is 39.89%) works out at just less than 0.05% chance, and this is without being able to account for all variables.

From a purely odds perspective, there's more chance of flipping nine heads in a row.

Darts statistician and fellow Sporting Life writer Carl Fletcher also informs me that during the World Championship, Humphries got to the 141 finish once in 177 legs which is 0.56%. Our calculation makes that (over a larger sample size) 0.29%, and this is the best player in the world for the last 12 months.

Is it any wonder that he's yet to hit a televised nine-darter? Don't let Luke Littler fool you into thinking it's easy - even if he does reach Phil Taylor's televised record of 11 by the time he's 20!

LUKE LITTLER HITS A NINE DARTER ON THE WORLD SERIES!

The Power, incidentally, never managed it in any of the legs he played across 29 World Championship campaigns in the BDO and PDC, which is remarkable when you think he got to the final 21 times and played all those long format matches.

Phil Taylor - All Televised Nine Dart Finishes

With that in mind, I'm sure you'll all agree that no casual sports fan with a relatively decent hand-eye coordination can rock up to the oche and throw back-to-back 180s followed by a 141 checkout. That argument should be redundant. The only reason it might seem in any way feasible is that it's 'only' three visits of perfection.

Most people who fall into this category would be delirious at the thought of ever throwing a single 180 - let alone that being at the start of a proper 501 leg in any kind of match. At that point you're only a third of the way there.

For this kind of person to get the same stage of a 147, they'd need to rattle in six reds and six blacks in succession, before any other reds have been potted. Your personal skill level at both sports will dictate your view on the difficulty level but either way, the perfection attempt is going to take much longer!

Imperfect 147s

A 147 break isn't 36 'perfect pots' anyway. Taking absolutely nothing away from anyone who has ever made a maximum, but in several cases they'll have found themselves slightly out of position and needing an extremely good shot to get back on track.

Snooker players also play for areas - they aren't necessarily always playing for an exact position for a specific ball, particularly early on in the break when there will be a few different options. There's also a degree of randomness to any attempt to separate a cluster of reds.

Darts players don't have the same luxury. One mistake at one tiny - albeit static - target and the chance is gone.

As Gerwyn Price once put it on the Happy Hour podcast: "Also you can fluke a 147, you can fluke a ball and still be on it, I can’t fluke in darts."

I think he should rephrase that to 'you can fluke a small part of a 147' but you can see his point. Just ask Cliff Thorburn back in 1984 when he began the first ever Crucible maximum with an outrageous fluke!

The First World Championship 147 [1983] | Cliff Thorburn vs Terry Griffiths

Vital statistics

If you're still not convinced about the difficulty level of a nine-darter being on a par - or greater - than a 147, let's have a look at the historical statistics.

You'll often hear snooker players talk about the 147s they make in practice and exhibitions or darts players bragging about their nines backstage or during the warm-up - but it's clearly much more difficult in tournament conditions.

There have been 472 tournament nine-darters across all PDC Tours since 1999 (this even includes Challenge & Development Tours, qualifying events as well as the majors etc) at the time of writing (January 25, 2024) while 172 maximum breaks have been made in that same time period out of the total of 196 which dates back to 1982.

Of course its nigh on impossible to work out the leg to frame ratio across the variety of tournaments and qualifying competitions that count across both sports so we're going to focus our attention on the World Championship stage since the PDC was formed in 1994 to make it as fair a comparison and sample size as possible.

Starting with darts, according to the PDC's stats partner Sportsradar there have been 37,015 legs played in this timeframe - including 1,810 during the last edition where nobody managed a perfect leg despite a record breaking of 180s thrown (914) - and 14 nine-darters, which means we've seen one every 2,644 legs.

In this same period there have been 17,809 frames played and 12 maximums - including two at the last edition from Kyren Wilson and Mark Selby - which means we see the 147 at this level once every 1,484 frames.

For balance, we've got to mention that all of those nine darters have come since the start of the 16th staging of the event in 2009 so nobody can deny players these days find it 'easier' than in the past - although part of this is also down to the fact the tournament has expanded in recent times with 95 matches being played at the most recent compared to 69 back in 2009 and as few as 31 back in 1994.

Nevertheless if we update our calculation, there have been 24,352 legs since the 2009 World Championship, equating to one nine-darter every 1,739 legs.

There have been six 147s at the Crucible since the PDC's first World Championship nine-darter in 2009, which have come over 8,950 frames - a rate of one every 1491 frames. This suggests snooker players haven't found it 'easier' over time in the same way darts players have, but it is still marginally more common.

Maybe in 10 years' time this will change and we can reopen the debate.

It has also been put to me by a colleague that it's perhaps unfair to compare these tournaments when you've got a lot more lower ranked players in the World Darts Championship, who don't really stand the same chance of hitting nine-darters as those at the top. Therefore thousands of these legs wouldn't have the same mathematical chance of seeing a nine-darter.

However, back in the 2022 edition we saw perfect legs from Willie Borland and Darius Labanauskas, who were outside the world's top 32 at the time and were both featuring at Qualifying School at the start of January this year. The standard has gone up so much in recent times that we can't dismiss too many of the legs played, even if it's true that the better the player, the stronger the chance.

The format of snooker's World Championship means that only 16 unseeded qualifiers ever have the opportunity to make a Crucible 147, and so far none of them has registered one: the list of 147s is a who's who of elite players (see further down). Given that the list of 147-makers in all WST competitions includes Sean O'Sullivan and Xu Si recently, perhaps that will change soon too.

Two chances are better than one

There is one other 'obvious' factor to bare in mind when looking at these statistics that often gets overlooked.

In all the legs of darts that have ever been played in this qualifying time, both players have had the chance of achieving perfection - even after the first player has thrown his first three darts. Memorably, in last year's World Championship, both Michael van Gerwen and Michael Smith threw for darting perfection in the very same leg.

In snooker, there's only once chance per frame. As soon as a red goes down, one player is out of the running. By the time the following shot has been completed, a 147 could be impossible for both.

Perfection not always the goal

There's another key discussion point to consider - and both camps can use it with different perspectives to reinforce their own arguments.

Firstly, a professional dart player will set out to hit a nine-darter in every single leg they play and will feel it's possible. Every time. They don't rock up with 501 on the scoreboard and consider aiming at the biggest part of the 20 with their first dart to 'play safe'.

In snooker, the 147 is not a worthwhile objective for any player before - or just after - the break. In fact, it may take several reds and blacks in succession before a professional even starts to consider if perfection is realistically achievable. And even then, they might not consider it - especially in a high-profile tournament or at an important point of a match - if there were easier options for them to build a frame-winning break.

That is, of course, their primary goal.

So from that perspective if you tuned in to the start of a leg between Luke Littler and Luke Humphries - for example - you'd feel there was more chance of seeing a nine darter than a 147 at the start of a frame between O'Sullivan and Judd Trump.

However, talking of snooker's GOAT, he once enquired about the prize money for a maximum break at the 2010 World Open after potting one red and one black!

That's an extreme example, of course, but generally commentators and players will know relatively early if it's an 'easier' and attainable objective worth going for. Even in this clip below, Dennis Taylor reflected on how nicely the balls were split for O'Sullivan - although that didn't stop him or John Virgo chuckling away at the Rocket's audacity. And of course he went on to do it.

So it's fair to say that in these situations, you'd fancy a snooker player making a 147 more than a darts player hitting a nine-darter. The difficulty for the latter never changes.

But there are obviously ridiculously difficult looking maximum breaks - just take Ryan Day's as a prime example back in the 2023 Tour Championship against Mark Selby. How he finished the job from the position of the balls after 13 reds and blacks is quite frankly remarkable, and at this point he only required 10 more pots.

Those in the 'Team Darts' camp can also use this section to back up their argument because the conversion rate is so small even though both players are gunning for it at the start of every leg.

A 147 is statistically 'more likely' in our sample size above despite the fact that the vast majority of those frames, a maximum isn't even considered.

So which is harder?

So my general conclusion is neither achievement can be fluked and as far as elite professionals are concerned, the stats suggest a 147 is slightly more common on the biggest stage than a nine-darter before a frame or leg begins.

As for difficulty level, I think that comparison can only really come into force after the first red is potted. In some cases it'll be pretty much impossible even for legends such as O'Sullivan. But on the rare occasions when a World Championship-level player likes the lie of the balls in this situation, I would back him more than any dart player before their first visit.

Whether you agree or not - it's so ridiculously close that both sides of the argument need to give each other a bit more respect!

At the very least we should be able to agree on one thing. Both achievements are much harder than Shaun Murphy's hole-in-one at Worlington Golf Club.