Luke Humphries and Luke Littler

World Darts Championship: Form guide for the top 32 players in televised tournaments during the 2024 PDC season

By James Cooper

Darts

Fri December 13, 2024 · 4h ago

Ahead of the World Championship, James Cooper has looked at a year’s worth of results to assess the form of all 32 seeds.

Performances in front of the main cameras ultimately make or break the career of a darts player and given there is no more intimidating stage to play darts on than the Alexandra Palace, there should be a reasonable correlation between the sample of matches I have taken with likely performance in the World Championship, which runs from December 15 to January 3.

A little on 'expected wins' first, which in this case differs from the football methodology employed to judge the fairness of a result over 90 minutes based on the quality of shooting positions in the match.

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Expected wins in darts is the cumulative pre-game probabilities based on the standard of the player in question compared to the level of opponent with match length factored in.

A positive expected wins over actual wins indicates overperformance while a negative return suggests underperformance.

Averages are not taken into account using this method as it’s a binary yes or no (or 1/0) for a win or loss.

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That has its limitations in some ways, particularly as dominant wins over narrow ones are also excluded from calculations but the purpose of this article is to give an overarching view of how the seeds have fared in the television tournaments rather than honing in on averages and niche performance metrics.

The eight players comprising this year’s Premier League obviously had far more exposure on television and thus a far bigger sample of matches in the table below is apparent.

A handful of seeds also failed to make a meaningful impact in any of the tournaments over the 12 months of matches covered (starting with the 2024 World Championship) so they are rather sparsely represented in the table below but for most, there is a reasonable amount to draw from the results below.

Expected wins on TV in 2024

The players ranked 1-16 according to our data

The players ranked 17-32 according to our data

SUSTAINED EXCELLENCE FROM THE LUKES

When looking at table like this, the temptation is to look at it as a ranking from 1-32.

As good a story as Ritchie Edhouse’s European Championship win was, he’s clearly not the best player in the world but rather compared to his Dec 2023 rating, he has enjoyed the most success on TV relative to his ability.

At the other end of the spectrum, this way of working rather hinders Luke Humphries and Luke Littler in that they have to win a very high percentage of matches to improve on their “expected par results”.

The fact that the finalists from last year’s brilliant tournament have both managed to record positive expected wins confirms it’s been a stellar season for both and the changing of the guard predicted by many looks to be coming true, particularly when a scan of the outright odds for this event reveals it’s 10/1 bar the two.

FADING FORCES

The fact that the trio at the foot of the table haven’t played many matches between them rather masks the serial underperformance of both Gerwyn Price and Peter Wright.

Wright landed this coveted trophy in 2020 and 2022 while Price claimed the honours in 2021 but neither are remotely close to that level at present.

The pair occupied the last two spots in the Premier League and while that format will brutally expose any chinks in the armour given the calibre of opponent, disappointing displays have been all too common this season.

A win apiece in a European Tour and A World Series of Darts offered some respite but the balance of their form means neither are on the shortlist this month, even at inflated prices.

SWEET ON DE DECKER’S CHANCES

Unseeded Wessel Nijman and Gian Van Veen have been hyped up as dark horses in some quarters and both have produced sky-high averages at times this season.

Instead, Mike De Decker could be the pick of those at longer odds as the table indicates an excellent campaign.

“The Real Deal” ranks in the top 10 for scoring-based attributes such as 180s, 180s per leg and first 9 dart average, suggesting De Decker has the firepower to mix it with the very best, as he showcased when lifting the World Grand Prix trophy during the autumn, while he really should have beaten Luke Littler in the Grand Slam.

He’s housed in the same section as Luke Humphries, which obviously isn’t ideal but that wouldn’t be until the quarter-final if all goes to plan and quotes of around 33/1 could be generous.