WHEN Rob Cross won the right to throw first before the deciding leg of his 2018 World Championship semi-final against Michael van Gerwen he gained a decisive advantage.
The eventual World Champion threw a handful of match darts before Van Gerwen could recover from a missed double of his own.
To oversimplify, that bullseye alone could be seen as the catalyst for Cross' eventual triumph as World Champion, resulting in a £315,000 payday, a guaranteed place in the top 10 of the PDC Order of Merit for the next two years, and a permanent place in the annals of darts.
The drama of that high-stakes throw for the bullseye was made all the more remarkable by the fact that it is so rarely seen in televised matches.
With the exception of World Championship deciding legs, all throws for the bull in PDC stage events are done backstage with no cameras on hand to observe the action, yet it is as relevant to the outcome of a match as any individual leg of the match itself.
Thanks to the streaming of matches from PDC floor events, fans can now observe dozens of these contests each week.
They make it immediately obvious why these are not typically televised - with each player throwing only one dart at time, and frequently hitting the same segment as their opponent in any given turn, the throw for the bull can go on interminably.
Suppose that player A hits the bullseye with their first dart in an opening throw for the bull, forcing their opponent to respond in kind to continue the duel.
In that situation, irrespective of what Player B does, Player A will have a 90% chance of throwing first in both the first leg and a potential final leg.
On the other hand, if Player A misses the bullseye and 25 entirely, they will have only a 10% chance of gaining that advantage.
However, most professionals in the PDC can expect to hit the 25 segment the majority of the time when throwing for the bullseye, so this can lead to a tedious stalemate.
As dull as it may sometimes seem, throwing first matters, and gaining that advantage often makes the difference between earning an extra £1000 in prize money and going home empty-handed.
If you know nothing about a darts match apart from the fact that Player A won the throw for the bull, you can expect Player A to beat his opponent 56.6% of the time.
Put another way, a player who wins 25 throws for the bull, all other things being equal, can expect to win three to four more matches than they would have if they failed to seize the advantage of throwing first.
The effect of winning the throw for the bull is often not felt until the decider, when the advantage of having an extra three darts to win the leg is more than doubled.
Some 64.2% of final legs are won by the player throwing first, a rate slightly higher than that for all legs throughout the match.
It is no surprise, then, that the world's best players also happen to be the most accurate in throwing for the bull, and therefore tend to have an advantage when playing less experienced players because they are more likely to win the opening throw for the bull.
Given that even Premier League opponents could only manage to break Van Gerwen's throw 20.4% of the time, the task of doing so in a last-leg decider appears all the more daunting.
The PDC leaders in bullseye checkout accuracy also show up at the top of the list of players who have won the most throws for the bull in 2018.
Van Gerwen, who has hit 35% of his checkout bullseye attempts this year, has also thrown first in 58% of matches.
Chris Dobey, who has yet to miss a bullseye checkout on stage this year, is even more successful than Van Gerwen on the bull before the match (61%).
Cross, whose 31% bullseye checkout rate led the PDC in 2017, wins 64% of his bullseye duels.
Mickey Mansell has won the right to throw first a spectacular 65% of the time, including in the last six of his seven matches during his run to the Players Championship Eight title.
However, the master of winning the bull-up in 2018 has been Mensur Suljovic, whose 68% win record is the highest in the PDC.
The Austrian is no stranger to throwing for the bullseye, having brought decades of bull-reliant soft-tip experience to bear in winning the bull-up.
In his German Darts Masters title win, he threw first in all four matches, including his game with Cross which went to a crucial deciding-leg.
Allowing the World Champion just 12 darts in the final leg and denying him a chance to return to the board to attempt a 64 checkout, Suljovic completed a 15-darter to get the win. The successful throw for the bull certainly was a decisive factor in it.
Just because you often don't see it doesn't mean that it's not important. The bull-up at the start of each match may not be the most glamorous or exciting aspect of the game, but it has unquestionably played a critical role in the course of darts history.