The Form Guide: Title winners defying the stats

Andrew Gilding, Michael van Gerwen

PDC Stats Analyst Christopher Kempf analyses the form players in world darts based on their last 200 legs played, following last weekend's 2023 Cazoo UK Open...

Form Guide

200-Leg Form Guide Summary
#1 Averages - Gerwyn Price
#1 OChE - Gerwyn Price
#1 Doubles - Luke Woodhouse
#1 171-180 - Joe Cullen
#1 99, 101+ Checkout Success - Andrew Gilding

The list of performers with the highest averages has never been more out of sync with the Order of Merit, or with the Roll of Honour's recent tournament champions.

Newly-crowned UK Open Champion Andrew Gilding has the 28th-highest average among Tour Card Holders and runner-up Michael van Gerwen ranks ninth with a 96.41 average - his lowest since losing his status as world number one.

The World Champion is 18th and in the bottom half of Tour Card Holders when it comes to doubles accuracy.

No player has come close to a 100 average over their last 200 legs, and two of the top ten spots are occupied by players who were born in the 21st century.

Gilding's shock win - and the astonishing number of Tour Card holders (31) within four points in averages of Gerwyn Price, the current leader - indicates how difficult it is to predict the winner of any darts tournaments from recent averages alone.

Of the top ten players as currently ranked, only one (Ryan Searle) has won a ranking title in 2023.

But if we consider the OChE ratings of the same players, we see that both Gilding and Dave Chisnall (the first European Tour champion of 2023) punch above their weight when it comes to efficiency in converting their scores into legs won.

Gilding ranks 12th in this efficiency score, a 9.07 point increase over mid-February, indicating that he would win 56% of his legs against ProTour opponents.

Another surprising name in the final day of action at the UK Open was Adam Gawlas, demonstrating the most dramatic improvement in form over the past two weeks.

The 10.6 point improvement in his OChE brings him up to an expected 50.1% leg win rate on the ProTour. Suddenly the 21-year-old from the Czech Republic is now one of the top ten 180 scorers in the PDC, having fired off eight in the first six legs of his quarter-final defeat of Rob Cross.

Gilding also emerges from Minehead as the player with the most 100+ checkouts of any Tour Card Holder over his last 200 legs; this includes seven completed at the UK Open and two 170 finishes in recent ProTour matches.

Van Gerwen's three bullseye checkouts in the UK Open final only brought him up to 12 ton-plus finishes in his last 200 legs; but his 62nd-highest doubles percentage, accentuated by his match-dart miss in a deciding leg, continues to cost him matches and titles.

*OChE (Ordinal Checkout Efficiency) explained:
OChE is a metric designed to evaluate the efficiency at which players convert their averages into legs won.
The statistic is the % of legs a player would expect to win on the ProTour, calculated from a weighted average of 4,5, 6 & 7 visit checkout rates.

Follow Christopher on Twitter @ochepedia