In the first edition of his latest column 'Ask Ochepedia', PDC Stats Analyst Christopher Kempf draws on 45 years of comprehensive darts data to answer statistical questions from PDC fans...
Q1) Which player is the most likely to score 93?
Who’s the best 93 hitter (20, 19, T18). My guess Michael Smith 🤷🏻♂️
— Neil (@NeilSargent4) March 31, 2024
In Eric Bristow's day, the score 93 was an almost unheard-of point total from a visit to the board.
Only one player managed to hit treble 18 (one time) after misses at the two larger trebles while starting on a score greater than 170 in the 516 legs of the 1983 World Championship, and Bristow never did it in any World Championship during his career.
On the 2024 ProTour, however, there have been 1,269 instances of a score of 93, for a rate of 4.6 such visits per 100 legs - a 24-fold increase in the rate of 93s scored from the 1980s.
Adoption of treble 18 as a scoring treble is uneven across the PDC, however – indeed there are several Tour Card Holders with zero 93 scoring visits to date in 2024.
Jonny Clayton, with zero 93s in 278 legs, is the most notable among them.
On the other end of the spectrum, Rob Cross - a player whose incredible treble 18 accuracy was a key to his successful 2018 World Championship campaign - hits the most.
He has scored it 64 times in 383 legs, for a rate of 16.7 per 100 legs.
In general, players who are most likely to have the treble 20 blocked and to switch to treble 19 are also the most likely to switch away from treble 19 to the next available target when it is blocked.
As for Michael Smith - he has scored 93 at a rate of 5.5 per 100 legs so far in 2024, slightly above average for PDC Tour Card Holders.
Q2) What's the biggest age difference between two players in a PDC event?
if Littler plays Beaton on the tour this year (excuse me if Beaton isn’t the oldest) will that be the meeting of oldest v youngest of PDC players on record?
— Squeeze (@squeezefootball) March 31, 2024
If both players enter every event remaining on the calendar, a match-up between Luke Littler and Steve Beaton on the ProTour has a roughly one in five probability of occurring.
If it does, it would represent one of the three possible match-ups between Littler, born in 2007, and a current active Tour Card Holder who became World Champion before Littler was born.
In the case of Beaton, the age difference is especially extreme.
Beaton is approximately 42 years and 9 months older than Littler, and by 2007 had already appeared in 16 World Championships and won more than a dozen BDO titles, including the 1996 Lakeside Championship.
Yet, if it occurs, 1964 to 2007 would not be the biggest span of ages between two players in PDC history.
Just as Littler has broken every conceivable record for youth achievement in the PDC, some 15 years ago another player was setting benchmarks for longevity.
Northern Ireland's John Magowan was born on 10 June 1941 and continued to play on the ProTour beyond the age of 70 - and at a high enough level to become the oldest hitter of a PDC nine-dart leg when he achieved perfection at the age of 67.
On four occasions in 2010, Magowan encountered a young talent from St Helens named Michael Smith and won two matches.
In their first meeting, Smith was 19, Magowan 69 - for a difference of 49 years, 3 months.
Littler may one day encounter a player born before 1958, but such a man does not currently hold a PDC Tour Card.
Q3) What player has won a match with the largest advantage in averages in his opponent's favour?
Can you tell me the players, score and event where the largest difference between averages was recorded whereby the player with the lowest of the two won the game? Hope that makes sense tbf. Thanks.
— FTimes2 (@FXTWO) April 1, 2024
High averages are not necessarily indicative of success in darts.
Consider that it is possible for a player averaging 159 to lose to a player averaging 77 in a best-of-11 match without either player throwing a nine-darter.
While such a difference between averages is highly implausible to the point of impossibility, a player losing to an opponent who scored fewer points per dart thrown is a common occurrence in darts.
21% of ProTour matches since 2018 have been won by the player with the lower average, though of the more than 17,000 matches in which the difference in averages between players was greater than five points, only 7% were won by the lower scorer.
At the furthest extreme of this statistic was a 2022 match between Mensur Suljovic and Ian White, which resulted in a 6-3 victory for Suljovic.
It was a contest which saw the Austrian veteran average 91.26 compared to White’s 106.83, a difference made possible by a nine-darter from White and by Suljovic failing to get his score below 200 in each of the legs that he lost.
In shorter matches and on PDC regional and affiliated tours, similar differences of nearly 20 points have been observed.
However, no known best-of-11 match between two PDC Tour Card Holders exceeds the massive 15.58 point gap that resulted when White, in spite of recording one of the eight perfect legs of his 25-year career, crashed out in the first round of a floor event.