PDC Stats Analyst Christopher Kempf assesses the top ten PDC stars - based on their last 200 legs played - following last week's Players Championship treble-header in Leicester.
#1 Averages - Luke Humphries
#1 OChE - Luke Humphries
#1 Doubles - Michael van Gerwen
#1 171-180 - Josh Rock
#1 99, 101+ Checkout - Wesley Plaisier
Due to the absence of the reigning World Champion and Premier League Champion, recent Players Championships have taken on the character of a proving ground for the opposition to the dominance of Luke Humphries and Luke Littler in televised ranking events.
Thanks to an impressive display at Players Championship 18, Stephen Bunting has made a strong case for himself as a World Matchplay contender.
The Bullet's performances in his last 200 legs are indicative of improving form: Bunting would expect to win 4.5% more legs in future Players Championship events even though his averages have increased by just two-thirds of a point, and his total of 180s has put him in the top ten for the PDC, just two behind Littler.
Yet Bunting has won another title with mediocre finishing - just four 100+ checkouts and a 51st-highest doubles percentage. If he can manage to rectify this, he will have the best chance of taking on one or more of the Lukes in Blackpool.
James Wade's unexpected Players Championship victory has made him one of the rising stars of the PDC. Thus far in June, 'The Machine' has boosted his average to 96.42 - good enough for 12th place in the PDC - yet Wade punches above his weight in terms of OChE rating.
Here he is a top-ten player once again. Of the remaining players who have held a Tour Card uninterrupted from 2011 to present, only Gary Anderson surpasses him on his most recent form.
Wade is winning seven out of eight legs in 18 darts or fewer, a figure nearly on par with that of Luke Littler and Luke Humphries and ahead of every other player in the PDC.
This routine talent of cleaning up nearly every leg within six visits has contributed to the longevity of his 20+ year career, and continues to make him a title threat in any year.
The imposing title of World Championship semi-finalist has not helped Scott Williams replicate his 2022 Players Championship triumph, but he has come as close as ever this past week before falling to Wade in the final of PC19.
Though Williams would remain an underdog against Wade in a prospective rematch, Williams is the most improved player of June and the only player to have increased his averages by more than two points.
His OChE rating of 51.90 now indicates that he would be the favourite in a match against ProTour player selected at random, but Williams has also cured the disappointment of missing a match dart to defeat Krzysztof Ratajski in PC15 by defeating Wessel Nijman and reaching his first ProTour final of 2025.
Though denied in that last-leg decider with Scott Williams, Nijman achieved his best results in a Players Championship event this year by making a semi-final in PC19, defeating national hero Raymond van Barneveld along the way.
Nijman now holds the sixth highest OChE rating of the 128 Tour Card Holders. His 60.13 is an especially impressive figure given that his average is only 95.73 - this indicates that even though he has recorded almost exactly the same average as Chris Dobey over his last 200 legs, he would expect to win 4-5 more legs than 'Hollywood' against normal ProTour opposition.
In the sense of efficiently converting his darts thrown into legs won, Nijman currently ranks as the #1 Dutch player, with only Dirk van Duijvenbode surpassing him on averages.
*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