In his latest column, PDC Stats Analyst Christopher Kempf analyses data from 2025 to discover the difference between winning legs on throw compared to against.
PDC professionals are accustomed to playing best-of-11 darts: more than 90% of the ranked matches in the PDC are played first to six.
If a player in this format wins the throw for the bull at the start of the match, they only need to hold throw six times and victory is assured regardless of their opponent's average.
Those holds, if all six take 15 darts or less, will win the match a majority of the time since 12-dart breaks are rare.
However, when playing the highest-level players, you cannot rely on just holding throw. On average, for every three legs won on throw, two legs are won against throw.
Across the 34 Players Championship events in 2025, not one player contesting over 100 legs won a majority of their legs with breaks, while two players managed to win more than 75% of their legs on their throw.
But when a player's average increases, why is it more likely that their improvements will more readily translate into holds and not breaks?
In order to break throw at the top level, it is far more likely that a player will need to convert a 15-darter into a 12-darter, since only around 10% of legs are won within 12 darts.
Improving against the throw from an 18-darter to a 15-darter can be effective, but may be futile if the opponent is playing at an average around 100, where a 15-darter is the norm.
However, on throw, if you covered an 18-darter into a 15-darter, your opponent now must take out a 12-darter to break, hence the marked improvement.
Players who win 50% of their legs on throw, according to figures from the 150 regular players in the Players Championship circuit, win about 30% against.
This gap of 20% widens gradually until an elite player's 70% win rate on throw is correlated with a 42% break of throw win rate.
Danny Noppert is the most characteristic player in this sense, winning 28% more legs on throw than he did against.
The heavy-scoring players most likely to record those coveted 12-darters are able to keep this gap as narrow as possible even when maximising their on-throw percentage.
These include Luke Littler, Josh Rock and Gian van Veen - but Wessel Nijman's gap of 21% between his on-throw and against-throw win rates is the smallest of any player winning 70%+ of his legs on throw.
Other players maintain a consistency that suits holding throw instead of breaking. James Wade, for example, won 72% of legs on throw, and 41% against, with 259 of 406 legs won this year on throw in floor events.
The most difficult player to break of them all, however, was Stephen Bunting. The St Helens star was broken less 100 times out of 391 legs played when throwing first, whilst being the 22nd best at breaking himself.
Both play styles are effective in best-of-11, since both Bunting and Nijman contested almost every Players Championship event and both won two titles.
The short format and unique seeding of the Players Championship Finals give players their best chance of causing an upset and defeating the likes of new world number one Luke Littler.
In order to defeat such a player, holds of throw are not enough. Twelve-darters to break throw are essential, and no player in the PDC has proven a consistent ability to outperform Littler in this respect in the long run.
While no player can likely produce 30 12-darters in one match, plenty have the potential to produce three. In a short format, that just might be enough to end Littler’s winning streak.
Follow Christopher on Twitter @ochepedia