How to Bet on Darts!

The World Championships officially get Christmas underway when things kick off on December 13th. The Worlds have a different look to them this year, with the previous short format preliminaries gone, and an expanded first round draw seeing the best international players taking on the best unseeded pro-tour ranked players for a place in the second round against the big guns. The full draw is available here:

The format

Understanding the format is absolutely critical before contemplating a bet. First off, Darts can be played over Legs or Sets format. A straight "legs" format sees the players take turns with the "throw" as they attempt to reach a pre-determined number of legs, while "Set" format sees the match broken into a number of mini-sets - usually played over a best of five legs per set.

The match length is more important arguably - shocks are far more likely to occur when a match is played over a longer format. It makes sense really doesn't it? If a player like Michael van Gerwen plays a decent tour pro, he will almost certainly not lose in a best-of-21, while a best-of-5 always has that element of unpredicatbility - especially if his opponent can win the bull-off.

Correct Score

With the throw alternating between players, knowing who will throw first is always important. Last year's World Championship's saw 61% of legs won by the thrower and just 39% but the receiving player, and that leg dominance would be much wider in matches where the players are of roughly equal ability.

When it comes to the World Championships, your fancy is more likely to win a match with an odd-number of total sets when they throw first in odd numbered sets (so throw the first dart of the match), while if they lose the bull-off and their opponent throws first, then they we will be throwing in sets 2,4,6 etc. That means they are marginally more likely to win the match in an even number of sets (3-1 or 4-2 perhaps). It's a small but important detail.

180s

The most important thing to understand here is that a players 180 totals are hugely related to the number of legs played in the match, and not how well they perform in terms of winning each of those legs. Of course, hitting lots of 180s might help a player win the match, but in practice, it makes relatively little difference with the real money made on the doubles and check-outs. Knowing a players "180s per leg" statistic is vital therefore and is something you should ensure you have in your locker before the tournament kicks off. We'll try to share this resource in the run-up to the big start.

When thinking about betting on a player or match total, you need to first accurately estimate how long a match might last - never an easy thing. Then take this projection, and multiply in the 180s per leg totals. This gives you a reasonably expectation for how many 180s each player might expect to shoot. You must be careful here though - applying a simple poisson distribution to this total introduces error, given the expected legs total is an estimation in itself, meaning the extremes are more likely than a standard distribution suggests. They are useful of course, but be careful how you use them.

Check Outs

There are a few things you should be doing in your pre-world championships research. For every player, ideally, you want to know their checkout-doubles. Not all players are the same - Mensur Suljovic loves his double 14 for instance - 17% of his double attempts this season have come on D14 or D17 - the next nearest top player is around 5%! Raymond van Barneveld and Dimitri van den Bergh have bigger love for D18 than most, while Michael Smith, James Richardson and James Wade can be completely relied upon to tee up D20 rather than heading down the preferred D16 of players such as Jamie Lewis or Stephen Bunting.

Get the stats, which can also help you if you fancy some in-play betting on "leg winning colour".

On the big check-out bets, remember that the longer the match, the more likely a big check-out is to come. It's also worth considering the different lines offered by bookmakers - how much easier is a 121 than a 122 for instance? We'll try to take a look before the World's if time allows.

Averages

This is always a tough one, and you need to consider a few things when betting on averages. Firstly, not just who you are betting on, but who they are playing against. If you are trotting up against MvG, you're match average is going to be somewhere close to your first 3-dart average. If you're opponent is such a step up in class, then the chances are you wont be seeing doubles, which means you wont be racking up costly "zero" scores against your average for a missed double, and your average is going to be higher. You might have lost the match, but you can come out with a much higher average than your real ability might have allowed against a lesser opponent for instance. MvG's opponents in last year's tournament averaged 100.23, 96.02, 97.06, 98.76 and 100.97.

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