PDC Stats Analyst Christopher Kempf assesses the Key Performance Indicators from all the events played in 2020 as a guide of who will be successful at the 2020/21 William Hill World Darts Championship....
Professional players have competed in a variety of different settings during 2020; before a crowd of thousands at Alexandra Palace on New Years' Day and broadcast live from their darts practice rooms at home; in PDC televised events and non-televised tour settings in sports halls; before and after the worldwide impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Taking into account all of these events, who has best prepared themselves in 2020 for the World Championship?
Michael van Gerwen, Gerwyn Price and Peter Wright are top three players in the world on the Order of Merit by an enormous margin relative to the world number four and below, and appropriately feature at the top of many statistical rankings of the 2020 season.
They also comprise the top three in terms of averages, treble 20 accuracy and the rate at which they finish legs in 15 darts or fewer.
However, Van Gerwen's second-placed finish in averages behind Peter Wright (99.12 vs 99.05) makes the 2021 contest the first in many years in which the number one seed for the tournament has shown less darting virtuosity than one of his rivals.
Van Gerwen still holds the top spot on the treble 19 accuracy leaderboard - he will need every 134 he can get to compensate for his lower treble 20 percentage of this year, although he was buoyed by victory in the last event before the World Championship at the Players Championship Finals.
Price is not to be underestimated either; in a few short years he has transformed himself from a below-average double hitter into the top finisher of ton-plus checkouts.
Though he has skyrocketed into the top 16 with his Grand Slam triumph, Jose de Sousa is still underestimated by his 14th seeding - in almost every statistic one could care to calculate, he is a top-ten player.
He ranks second out of the 96 players in legs won in 12 darts or fewer; fourth in averages; and fifth in 180s.
His position in the draw could set up an intriguing duel with Gerwyn Price immediately after Christmas.
Some of the traditional powers in the PDC have had less-than-successful years, yet hold on to favourable seeding positions by virtue of the two-year rolling period of the Order of Merit.
World number five Rob Cross had only the 30th highest average in the 2020 season; Dave Chisnall ranks 23rd and only seventh in his traditional speciality of hitting 180s, and Daryl Gurney - who has fallen out of the top ten for the first time since 2017 - may drop further if his 29th-highest treble 20 accuracy is any indication.
James Wade, on the other hand, is still going strong, compensating for his extremely low rate of 180-hitting with extreme accuracy and consistency on all checkouts (he ranks second or third out of the field regardless of whether he is attempting a double with three darts in hand or attempting to take out the big three-dart finishes.
Representing the culmination of one of the great comeback seasons in PDC history, Devon Petersen has become not only the first player from the African continent to be seeded in a World Championship, but also the world's leading player in hitting 180s.
Petersen filled up the treble 20 bed 338 times in his 2020 tournament appearances, leading the PDC with a per-leg rate of 0.365, far surpassing traditional 180 powerhouses like Adrian Lewis (0.277) and Dave Chisnall (0.318).
Moreover, a semi-final run at the European Championship helped boost his average to world-class levels - for the 2020 season, his 96.35 average ranks ninth out of all the World Championship qualifiers.
Two of the most potent threats in the first round are Luke Humphries and Damon Heta - their potential second round seeded opponents both averaged less than their unseeded challengers across 2020.
Humphries is the only player in the field to have averaged over 95 for the year and to not have been seeded, while Heta, fresh off two ranking televised quarterfinal appearances, threw the tenth most 180s per leg in 2020 and threw fewer stray darts at treble 20 than all but three players in the field.
Adrian Lewis and Dimitri Van den Bergh, in spite of the TV titles to their names, will be the slight statistical underdogs to Heta and Humphries (respectively) should those two get through their first matches.
Another of the few players who is facing a second round opponent with higher averages potential than his own is Jeffrey de Zwaan, who has shown little indication in 2020 that he can follow up his 106 average in a seven-set match last December, although shoulder surgery in the Spring did disrupt his year.
De Zwaan (91.21 year to date average) appears to be highly vulnerable to a Ryan Searle averaging 94.70 and completing 54% of his sub-100 combination checkouts.
Furthermore, while Ricky Evans is favoured to out-average and beat Mickey Mansell or Haupai Puha, his position as 32nd seed sets him up for an identical situation to the one that resulted in his elimination last year; a third-round rendezvous with Michael van Gerwen.
Give a player three darts at double and who would you expect to check out most often?
Only two players complete finishes like 40 and 32 in one visit more than 4/5 of the time, and neither of those two are in the world's top three!
The top finisher in these situations is the United States' Danny Baggish, whose mediocre 88.38 average for the year is belied by his extremely high doubles percentage (estimate) of 41.62%, which ranks fifth overall.
Another standout player in this category is Keane Barry, who ranks ninth in three-darts-at-a-double situations, outpacing players like Michael Smith and Glen Durrant at a mere 18 years of age.
While Van Gerwen remains one of the most formidable players in darts (as demonstrated by his successful defence of his Players Championship Finals title), the era of his untrammeled dominance appears to be over.
If Peter Wright advances further in the tournament than Van Gerwen, we will have our first new world number one since 2014.
But there are also nearly a dozen players who could legitimately claim spots in the semi-finals and final, and the six-figure ranking pay-day that comes with them.
This tournament represents a greater percentage of the ranking money on offer in a given year than in any previous; a strong performance at the 2021 World Championship will give any player the biggest possible boost from two week's successful play.
Follow Christopher Kempf on Twitter @Ochepedia.