In his latest column, PDC Stats Analyst Christopher Kempf analyses the best treble 20 hitters on the European Tour over the last five years, ahead of the opening event of 2025 in Wieze this weekend...
Almost every professional darts player throws between eight and 12 darts per leg at the treble 20, representing about two thirds of all the darts they throw in the game of 501.
Over the course of a year, top players spend a total of about 15-20 hours in professional matches just throwing at that target.
With the exception of Madars Razma, known to favour treble 19, a treble 20 attempt will begin every leg for every player in every darts match, and some players may not switch away from it until a double-finish attempt presents itself.
There is no avoiding the fact that winning a leg of 501 at the elite level requires extensive and prolific power scoring.
More than anything else, counting oneself among the best in the world at making one's darts land in those few square centimetres of red sisal is a prerequisite for darts stardom.
The three-dart average so liberally cited in discussions of darts players' performance is an imperfect measure of this specific skill, since it includes darts at targets other than the one which interests us.
What if we only considered attempts at treble 20 in our calculation? This requires us to match every dart with an intended target, but Sportradar's data for the European Tour allows us to do that.
For instance, if we add up all the points scored by Rob Cross with the 8,163 darts he has thrown at treble 20 over the past five years of European Tour darts, we arrive at an average score of 35.17 per dart, or 105.51 per theoretical three-dart scoring visit.
It will surprise no one familiar with Luke Littler's record-breaking output of 180s in 2024 that the 2025 World Champion is, by some distance the player with the highest expected score per dart at treble 20.
Out of more than 2,000 darts over 259 legs, Littler averages 38.64 per dart and is nearly as likely to hit the treble as to hit the adjoining singles.
Most players who throw only eight darts at treble per leg make up for that low figure with extra attempts at treble 19, but in Littler's case needing so few darts at treble 20 is a consequence of his extremely high scoring.
After all, when the majority of one's darts score 60, one needs to throw fewer darts per leg to span the difference between 501 and 0.
Luke Humphries' haul of seven European Tour titles, mostly won before the PDC debut of Littler, have contributed to Humphries' becoming the only player in the PDC to have thrown 10,000 darts at treble 20 in the past five years of European Tour darts.
His average score of 36.67 per dart places him just ahead of Gerwyn Price for second in the ranking of European Tour stalwarts, but nearly two points behind Littler's 2024 figure.
He has nonetheless achieved more success than the player who formerly dominated the European Tour to the tune of winning more than 30 titles, Michael van Gerwen, whose scoring has not kept pace with the increases registered by his rivals.
Van Gerwen's one-dart average of 35.81 places him fourth, and less than half a point ahead of six other players, all of whom attempt the dartboard's most high-value target more often than he.
Among those players of Littler's generation, Josh Rock is the only other player in the top ten on 35.56, a figure which has steadily increased to the point of the Northern Irishman winning his first European Tour title in the Netherlands last May.
Repetitive practice in hitting big trebles does not necessarily correspond to more clinical checkouts - indeed, one might expect that a player could lose his nerve in less-familiar, high-pressure scenarios.
However, if treble 20 accuracy and scoring were the only variable one could use in attempting to predict which players would win the most events, it would do so very effectively - far more so than any granular statistic concerning doubles under pressure.
The top five players in T20 averages have won a total of 62 European Tour titles, more than half of all those awarded since 2012.
The only reason that the title-haul total is not greater is that the best treble 20 hitter of them all is only 18 and has had only one year in which to prove himself.
If his incredible scoring average is any guide to future achievements, he will have no trouble doing so.
Follow Christopher on Twitter @ochepedia