In the first edition of his new 'Stat of the Week' column, PDC Stats Analyst Christopher Kempf outlines the best double 12 hitters in world darts following the conclusion of the opening European Tour event of 2024.
Double 12 represents fewer than 5% of all finishing doubles hit in darts, but its importance to the game is far more significant than this mere utilitarian purpose.
Luke Littler may have become the youngest player to hit a European Tour nine-darter this past weekend, but he did so in a familiar way, leaving 144 with his first six darts before pinning double 12 to complete the perfect leg.
More than 80% of successful nine-dart legs completed in history (for which the route is known) have resulted in a double 12 finish.
Thus while not essential to the routine business of winning more legs than one's opponent, knowing one's way around the northwest corner of the board is a critical factor in earning one's piece of darts immortality.
As is often the case with players who specialise in a particular segment of the board, the player with the most impressive accuracy is also the player most dependent on that double - an affinity and an aptitude for aiming at an auspicious area often go hand-in-hand.
The leader in double 12 accuracy from January 2023 to the present is Gerwyn Price - with 47.3%, this is more than eight points better than the PDC stage average.
Price is also the only player to have hit that double more than 100 times, while no other player has managed more than 50 hits.
One might have expected Price to have converted at least a few of these into nine-darters, but in fact Price has missed double 12 three times with a perfect leg on the line, most recently in Glasgow during Night Three of the Premier League last month.
In the course of normal leg-play, the imperative to hit double 12 - or at least miss on the outside - is very strong.
Missing inside takes a player on a path to uncomfortable regions of the board, especially double 3, the most difficult double on the board to hit for most players.
Luke Humphries - in second place on the double 12 leaderboard - nearly matches Price's accuracy with 46.7%.
However, with his darts' habit of landing low - which they do twice as often as they miss above the outer wire - could cause him more trouble than they would for Dimitri Van den Bergh, for example.
The newly crowned UK Open champion has a lower accuracy than Humphries, but a greater tendency to leave himself markers for future double 12 attempts, should they be necessary.
The parameters: 2023 and 2024 seasons, minimum of 50 stage/streamed attempts.
The caveats: Data only available for TV, European Tour and streamed Players Championship matches. Many players do not have enough attempts on record to get a comprehensive sense of their accuracy on this double.