The 2023-24 Paddy Power PDC World Darts Championship

Close to 110 average and multiple 100+ finishes over 6 sets. A bit more than playing well I'd say

Very enjoyable tournament . Gutted back to work tomoro night for final but phone wil be close by . I think it could be an absolute cracker of a final .

It's close to double the odds (60%). Put a tener on each, the return is 6.50 or 11. Big difference there.

Minor would be both less then evens. It's from PP, they're all gonna be similar.

That's an odd definition of minor but does matter?

Most ridiculous comment ever, hopefully you retire from Boards.

I don't enjoy watching LH like several others but you can enjoy him for the next few months in the PL if you wish.

For the final i see it

5/4 Littler v 4/5 Humphries. Draw about 5/1(😁)

There are pots going in on the snooker tables now that have no right to go in. I've played on professional table before the hearn era and there was no room for error on anything near a cushion. Now then are hitting near cushion and going in.

I think you’ll always gave the human element - i.e Mvg probably beats Williams 95 times out of 100 but somehow loses in a best of 9 game. While taking nothing away from Williams, it’s pretty inexplicable that he won really.

Although i guess that’s what you are saying, that in the coming years the human element will become less affective of the result as players get better.

Other big factor i see is the crowd, they can have an enormous affect on players as we’ve seen with Gerwyn Price.

Yeah, all this really.

I'm not saying the game is imminently going this way, but it seems to me there's an inevitable point that going out in 12 darts will become the norm for the ever-improving top players. At which stage (which is still maybe 2 generations away) the game becomes just about the misses - nerves, crowd, whatever. But if you have enough top players who aren't affected as such, then the game would need to re-adjust. What that re-adjustment would be I don't know (higher board, longer oche, smaller segments, 2 darts instead of 3 are all possibles that occur to me).

To an extent other sports have faced this. Examples off the top of my head would be golf has limited technological advances in ball/club to stop 400yd drives that destroyed courses whilst simultaneously making courses longer/trickier - tennis changed the ball makeup to stop it becoming a relentless serve/volley 3 shot game - javelin changed the equipment to stop people being able to throw it into the stands.

All just random musings before the Lukes battle.

Have been thinking for a long time that the PDC are missing a trick by not running a tournament with a ‘quadruple’ board. Would be very interesting and a potential future solution to the problem you are describing!