The luck of the draw

So, we come into the last two Pro Tour events. Everyone is scrambling for Minehead and, ultimately, the worlds. But here's the thing - you show up at a leisure centre in one of the less salubrious parts of the world, and you want to play darts. You're a random card holder. You could get Callum Goffin. You could get Luke Humphries. You just don't know. Over the course of the year, how much does the draw matter?

Well let's try to put some numbers to the bullshit. I've taken every single first round match on the Pro Tour so far, taken everybody in my database's scoring for the whole calendar year, looked at their first round opponent, merged one on to the other, and got an average. Who's had the easiest draws? Who's had the most difficult draws? I'll tell you.

Now obviously, players who are seeded will be weighted towards the "easy" end. That is obvious. You will expect to see big names in the lower part of the list. I only state this as I'm finding that some people are becoming thicker and thicker and can't draw obvious conclusions. So let's go through. Two caveats - for your opposing player's scoring average, which is the metric I'm going to use, I'm using the entirety of the data in my set from the day after the worlds ends. Just for more data. I'm also not going to list players who've played less than a quarter of the events so far, just so someone who's only played one or two events doesn't become a comical outlier. I'm going to list everyone now in ascending order of difficulty. Let's go.

89.2-89.4 - Cullen

89.4-89.6 - Joyce, Humphries

89.6-89.8 - Chisnall, R Smith, Bunting, Littler

89.8-90.0 - Pietreczko, Anderson, Clemens, M Smith, Cross, Searle, Clayton, Rock

90.0-90.2 - Heta, Dolan, van Barneveld, Burnett, Gilding, Goffin, van Veen, Wooshouse, Hughes

90.2-90.4 - Wright, van Gerwen, Hunt, de Decker, Landman, Campbell, Wade, Scutt, Doets, Wattimena, Edhouse, Dobey, Burton, Schindler, Killington, Gurney, Bellmont, Price

90.4-90.6 - Labre, White, Sparidaans, O'Connor, van den Bergh, Meikle, Vandenbogaerde, Lukeman, Henderson, de Sousa, Lennon, Soutar, van Duijvenbode

90.6-90.8 - Razma, Gotthardt, Noppert, Aspinall, Hood, Suljovic, de Zwaan, Hempel

90.8-91.0 - Rydz, Griffin, Menzies, Kenny, S Williams, Rupprecht, Reus, Ratajski, Sedlacek, Pilgrim, Claydon

91.0-91.2 - Szaganski, Hurrell, L Evans, Rodriguez, Bates, Zonneveld, Richardson, Geeraets, Rafferty, Brown, Kuivenhoven, Krcmar

91.2-91.4 - Borland, Beaton, Veenstra, Knops, Dennant, Gawlas, Wolters, Nentjes, Perez, van Trijp, Atkins, Lukasiak, Roelofs, van Peer, van der Wal, Baetens

91.4-91.6 - Nijman, Wenig, K Huybrechts, Plaisier, R Huybrechts, Crabtree, Usher, Taylor, R Evans, Tricole, Jansen, Monk, King, van der Voort, Grundy

91.6-91.8 - Klose, van Schie, Bennett, Slevin, Turetta, Mansell, Boulton, Krohne, Payne, Beveridge, Hall

And your top fuckees in terms of draws:

91.83 - Jurjen van der Velde

91.85 - Robert Owen

91.86 - Jeffrey de Graaf

91.88 - Lee Cocks, Simon Whitlock

91.91 - Adam Warner

91.95 - Martijn Dragt

92.05 - Jules van Dongen, Danny Lauby

92.18 - Christian Kist

92.19 - Jim Williams

92.24 - Rene Eidams

92.39 - Keane Barry

92.45 - Haupai Puha

92.57 - Aden Kirk

For the record, Kirk's 12 events saw him face Aspinall, Hall, Rock (twice), Heta, Kuivenhoven, Menzies, Wattimena, Burnett, King, Owen and Lennon. I've seen easier runs. Of those that have played basically every event, the worst in terms of draws has been Keane Barry, who's run into the following:

Dobey, Rock, Littler, Hall, van den Bergh, R Smith, Littler (again), Gurney, Dolan, Lennon, Sedlacek, Bunting, Crabtree, O'Connor, Bunting (again), Turetta, Goffin, Gotthardt, van Veen, Clayton, Roelofs, Cross, Menzies, King, Kenny, Beaton, Szaganski and Cocks. Brutal.