Is Littler value

Now this might be a bit of a counter-intuitive post given my previous post was saying betting on Littler to beat Humphries was maybe the best bet I've seen since January, but people who I respect are basically suggesting that Littler should be odds on to bink the worlds. That is in no way an unreasonable assessment, we have seen it before when MvG was at his peak, we've almost certainly seen it before when Taylor was at his peak, but is it realistic now? Let's run the numbers.

I'm going to try to work out a worst possible run, and then a best possible run. So much is down to the draw that it seems prudent to try to do this. Clearly this is going to be subjective, and clearly things will change in terms of draw brackets once Minehead is done, but we should be able to get some kind of base level. I'm using dartsrankings.com in terms of working out the bracket. Any mistake I make is mine for not double checking their work, but I trust them to be reliable enough. At least for the purposes of this post. What I'll do is post the players that Littler can, as of right now (I think they work in PC Finals guaranteed money) face in each round, and their year long scoring per turn. I'll then try to give him the god run, and then the bastard run. Let's go, but I will list in order of least options first, even if that makes no sense in order.

R3 - Cullen (92.07)

R4 - Cross (93.04), de Decker (91.72)

R5 - van Veen (95.09), Dobey (94.06), Joyce (90.65), Woodhouse (90.56)

SF - Bunting (95.19), van Duijvenbode (93.95), Clayton (93.61), R Smith (93.51), Wattimena (92.84), Aspinall (92.67), Schindler (91.39), M Smith (90.64)

F - Humphries (95.91), Rock (95.65), Anderson (94.93), Price (94.87), van Gerwen (94.56), Nijman (93.10) Searle (92.97), Wade (92.24), Heta (92.02), Noppert (92.01), Gurney (90.83), Wright (90.55), Menzies (90.09), Chisnall (89.45), Edhouse (88.70), van den Bergh (87.78)

Any round except 1 - Taylor (92.52), Rydz (92.20), Ratajski (91.69), Springer (91.65), O'Connot (91.29), Gilding (91.20), Scutt (90.91), Zonneveld (90.75), S Williams (90.08), Suljovic (90.01), Evans (89.68), Doers (89.61), Vandenbogaerde (89.58),.Razma (89.56), Hurrell (89.47), Clemens (89.43), Dolan (89.11), Wenig (89.05), Pietreczko (88.99), van Barneveld (88.99), Kenny (88.97), Mansell (88.78), Soutar (88.71), de Graaf (88.68), Huybrechts (88.68), Campbell (88.60), White (88.56), Veenstra (88.41), Meikle (88.20), Barry (87.82), Lukeman (87.81), Tricole (86.82)

Any round - Brooks (91.68), Greaves (90.62), Hood (90.51), Plaisier (90.30), Sedlacek (89.84), Crabtree (89.69), Baetens (89.67), Manby (89.66), Lennon (89.49), Bates (88.87), Dennant (88.83), Beveridge (88.63), van den Herik (88.48), Gruellich (88.44), Hopp (88.31), van der Velde (87.96), King (87.96), Harrysson (87.95), Landman (87.92), Buntz (87.61), Bialecki (87.49), Lipscombe (87.38), Evetts (87.27), Labanauskas (87.23), Harju (87.23), Dekker (87.21), Davies (86.76), Toylo (86.08), Cameron (86.02), Ilagan (86.00), Bellmont (85.97), Leung (85.88), Sevada (85.87), Nebrida (85.51), Sakai (84.86), Lukasiak (84.81), Gates (84.76), Spellman (84.55), Comito (83.92), Lim (83.87), Azemoto (83.71), Pusey (83.09), Krcmar (94.31*), Tatsunami (87.87*), van Leuven (86.56*), Gawlas (84.33*), Zong (83.00*), Ashton (82.96*), Kumar (81.06*), Merk (79.75*), Sherrock (79.05*), Kovacs (76.17*), Hayter (0.00*), Reyes (0.00*), Tata (0.00*), Kciuk (0.00*), Salate (0.00*), Munyua (0.00*)

Here note that an * indicates I do not have 50 winning legs on someone (and if they're at 0.00, I don't have any legs whatsoever on them) and as such I'm not confident in the sample size to consider them in the equation. So now we can start to create the bastard run and the god run. As you might expect, it starts with Brooks (it could be the case that in reality, the bastard draw is Krcmar), but we'll just go with Brooks, if only because I have each way money on him and want to hype. We'll then go into Ratajski round two (think the tested veteran who's actually won stuff might play out better than the younger players who haven't, and might play at a pace that's more conducive to Littler. Can consider qualifiers in round 3 but Cullen looks to have enough numbers, Cross and van Veen are the obvious next two choices, then for the semi I think maybe there's someone in better form than Bunting, but we'll trust the numbers, and then go Humphries in the PDC's dream final. This gives us a Littler winning chance of:

0.8225 * 0.9053 * 0.9359 * 0.8277 * 0.8003 * 0.8106 * 0.8287 = 31.01% binking chance

That is quite remarkable in that if you construct the hardest possible draw, the bookmakers couldn't even price Littler at 5/2 and be profitable.

What about the god draw though? Here I'm going to try to be reasonable and avoid bUT kIrK ShePHeRd mADe tHe fINaL oNCe permutations, I doubt that ever happens again, at least in terms of basically coming out of nowhere. We should all know who Mitchell Lawrie is by now, should a non seed get pretty deep, it's probably going to b e one we know. So let's go sensible. First round I'm taking Pusey, if only because he'll be demoralised at having to change his nickname. I could pick an unseeded player for round two as well and say someone will pull an upset, but Tricole's numbers look weak enough that it's less controversial just to go with him. Round three we want someone to knock Cullen out. I'm going to look at who's knocked him out of European Tours at the first round and use that as a "reasonable" yardstick. Ryan Meikle gave him a 6-1 shoeing and is in the bottom few names for who'll be in the 33-64 list so that seems as reasonable as any (plus we get the rematch knowledge that even when Meikle was looking really good, he couldn't really do much at all). Round 4 we need to have someone reasonably good to knock out Cross. de Decker would fit that bill in a 16 v 17 seeding match, there's ptobably someone weaker who could reasonably take both of them out, but MdD seems the most reasonable. Into the quarters and I think we realistically need to pick a seed. Here I'm going to go with Joyce - he has hit some form, has course and distance for this stage, and would it be that unreasonable to say something like van Veen ran into someone like Springer or O'Connor in the early stages, went out, then Joyce turns over Dobey and whoever took out GvV? I don't think that's TOO much of a stretch. Semi final I'll just take Aspinall, again in decent form, think it's a reasonable argument that he could turn over any of the names ahead of him right now. Then in the final, we'll take Price, going for the Nijman upsetting Humphries early to open up the section and have MvG, Ando and Rock beat seven bells out of each other softening them all up. This god run would give you:

0.9940 * 0.9780 * 0.9817 * 0.8885 * 0.9686 * 0.9372 * 0.8294 = 63.82% binking chance

Now that's not a huge percentage. It'd probably allow the bookies to ptivr him up at 1/2, but if you want to come up with some realistic path that's even weaker, then be my guest. We've already got four matches in the slate that are over 95% for Littler, and another that isn't too far off. Maybe you can get it a tad shorter if you want to make an argument that a non seed would clear out both Cross and de Decker, but factor in the scoring numbers - Mike isn't exacrly lighting it up, so who out of the non-seeds is both significantly worse than de Decker yet could realistically take them both out (or, perhaps, get an assist by someone knocking one or both out before they would ordinarily face them). You're pushing it. I don't think you can realistically make an argument that you can get a weaker finalist - you'd probably indeed need to go back to that Part/Shepherd final before you got a real surprise finalist, at least in the lastt decade the only name you could say wasn't hugely known the year before they got to the final was Cross, but he was certainly known at the time, then you're looking back further at maybe the likes of when Hamilton or Whitlock made the final, but neither was random (and I've skipped the first Wright final where MvG won as well, as I was on him each way to bink at the time and hence known).

Naturally, the draw is probably not going to be one of these two polar opposites, and is probably going to come down somewhere in the middle - although leaning a bit towards the bastard draw. If you gave him something like Beveridge, Suljovic, Cullen, de Decker, van Veen, van Duijvenbode then Rock in the final, that comes to about 38%. Let's call a typical path 40% - that seems a long way off saying he should be shorter than evens, especially if you consider that I have been MORE optimistic about Littler's chances against elite players - looking back I took Littler only on three occasions, the semi and final of the worlds and the Slam final just now, and all for relatively speaking large amounts. If I'm right, then these numbers are fine. If I'm wrong, and I'm actually overestimating Littler's chances, then it seems even less reasonable to say Littler should be odds on for the title, barring any arguments people might like to make in that he's only so short already because of bookmaker liabilities - although that wouldn't explain that the exchange has him at 2.3-2.4 depending which perspective you want to take.

tl;dr - no i'm not backing littler at 11/10 outright i'll just wait for the latter stages thanks