The PDC form guide does not hand out a trophy, it captures a trend. Published on 3 November, eleven days before the Grand Slam of Darts in Wolverhampton (14 to 22 November) and on the eve of the Players Championship double-header in Leicester, Christopher Kempf's ranking is built on each player's last 200 legs. Behind Luke Humphries and Luke Littler, it tells the story of a fight for 2027 Premier League places and a late-season surge from the ProTour outsiders.
The PDC's stats analyst assesses the sport's top ten stars across five categories. The result draws two separate hierarchies: pure scoring, and conversion.
Humphries on top, Littler everywhere else
Luke Humphries holds the best average on the circuit over the period. Luke Littler takes two of the five crowns: the best OChE and the highest number of 171s and 180s. Gian van Veen posts the best doubles rate, Ricardo Pietreczko the best checkouts of 99 and above.
OChE, for Ordinal Checkout Efficiency, deserves a word of explanation. The metric measures how efficiently a player converts an average into legs won: the percentage of legs he would be expected to win on the ProTour, calculated from a weighted average of his four, five, six and seven visit checkout rates. In practice, a heavy scorer who finishes poorly slides down, while a slower but clinical player climbs. That measure is what makes Ross Smith the story of the day.
Ross Smith, a Premier League case
European Champion in Dortmund, Ross Smith has never been a regular near the top of this ranking. His week in Germany changes the picture: 2.5 OChE points gained in one go, and a move to eighth in the PDC on that measure. Only two players on the circuit are currently outscoring him on 180s.
The detail of the tournament explains the jump. Against Luke Woodhouse, another European Tour winner, he averaged 107 and won five legs before the end of his fourth turn at the board, hitting 17 trebles in 23 attempts across three legs.
The real stakes lie elsewhere. Two Welsh players separate him from an automatic 2027 Premier League spot, and one of them, Gerwyn Price, lost to him in a televised semi-final. Price has dropped 1.28 points in average across the second half of October, while Jonny Clayton is winning legs less efficiently than the two-time European Champion. Ross Smith is therefore in position to force the door open in three months' time.
Dobey finds his range before Leicester
Chris Dobey had a different problem to solve: four straight first-round exits in televised events. His PC32 win in Den Bosch, a third title of the year, at least answered on the stats sheet. Over his last 200 legs he has thrown 90 maximums, second in the PDC and only five behind Littler, and he sits second for leg-winning efficiency at 62.14 OChE.
The manner matters as much as the result: he dropped only 14 of the 52 legs he played in the event, and averaged 111 against Krzysztof Ratajski in a one-sided 6-1 quarter-final. Dobey is one of only three players on the circuit, with Littler and Humphries, winning at least one leg in 12 darts or fewer every nine legs. He did so six times in his last 30 legs.
Williams and O'Connor close in on Minehead
Scott Williams won nothing last week, but he probably secured something much bigger. Runner-up at PC30 and a semi-finalist at PC32, he banked more than 16,000 pounds across two events after failing to reach a single quarter-final in the first 29 tournaments of the year. That run puts him in a qualifying position for the Players Championship Finals in Minehead, with two events left on the ProTour.
Three whitewash wins in Den Bosch pushed his OChE into the PDC top ten. William O'Connor, who beat him at PC31 before reaching the PC32 semi-finals, gained seven OChE points thanks to deciding-leg wins over Martin Schindler and Niels Zonneveld. Both will be seeded at Minehead, with a real chance of meeting in the first round.
What Leicester can still change
PC33 and PC34 take place in Leicester this week, before the Grand Slam. Every new event reshuffles the last 200 legs, so the form guide positions will move again before Wolverhampton. For Ross Smith, Dobey and Williams the point is simple: ProTour titles build confidence, but averages and checkouts decide Premier League places and Minehead seedings.
