How good do you actually need to be to play competitive darts?
It's something I've thought about quite a lot.
If most of your darts viewing comes from the PDC, it would be very easy to think you need to average 80 or 90 before you should even consider entering a tournament.
An 85 average can look ordinary on television. Players average 90 and lose comfortably. Occasionally somebody can average close to 100 and still find themselves going home.
But professional darts isn't normal darts.
So I decided to use the Q4QS database to look at the players who are actually going out and competing.
And the numbers tell a very different story.
You don't have to be amazing to play competitive darts.
More than 5,500 competitive players
For this analysis I've concentrated on players who have played enough events to establish a Q4QS Average.
That leaves 5,590 players.
At one end we have some of the very best players in the world.
At the other we have ordinary grassroots players entering local competitions.
And there is pretty much everything in between.
Importantly, these aren't somebody's best five legs on a practice board. They are averages built from actual competitive darts.
So what does a competitive darts player really look like?
The answer isn't 80 or 90
The biggest concentration of players isn't around 80.
It isn't even around 70.
The largest five-point group is in the 56–60 range.
There is another huge group between 61 and 65.
The median Q4QS Average across the entire sample is 64.67.
The mean is 66.35.
The most common exact Q4QS Average is 56.80, although with averages recorded to two decimal places I wouldn't read too much into one exact figure. Rounded to a whole number, the biggest concentration is around 60.
Whichever measure we use, the conclusion is much the same.
The centre of competitive darts is nowhere near the averages we regularly see on television.
What about an 80 average?
I've scored at several Q Schools and I've always had 80.00 in my head as an important benchmark.
That's my own opinion. It isn't an official PDC minimum and averaging 80 certainly doesn't guarantee success at Q School.
But from what I've seen, it's around the minimum level where I personally start thinking seriously about Q School standard.
So how many of these 5,590 players actually average 80 or more?
539.
That's just 9.6%.
In other words, more than 90% of the qualifying competitive players in this sample average below 80.
Go higher and the numbers fall rapidly.
Only 214 players — 3.8% — average 85 or better.
Only 69 — 1.2% — average 90 or better.
Only 14 players — 0.25% — average 95 or better.
And there is just one player in the database with a Q4QS Average above 100.
Suddenly an 80 average doesn't look very ordinary.
Television gives us a strange idea of a good average
That's probably inevitable.
We spend hours watching some of the best darts players on the planet.
Someone averages 89, loses 6–2 and we hear that they've had a poor game.
Perhaps they have by their standards.
But an 89 average isn't poor darts.
Across this population, it's exceptional.
An 80 average puts you roughly in the top 10%.
Get into the 83–84 area and you're around the top 5%.
Reach the low 90s and you're getting towards top 1% territory.
That's quite a different perspective.
Where does your average put you?
With thousands of players, we can start putting averages into context.
Very approximately:
| Q4QS Average | Where it puts you |
|---|---|
| 59 | Top 75% |
| 65 | Around the top 50% |
| 73 | Around the top 25% |
| 80 | Around the top 10% |
| 83–84 | Around the top 5% |
| 92 | Around the top 1% |
That makes a 70-something average look rather different from how it might appear on television.
If you're averaging around 73 consistently in competitive darts, you're roughly in the upper quarter of this population.
That's decent darts.
The Q4QS colours give us another way of looking at it
I then wondered whether the Q4QS colour rankings would show the same pattern.
They do.
I calculated the average Q4QS Average of the players in each current colour band.
| Q4QS Colour | Ranking | Average Q4QS Average |
|---|---|---|
| Gold | 1–200 | 88.53 |
| Silver | 201–500 | 82.43 |
| Bronze | 501–1,000 | 78.75 |
| Black | 1,001–2,000 | 74.14 |
| Brown | 2,001–3,000 | 69.51 |
| Blue | 3,001–4,000 | 66.51 |
| Green | 4,001–5,000 | 63.96 |
| Red | 5,001–6,000 | 61.86 |
| Purple | 6,001–7,000 | 59.96 |
| Pink | 7,001–8,000 | 58.19 |
| Orange | 8,001–9,000 | 56.78 |
| Yellow | 9,001–10,000 | 54.86 |
I really like this table.
It gives players a completely different set of targets.
The average Yellow-ranked player is around 55.
Orange is around 57.
Purple is almost exactly 60.
Red is around 62.
Green is around 64.
Blue moves into the 66–67 territory.
Brown is getting close to 70.
Black is around 74.
Bronze is nearly 79.
Silver is above 82.
Gold averages almost 89.
These aren't qualification marks. Averaging 74 doesn't automatically make you a Black-ranked player because Q4QS ranking isn't based solely on average.
But they are useful benchmarks.
If you're Purple, perhaps your immediate target isn't an 80 average.
Maybe it's the typical Red level.
Then Green.
Then Blue.
That's a much more achievable way of looking at improvement.
And then there's me
I'm useful at the other end of this argument.
I'm roughly a 50-average player.
I've averaged 70.
I've also averaged 40.
Consistency is very much a work in progress.
But I play competitive darts.
I'm not entering tournaments expecting to become the next world champion. I'm playing because I enjoy competing and because I want to improve.
There is a tendency in darts to think you have to reach some imaginary standard before you're allowed to enter.
You don't.
There will always be somebody better than you.
That's true if you average 50.
It's true if you average 70.
And unless your name happens to be Luke Littler or Luke Humphries, it's probably true if you average 100.
Half a point matters
This might be my favourite result from the whole exercise.
When we talk about getting better at darts, we usually think in big numbers.
"I'm averaging 55 and want to average 65."
Or:
"I'm at 60 and want to reach 70."
But ten average points is an enormous improvement.
So I looked at something much smaller.
Half a point.
Around a 60 average, there are approximately 134 players within the next half-point of the Q4QS average distribution.
At 65, it's around 105.
At 70, around 76.
At 75, around 72.
At 80, around 48.
At 85, only around 19.
At 90, just seven.
That doesn't mean adding half a point automatically moves your Q4QS ranking by that many places. The ranking takes much more into account.
But it shows just how densely packed the playing population is around grassroots levels.
Don't find ten points — find half a point
I think that's a much better way of approaching improvement.
If I'm averaging 50 and decide I need to get to 80, I've given myself a 30-point target.
That sounds ridiculous.
What if I try to get to 50.5?
Then 51.
Then 51.5.
Then 52.
Suddenly the target isn't quite so ridiculous.
And around the busiest areas of the average distribution, those little improvements can move you past a surprisingly large number of players on the average curve.
Half a point matters.
A point matters.
Consistency matters.
It gets harder the higher you go
The numbers demonstrate something else as well.
The player population becomes thinner as the averages rise.
At grassroots levels, there can be more than 100 players squeezed into half an average point.
At 90, there are only a handful.
And finding an extra half-point when you're already averaging 90 is considerably harder than finding one when you're averaging 55.
That's part of what makes elite darts so impressive.
The margins become tiny.
Average isn't everything
There's one other important caveat.
Q4QS ranking isn't simply an average table.
Actually entering tournaments matters.
Winning matches matters.
Who you play matters.
Consistency matters.
That's why somebody with a relatively modest average can still have a respectable ranking.
Darts matches aren't awarded to whoever has the best season average.
You still have to win the legs.
So don't become obsessed with one number.
Use it as a measure of improvement rather than a definition of how good you are.
Stop comparing yourself with the PDC
Professional darts is brilliant.
It's also a terrible benchmark for deciding whether you're good enough to enter your local tournament.
Those players are at the extreme end of the curve.
That's why they're professionals.
An average that looks disappointing on television can represent an exceptional standard across the wider competitive game.
And an average that looks poor compared with the PDC might actually be completely normal at grassroots level.
So if you're sitting at home averaging 50, 55 or 60 and thinking you aren't good enough to enter a tournament, perhaps think again.
Will you win it?
Probably not.
Could you lose your first match?
Absolutely.
So could everybody else who enters.
Could you compete?
Yes.
You might already be good enough
That's ultimately what I took from looking at these numbers.
There isn't a magic average where somebody suddenly becomes entitled to call themselves a competitive darts player.
You don't need to average 80.
You don't need to average 70.
You don't even need to average 60.
If you want to play competitive darts, enter something.
Find out where you are.
Then try to improve.
And rather than looking 10 or 20 points further up the average table, start with half a point.
Then another half.
Then another.
Because when you stop comparing yourself with the handful of extraordinary players we watch on television and start comparing yourself with thousands of people who actually play competitive darts, things look very different.
You don't have to be amazing to play competitive darts.
You just have to play.
