Luke Littler On Pace to Break Michael Smith's 180 Record: Can He Hit 800 This Year?

In his latest column, PDC Stats Analyst Christopher Kempf dissects the remarkable maximum-hitting of Luke Littler and Gary Anderson, who are poised to create history over the coming months...

In 1979, throwing a 180 - even one - was the mark of an extremely skilled darts player. Chunky dart barrels and thick dartboard wires all conspired against professional darts players attempting to register a maximum score. No player of the 1970s is known to have thrown more than five 180s in a match - when John Lowe did it in the 1979 BDO World Championship final, it capped off a tournament in which only 48 total were thrown across 282 legs.

In 1979, Gary Anderson was nine years old and would not begin to play darts for another 17 years. Luke Littler would not be born for another 28, four years after the player against whom Lowe threw those five maxima, Leighton Rees, had passed away. These two are breaking new ground for maxima thrown, and it is a testament to the evolution of professional darts equipment and talent that a teenage player can throw five 180s in fewer than five legs, and a player's scoring potential is measured by how many hundreds of 180s they throw in a year.

Littler and Anderson - some 36 years apart in age - are both on the verge of smashing records for 180 totals and rates set by players already considered among the sport's most powerful scorers of all-time. With per-visit scores not being consistently recorded until 2018, we are unfortunately unable to compare either player to the legendary exploits of Phil Taylor at his 2009-2010 zenith - exactly how many maxima he threw in those years is a fact lost to history. But for the past six complete seasons, we know exactly how many 180s each player threw and how many legs it took them to do so, allowing us to determine which players, in which years, are the most outstanding volume scorers in darts.

The 180 Record

2022 saw Michael Smith capture the biggest ranking title of his career at the Grand Slam of Darts, before he celebrated his landmark triumph at Alexandra Palace in January of the next year. In addition to all that, it has entered into history as the only year in which a single player threw more than 700 maxima. Smith, an extremely fast thrower, may likely have thrown the more than 2100 trebles needed to accomplish this record in less than one hour total. The St Helens star finished the year more than 100 180s clear of his second-place rival, Dave Chisnall, another renowned scorer, who threw more maxima in 2022 than in any other year of his career for which we have statistics.

Naturally it took more than 2000 legs for Smith to rack up his total of 714, with the result that the density of 180s per leg in his matches, though already very high, has already been usurped.

Luke Littler's 180 Rate

With more than eight months of darts completed in 2024, Luke Littler currently holds the fourth-highest rate of 180s ever seen for a player contesting more than 1000 legs, at 0.362 per leg. Littler is the fastest player ever to accumulate 500 maxima in a season, aided by last weekend's German Darts Championship which saw him record the highest rate of 180s ever seen by a finalist in a stage event. Should Littler continue throwing maxima at his current rate, and continue to enter enough tournaments and win enough matches in them to maintain that rate, he will break Smith's record, and even have an outside chance of reaching 800 180s for the first time. Littler, by virtue of being a Premier League and European Tour champion in 2024, has already played more than 1400 legs. Few players will ever throw as many darts as that, which is effectively necessary to challenge the total 180s record.

Gary Anderson's 180 Rate

However, if we reduce the leg threshold slightly, we discover another astonishing achievement: in 600+ legs played by Gary Anderson, the 'Flying Scotsman' is averaging more than 0.43 per leg. That is a figure so far beyond the record figure of 0.376 that, if it holds through to the end of the year, may take years for another player to approach, let alone surpass. A July match saw Anderson record nine scores of at least 171 in seven visits - a record for 2024 and an indication that the 53-year old veteran is not slowing down in his treble production.

The Future of Scoring?

It seems implausible that dartboard wires could become even thinner, or that players will soon use darts made from something more dense than tungsten. Similarly doubtful is the idea that new players will soon come along and surpass Littler's or Anderson's achievements in scoring. If we've never seen the like from the greatest players ever - Bristow, Lowe, Van Gerwen, Taylor - are these two stars perfecting the art of scoring?

Follow Christopher on Twitter @ochepedia