Analysis: Why Double One is darts’ most feared checkout — and the stats that prove it

This past weekend in Austria, darts history was made — for all the wrong reasons. Joe Cullen and Thibault Tricole played out the longest leg ever on the European Tour, needing a staggering 79 darts and 27 visits to finally close it out.

Most of the leg was spent in the dreaded “madhouse,” as both players struggled to finish on double one. As the leg dragged on, disbelief spread through both the crowd and the players.

While such scenes are almost unheard of at PDC Pro Tour level, this leg served as a brutal reminder of just how tricky double one can be — even for seasoned pros like Cullen and Tricole.

In professional darts, the best players do everything they can to avoid finishing on two. The stats back that up: since 2017, across more than 350,000 recorded double attempts in PDC matches, double one has been targeted only 4,094 times — just over 1%.

Remarkably, 0.6% of all those double one attempts came in that single leg between Cullen and Tricole.

Of those 4,094 tries, just 1,463 hit the mark — a success rate of 35.7%. Only the bullseye and a few obscure doubles (like double three, five, and nineteen) see worse returns.

Double one is infamous because a miss on the inside leaves you on one — forcing a reset. To avoid busting, players often aim wide on purpose, which ironically makes hitting the double even harder.

For most top players, time spent on double one is a sign things have already gone wrong. Unsurprisingly, many steer clear of it. Before Austria, Cullen had attempted double one only once in every 90 double shots — slightly below the PDC average. Damon Heta is even more extreme: just 33 attempts in six years, roughly once every 175 doubles. His strategy is simple — avoid it altogether.

There are exceptions. Michael van Gerwen ends up in the madhouse more than most, but boasts the highest success rate on double one — landing 45.5% of attempts and missing fewer than one in five. Gary Anderson is next best at 44.2%.