How Rare Is a 9-Darter? The True Odds of Darts’ Perfect Leg

What Is a 9-Darter?

A 9-darter is a perfect leg of 501 darts. The minimum number of darts required to reach zero from 501 is nine. A player needs to score 60 points (treble 20) with seven of their darts, then 57 (treble 19) with the eighth, and finish with 24 (double 12) on the ninth. There are over 3,944 mathematically possible combinations of nine darts that reach exactly 501, but only a handful are practical in competitive play.

The traditional route is three treble 20s (180), another three treble 20s (360 total), then a 141 checkout using treble 20 (60), treble 19 (57), and double 12 (24). Some players use alternative routes. Phil Taylor sometimes finished with treble 17, treble 18, double 18. Michael van Gerwen has used treble 20, treble 17, double 15. The route does not matter. All that counts is nine perfect darts.

The feat is considered the highest single-game achievement in darts, comparable to a 147 maximum break in snooker or a perfect 300 game in bowling. It requires not just elite accuracy but also composure under pressure, because the difficulty ramps up with each successive dart.

The Math Behind a 9-Darter

To understand how rare a 9-darter really is, you need to look at the numbers. A player must hit eight trebles and one double without a single miss. Each hit is not guaranteed, and the probability of all nine landing perfectly is the product of each individual probability multiplied together.

Professional Level Odds

A top professional hits the treble 20 bed roughly 35% of the time. They hit a double around 38% of the time. The probability of a 9-darter is therefore 0.35 to the power of 8, multiplied by 0.38. That comes out to approximately 0.009% per leg. Put another way, a world-class player can expect one 9-darter every 10,000 to 12,000 legs in practice conditions. At one leg per minute, that is about seven days of non-stop throwing.

Decent League Player Odds

A decent league player averaging around 75 hits the treble bed about 23% of the time and a double about 27%. Their probability per leg drops to about 0.0002%, or roughly one in 500,000 legs. At one leg per minute, that would take nearly a year of continuous throwing. Most league players throw a tiny fraction of that volume in their entire lifetimes.

Amateur Player Odds

For the average pub player with a 40-point average, the treble hit rate is around 5% and the double hit rate around 7%. The probability becomes vanishingly small: 0.0000002%, or one in 500 billion legs. If every human who has ever lived (roughly 110 billion people) threw darts at a 40 average, there would be only about a 20% chance that any one of them ever hit a 9-darter. At one leg per minute, it would take about a million years of constant throwing.

These numbers explain why most amateur players never see a 9-darter in their entire lives, let alone throw one. The feat is so statistically improbable at lower skill levels that it effectively never happens.

Interactive: 9-Darter Odds Calculator

Select your skill level below to see the exact probability of hitting a 9-darter. The calculator uses treble and double hit rates derived from real-world averages at each level.

How Often Do Professional Players Hit 9-Darters?

The frequency of 9-darters in professional darts has increased dramatically in recent years. In 2024, there were 58 perfect legs logged across PDC events, both televised and non-televised. In 2025, there were 55. As of early 2026, the sport is on track to break those records. Data from Ochepedia shows that a 9-darter now occurs roughly once every 1,167 legs in the Players Championship, making it the most common season on record.

Why Are They Becoming More Common?

The increase is not because the feat is getting easier. It is driven by three factors. First, the standard of professional darts is higher than ever. Players are averaging 100+ for entire matches, something that was rare 20 years ago. Second, the number of professional tournaments has exploded. The PDC calendar now features more than 150 events per year, including floor events, European Tour stops, and televised majors, giving players far more opportunities. Third, the quality of dartboard wires has improved. Thinner wires expose more of the treble bed, giving players a fractionally larger target.

As two-time world champion Dennis Priestley told the BBC: "The standard is better and they are playing competitively nearly every weekend. When I won the World Championship in 1991, I did not play another competitive game until April. Now players are attuned and ready mentally and physically week in, week out."

The 9-Darter Curse

There is a well-known pattern in professional darts: players who hit a 9-darter often go on to lose the match. The phenomenon is so common that fans call it the "9-darter curse." Christian Kist and Damon Heta both hit perfect legs at the 2025 PDC World Championship and lost their matches. Josh Rock hit a 9-darter in the 2026 Premier League and was defeated by Gian van Veen. The emotional high of a perfect leg can disrupt a player's focus for the remaining darts. "It is a mental barrier," explains Priestley. "They are still overjoyed about the 9-darter and the standard just seems to drop that little touch."

Televised 9-Darters By the Numbers

As of March 2026, there have been 110 nine-dart finishes in televised matches, thrown by 47 different players. The first was John Lowe in 1984 at the MFI World Matchplay, for which he won GBP 102,000. The first live broadcast 9-darter was Shaun Greatbatch at the 2002 Dutch Open. The first on British live television was Phil Taylor at the 2002 World Matchplay.

Record Holders

Phil Taylor holds the record for the most televised 9-darters with 11. Michael van Gerwen is second with 10. Gerwyn Price is third with 7, making him the most prolific active player outside Van Gerwen. Taylor and Van Gerwen are the only players to ever hit two 9-darters in the same match. Taylor did it in the 2010 Premier League final against James Wade. Van Gerwen matched the feat in a 2017 UK Open qualifier against Ryan Murray.

Youngest and Firsts

Luke Littler became the youngest player to throw a televised 9-darter at the 2024 Bahrain Darts Masters, achieving the feat two days before his 17th birthday. Paul Lim hit the first 9-darter at a World Championship in 1990. Fallon Sherrock became the first woman to hit a televised 9-darter in 2023. Adrian Lewis was the first to hit one in a World Championship final (2011), and Michael Smith repeated the feat in the 2023 final in what commentators called "the greatest leg in the history of darts."

The Greatest Leg in Darts History

The 2023 PDC World Championship final produced a moment that transcended the sport. In the third leg of the match, Michael van Gerwen and Michael Smith both had three darts to complete a 9-darter in the same leg. Van Gerwen went first. He hit treble 20, treble 20, and the third dart landed in the treble 20 bed but on the wrong side of the wire. It bounced out. He missed by millimetres.

Then Smith stepped up. Two treble 20s. Then a 141 checkout on treble 20, treble 19, double 12. Perfect. The commentator Wayne Mardle famously said "I cannot speak! I cannot speak!" after the leg finished. It was the first time in history that a player had completed a 9-darter in the same leg where an opponent had missed by one dart. The leg is widely considered the greatest single leg of darts ever played.

Has Anyone Hit Two 9-Darters in a Row?

No player has ever hit two consecutive 9-darters in any official match. The closest anyone has come was Michael van Gerwen in 2017, who threw 17 perfect darts in a row before missing the final double 12. Van Gerwen hit a 9-darter in one leg, then hit treble 20 with all six darts of his next visit, leaving himself 141. His first dart of the third visit landed in the treble 20. That is 17 perfect darts out of 18 needed. The 18th dart missed.

The probability of a world-class player hitting two 9-darters in a row is roughly one in 100 million. For an amateur player at a 40 average, the odds are one in 10 to the 21, which is roughly the width of our galaxy in metres. It would take around 10,000 times the age of the universe to hit one.

How Rare Is a 9-Darter in Local League Play?

In local darts leagues around the world, 9-darters are effectively non-existent. Many leagues have been running for 40 or 50 years without a single perfect leg. One Reddit user commented on their local league in the United States, which has been active for around 40 years with no 9-darter. Another shared a story of a league that has been running for over 50 years, where the best leg record is 11 darts, achieved by only two players.

The reason is simple: to hit a 9-darter, you need to be consistently scoring at a professional level. Even players who average 80 in local league play have astronomically low odds. Most amateur players never throw a 180 in a match, let alone string together the eight trebles and a double required for a perfect leg. If you ever see a 9-darter in your local pub, you are witnessing something that may not happen again in that venue for decades.

Practice vs Match: A Different Story

The gap between practice and match 9-darters is enormous. Top professionals hit 9-darters in practice with surprising frequency. Gary Anderson is reported to have thrown three in a single practice session. Gerwyn Price has been seen throwing back to back 9-darters in warm-up before a televised match. "I hit them constantly in my house," Price said after a 2021 event, "but when the pressure is on, the shots dip."

This gap is the clearest sign of the mental difficulty of a 9-darter. The physical skill exists. The muscle memory is there. But under the spotlight of a television camera, with thousands of fans watching and a match on the line, the same throw that finds the treble 20 every time in practice can drift wide. The pressure of the ninth dart is unlike anything else in the sport.

Why Are 9-Darters on the Rise?

The frequency of 9-darters has increased steadily since the PDC was formed in 1992. Prior to 2018, no single year had ever seen 30 or more perfect legs. In 2024, there were 58. The reasons go beyond just higher standards.

The modern dartboard uses thinner wires than the boards of the 1980s and 1990s. Modern tungsten darts are denser and slimmer, allowing players to group darts tighter. The number of professional tournaments has tripled in the last decade, including floor events where the pressure is lower and players take more risks. And the professional game has deepened. Players ranked 50th in the world today would have been top-16 material twenty years ago.

As BBC Sport reported, the average across the 2026 Players Championship season has a 9-darter once every 1,167 legs, making it fractionally the most common season on record. Follow a structured training plan that builds the consistency needed to compete at higher levels.

What Happens After a 9-Darter?

If a player hits a 9-darter on television, the crowd erupts, the commentators lose their composure, and the player often stands in disbelief. But the leg is not necessarily over. In most formats, the leg ends and the player wins it, but the match continues. This is where the "curse" takes hold.

In recent years, prize money for 9-darters has varied. At the 2025 PDC World Championship, sponsor Paddy Power offered GBP 180,000 total for each 9-darter, split between the player, a fan in the crowd, and Prostate Cancer UK. Christian Kist and Damon Heta each earned GBP 60,000 for their perfect legs at that tournament, despite both losing their matches. Earlier in the sport's history, John Lowe won GBP 102,000 for the first televised 9-darter in 1984, a sum equivalent to over GBP 300,000 today. Dartsva tracks your match performance so you can see how your game evolves over time.

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