Luke Littler Beats Noppert 6-4 to Reach World Series Last 16

The 44 that changed it

Noppert started the better of the two. He broke in the third leg, went 3-1 clear and had the building with him — a Dutch crowd that had already watched Michael van Gerwen go out on Thursday and had settled on the world number one as the next target.

The sixth leg undid him. Noppert made a mess of a 44 checkout, Littler broke back for 3-3, and from there the match ran the other way. Littler edged 4-3 ahead, Noppert held for 4-4, and then came the two legs that ended it: a 95 finish, double top after double top, and a 12-darter to close.

Littler cupped his ears at the crowd after one of those legs, which did nothing to quieten them. Afterwards he was matter-of-fact about the night. “Coming back from a losing position to win is always a great feeling,” he said. “I’m not putting pressure on myself. I am just focusing on round by round.”

The 98.2 flatters the finishing. He was somewhere near 30 per cent on the outer ring, and against an opponent scoring better than Noppert managed, 14 missed doubles is a losing number.

Friday’s full round-one results

Eight ties completed the first round, all over the best of 11 legs. Three of them went to a deciding leg.

Gerwyn Price had the strangest evening of the eight. He raced 5-0 up on Australian qualifier Brody Klinge, barely missing a double, then watched Klinge take four legs in a row to get within one. Price found the sixth and got out at 6-4.

James Wade, who has spent this summer collecting titles after years without one, needed the full eleven legs to see off Damon Heta. So did Canada’s Jim Long, who was 4-0 down to Adam Leek before winning six of the last seven, and Japan’s Motomu Sakai, who nearly let a 4-1 lead over Callan Rydz slip before taking the decider.

Jonny Clayton was the most straightforward winner of the night, 6-3 against Maik Kuivenhoven — the reserve-list call-up who, like Daryl Gurney, only made the field when two Asian Tour players were left without Schengen visa decisions. Wessel Nijman beat Simon Whitlock 6-4, and Nathan Aspinall won four legs in a row to get past Raymond Smith 6-4.

The format changes on Saturday

This is the part of the tournament that tends to catch people out. Round one was best of 11 legs, first to six — short enough that a hot half-hour wins a match, which is exactly how Gurney beat Van Gerwen and how Sakai beat Rydz. From the second round onwards the matches almost double in length.

First to ten rewards a different player. Scoring consistency starts to matter more than a fast start, and a missed-doubles rate like Littler’s on Friday has ten more legs in which to cost him. It is also why the second round fills both Saturday sessions rather than one: eight matches of up to 19 legs is a long day of darts.

Saturday’s last 16 in full

Littler against Aspinall is the pick of the eight. Aspinall reached the final of this tournament in the same building in 2023, losing to Van Gerwen, and a best of 19 suits him rather better than a best of 11 does.

Every former champion is on one side

Friday’s results confirmed something the draw had only hinted at. Four men in this field have won the World Series of Darts Finals before — Littler in 2024, Price in 2020 and 2022, Clayton in 2021 and Wade in 2018 — and all four won on Friday. All four are also in the same half of the bracket, the one playing Saturday evening.

That has two consequences. Only one of them can reach Sunday’s final, and the other half — Rock, Searle, Gurney, Ross Smith, Van Veen, Sedláček, Humphries and Van Duijvenbode — is guaranteed to produce a first-time finalist at this event. Luke Humphries has won the World Championship, the World Matchplay, the Premier League and the Grand Slam, and this remains the major-standard trophy missing from that list.

What Saturday is worth

The eight players knocked out on Saturday leave with £10,000 each, double the £5,000 first-round fee. The full ladder, and the three routes players took to get into this 32-man field, are set out in our guide to how the Amsterdam field qualified.

The quarter-finals, semi-finals and final are all played on Sunday 20 September. After that the season moves to Leicester for the World Grand Prix from 28 September; the rest of the run-in sits on our 2026 calendar, and every result here feeds the live PDC Order of Merit.