Who is missing from Players Championships 31 and 32?
Two rows of the world rankings have simply not entered. World number one Luke Littler was never going to — he has ruled out Dutch events entirely since being whistled at in Amsterdam in September. The other seven are a choice.
| Player | World rank | Order of Merit |
|---|---|---|
| Luke Littler | 1 | £3,141,000 |
| Luke Humphries | 3 | £1,037,500 |
| Gerwyn Price | 4 | £829,500 |
| Jonny Clayton | 5 | £726,000 |
| Ross Smith | 6 | £714,750 |
| Josh Rock | 8 | £619,000 |
| Stephen Bunting | 9 | £603,750 |
| Gary Anderson | 14 | £566,750 |
The pattern is not hard to read. Most of the eight are already far enough inside the 64 that a midweek trip to the Netherlands days after a major, for £1,250 if they win a match, is a poor trade. Three of them — Littler, Josh Rock and Gary Anderson — have no such cushion, and have skipped it anyway.
How do you qualify for the Players Championship Finals?
The 64-player field at Butlin’s Minehead Resort is decided by one table and nothing else: the Players Championship Order of Merit, which counts prize money from the 34 floor events of the calendar year. World titles, Premier League money and European Tour runs are all worth exactly nothing to it, which is why last weekend’s ranking upheaval in Dortmund left this one untouched. The floor standings have not moved since Players Championship 30 on 23 September, when Karel Sedlacek won the last Den Bosch double-header.
Thirty of the 34 events are gone. What is left is this week in the Netherlands and Players Championships 33 and 34 at the Mattioli Arena in Leicester on 4 and 5 November, and then the Minehead weekend of 20-22 November.
The cut line, before a dart is thrown
Here is why the entry list matters more than usual. Fifteen players are covered by £3,250 around the qualifying place, and the last two places inside it are held on an identical figure.
| Pos | Player | Prize money |
|---|---|---|
| 58 | Michael Smith | £30,500 |
| 59 | Ritchie Edhouse | £30,250 |
| 60 | Madars Razma | £30,250 |
| 61 | Henry Coates | £30,000 |
| 62 | Gary Anderson | £29,750 |
| 63 | Scott Williams | £29,250 |
| 64 | Mike De Decker | £29,250 |
| 65 | Mario Vandenbogaerde | £28,750 |
| 66 | Shane McGuirk | £28,500 |
| 67 | Martijn Dragt | £28,250 |
| 68 | Jim Long | £28,000 |
| 69 | Bradley Brooks | £27,500 |
| 70 | Wesley Plaisier | £27,500 |
| 71 | Cam Crabtree | £27,250 |
| 72 | Jimmy van Schie | £27,250 |
Scott Williams and Mike De Decker hold 63rd and 64th on an identical £29,250. Everything below the red line is a Minehead place that does not exist yet.
Why Gary Anderson’s place is the one at risk
Anderson is 62nd on £29,750. That is £500 clear of the last qualifying place and £1,000 clear of Mario Vandenbogaerde in 65th — a cushion that sounds like a cushion until you look at what one win pays.
| Finish | Prize |
|---|---|
| Winner | £15,000 |
| Runner-up | £10,000 |
| Semi-finalists (2) | £6,500 |
| Quarter-finalists (4) | £4,000 |
| Last 16 (8) | £3,000 |
| Last 32 (16) | £2,000 |
| Last 64 (32) | £1,250 |
A single win in a 128-player Players Championship takes you to the last 64 and pays £1,250. That one number does all the damage. Vandenbogaerde goes past Anderson by winning one match in Den Bosch. Across the two days, winning one match in each event would take every one of the eight players ranked 65th to 72nd to Anderson’s total or beyond it — six of them clear of it outright, with Cam Crabtree and Jimmy van Schie landing exactly level on £29,750.
Reaching the last 64 of one event pays £1,250, so the top four bars are inside one win of the cut. Source: dartsrankings.com standings and the PDC prize breakdown.
Anderson cannot answer any of it, because he is not in the building. That is not a new habit: he has been a part-time floor player for several seasons and routinely skips Players Championship and European Tour events rather than make the travel, which is how a two-time world champion ends up 62nd on the floor rankings. The cost this time is that the four events he needed have become two.
Rock’s position is worse but simpler. He is 76th on £26,000, £3,250 adrift, and skipping Den Bosch leaves him needing a deep run in Leicester from a standing start. Littler is 126th on £10,500 and would need to win both Leicester events, which pays £30,000, to clear a bar that is already £29,250 and will rise over the next four tournaments. Ryan Joyce, 86th, is also absent.
Who turned up instead
The players still in contention mostly made the opposite call. Nathan Aspinall is 74th on £26,500, £2,750 off the place, and is entered. Raymond van Barneveld is 84th on £23,250 and £6,000 behind, playing in front of a Dutch crowd that will carry him further than the arithmetic suggests. Michael van Gerwen, 34th on £43,750 and safe, entered anyway, as did Gian van Veen. At the top of the floor table, Wessel Nijman leads on £150,250 from Kevin Doets on £106,250 and Chris Dobey on £102,500.
Then there is the part the withdrawing players may not have thought about. Eight vacated places do not go unfilled; they go to the reserve list, and the reserve list is full of people chasing the same 64 spots. Henry Coates is in — a non-Tour Card player who is nonetheless 61st on £30,000, one place and £250 above Anderson, having made history in Hildesheim in July. Martijn Dragt is in too, and he is 67th on £28,250, exactly £1,000 from a Minehead place he was not entered to chase until Monday. Gilbert van der Meijden, Stef Kosters and Levy Frauenfelder complete the Dutch call-ups, with Joe Hunt, Tommy Morris, Steve Lennon, Scott Waites, Daniel Klose, James Beeton, Radek Szaganski and Kevin Burness among the others.
What this does to the Minehead field
Two events in which half the game’s biggest names are absent is not a weaker tournament so much as a redistributive one. £300,000 is on the table across Wednesday and Thursday, and almost none of it can now go to the eight players above — which means a disproportionate share of it lands on exactly the band of the table where Minehead places are decided.
The Players Championship Finals will be the same 64-player, £600,000 event either way. The question the Maaspoort settles is which sixty-four, and the eight players who stayed home have handed that decision to everyone else. For a fuller explanation of how the floor circuit feeds the rankings, our guide to the PDC ProTour covers the Order of Merit mechanics in detail.
Both days are streamed on PDCTV. Anderson will be watching the same table as everyone else, hoping Vandenbogaerde, McGuirk, Dragt and Long all lose early twice.