Preview of the 2024 World Darts Championship: The Ally Pally will shake

The Mecca of darts opens its doors again on 15 December. The 31st World Darts Championship of the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC) begins on Friday at the legendary Ally Pally in London. In the three-week tournament, the 96 participants from 24 nations will determine the new PDC World Champion in the final on 3 January 2024. As in the past five years, the PDC will pay out a total of £2.5 million in prize money. The winner will receive half a million pounds and the losing finalist 200,000 pounds.

The mode and the match schedule

The field of participants in the first round consists of the 32 best players on the Pro Tour and 32 international qualifiers. The winner of this round will then face one of the 32 best players in the world rankings who are already seeded for the second round. The first two rounds will be played in a best-of-five format. This means that the winner must win three sets. To win a set, three legs must be won. The winner of a leg is the player who throws 501 points faster than his opponent and ends on 0 on a double. The two-clear-leg rule applies in the decisive set.

The duration of the game gets longer and longer as the tournament progresses. A best-of-seven format awaits the participants in the third and fourth rounds, with the winner having to win five sets in the quarter-finals. There are six sets in the semi-finals and seven sets in the final (best-of-13 sets).

"Bully Boy" Michael Smith will be the defending champion. At the last event, he entered the winners' list for the first time with a 7:4 victory over Michael van Gerwen and even conquered the top of the world rankings. The spectators in London's Alexandra Palace and in front of the television experienced what was probably the best leg of all time. But watch it again for yourself:

At this World Championship, the English "Bully Boy" will start the tournament as the #1 seed on the very first day. In the following overview you can see when which player will play in one of the first two rounds in the pre-Christmas period:

The favourites

The top favourite for the title is clearly "Cool Hand Luke" Humphries after his outstanding performances in recent months. The current world number three has won three of the last four major tournaments, including the last two. However, the Englishman Humphries has never made it past the quarter-finals at the World Championships.

The second favourite is three-time world champion and last year's finalist Michael van Gerwen. The Dutchman won two major tournaments this year, the Premier League and the World Series Finals. He is always a force to be reckoned with at the World Championships.

The extended group of favourites

The standard in darts is now so high: on a good day, almost any player can beat any competitor. That's why you can expect to see some big names in this format: Even though players like Gerwyn Price, Peter Wright, Jonny Clayton and also defending champion Michael Smith have struggled at times this year, I think they are capable of winning the World Championship at any time. Behind them lurk players who have already won major tournaments and are ready for the big coup, such as Nathan Aspinall, Joe Cullen, James Wade and Danny Noppert. Not forgetting former world champion Rob Cross.

The players from the DACH region

For the first time in the history of the World Darts Championship, five German players will be competing. They will be joined by an Austrian

The "German Giant" Gabriel Clemens caused a minor sensation last year when he made it to the semi-finals but was beaten by eventual winner Michael Smith. Clemens is currently the highest-ranked German darts player in the world rankings in 22nd place. As a seeded player, he will therefore only start in the second round, but could have a tough draw there with Dutch shooting star Gian van Veen.

"The Wall" Martin Schindler will also start the tournament as a seeded player and currently 26th in the world rankings. He reached the quarter-finals at the World Grand Prix in October. He could face Fallon Sherrock, one of two women, in the second round.

The German shooting star this year, however, is "Pikachu" Ricardo Pietreczko. He has only held a PDC Tour Card since the beginning of 2022 and qualified for the World Championship in 16th place on the PDC Pro Tour Order of Merit. In October, he became only the second German ever to win a European Tour event. In the final, he defeated Peter Wright 8:4 and kept a clean sheet on the doubles. However, he recently struggled at the Grand Slam of Darts, especially against arguably the best female darts player Beau Greeves, and lost some favour with his English fans at home. And this time, too, he has to play directly against a woman. Japan's Mikuru Suzuki awaits in the first round.

This will be the third World Championship for Cologne youngster Florian Hempel. Two years ago, he reached the third round after defeating Martin Schindler and Dimitri van den Bergh. Before his darts career, Hempel was a handball goalkeeper for Dessau-Roßlauer HV in the 2nd Bundesliga. The fifth German player in the squad is Dragutin Horvat, who qualified for the World Championship via the German Super League. This is his second participation after 2017.

The field of players from German-speaking countries is completed by Austrian Rusty-Jake Rodriguez. Having grown up in a darts family, he is currently ranked 89th in the world and is one of the best Austrian darts players alongside his brother Rowby-John Rodriguez (48th in the rankings) and his mentor Mensur Suljovic (50th).

The young guns

Aged 22, Josh "Rocky" Rock from Northern Ireland is still one of the young guns, but could also be counted among the favourites. He is now number 23 in the world rankings and has established himself on the tour. He has reached three Pro Tour finals this year, but lost all three. His best Major result came in November at the Grand Slam of Darts when he reached the quarter-finals. I wouldn't be surprised if he could cause a furore at this World Championship.

The 21-year-old Dutchman Gian van Veen has also enjoyed some success since winning his tour card at the start of the year. At the end of the season, he was ranked 25th in the Pro Tour Order of Merit and thus qualified for the World Darts Championship as the second-best player who had not already qualified via the Order of Merit. He also scored a coup at the end of October by reaching the semi-finals of the European Darts Championship. He recently lost the final of the PDC Junior World Championship to 16-year-old Englishman Luke Littler.

And this Luke Littler is regarded as one of the absolute top talents in the industry. At his young age, Littler has already won several titles on the PDC Development Tour this year - and hit a 9-darter in the process. It will be exciting to see what Littler can achieve at the World Championship at the age of 16.

And with this preview, I'm happy to say: Game on!

Who do you think is the favourite to win the title? Are you watching the World Darts Championship? Let me know in the comments.