🎯GOAT Rankings

The best player of the post-Taylor era and the most naturally gifted thrower the sport has seen. Van Gerwen won the Winmau World Masters in 2006 at 17, becoming the youngest world champion of any description at the time, then took three PDC world titles in 2014, 2017 and 2019 from five finals, seven Premier League crowns and three World Matchplays among more than 25 televised majors. His statistical peak is unmatched: the highest televised three-dart average in history, 123.40 against Michael Smith in the 2016 Premier League, and the highest average in a World Championship final, 114.05 in the 2017 win over Gary Anderson. He held the world number one ranking continuously for roughly seven years from early 2014. Where Taylor's dominance was built on relentless accumulation, van Gerwen's was built on speed and a scoring ceiling nobody else could reach — he throws fast, rarely reconsiders, and at his best simply outscores opponents into irrelevance.

The player who made darts a television sport. The Crafty Cockney won five world championships in 1980, 1981, 1984, 1985 and 1986 from ten world finals, five Winmau World Masters and two News of the World titles, and dominated the boom years so completely that his defeats became more famous than his victories — Keith Deller's 138 checkout to beat him 6-5 in the 1983 final is still the sport's best-known moment. He was the first darts player recognisable to people who never watched darts: chalk-white shirt, little finger cocked, an arrogance he cultivated deliberately because it sold tickets. Dartitis struck at the peak of his powers in the mid-1980s and he never won another world title, though he reached the finals of 1989, 1990 and 1991 while fighting it. He then bankrolled a young Stoke potter named Phil Taylor, who beat him in the 1990 final. No player has been more consequential for the sport's commercial existence.

The man who turned darts into a mainstream sport in a country that had barely played it. A former postman from The Hague, Van Barneveld won four BDO world titles in 1998, 1999, 2003 and 2005, crossed to the PDC in 2006, and won the 2007 world final against Phil Taylor 7-6 in a sudden-death leg at the Circus Tavern — a match still routinely voted the greatest ever played, in which he came from 3-0 down in sets. Five world titles from six finals puts him level with Bristow and behind only Taylor among men. He added the 2012 Grand Slam of Darts and the 2014 Premier League among more than ten televised majors. His real legacy is national: Dutch television audiences for his matches ran into the millions, participation exploded, and the pipeline he opened produced Michael van Gerwen, Jelle Klaasen, Danny Noppert and a generation for whom being a professional darts player was a plausible ambition.

The only player to win world titles in three different decades — 1979, 1987 and 1993 — from seven world finals, across a career that bridged the pub era and the professional one. Old Stoneface was the technical antithesis of Bristow: unhurried, expressionless, orthodox in stance and grip, and admired by coaches as the model throw. He added two Winmau World Masters and a News of the World title among more than ten televised majors, and on 13 October 1984 he threw the first nine-dart finish ever seen on television, at the MFI World Matchplay against Keith Deller, closing 180, 180 and treble 17, treble 18, double 18 for a prize of £102,000 — an enormous sum for any British sportsman of the period. He was among the sixteen players who broke away in 1992 to found what became the PDC, and he remained competitive on television into his fifties.

The purest thrower of his generation and the man who ended Phil Taylor's last realistic title bid. Anderson won back-to-back PDC world championships in 2015, beating Taylor 7-6 in a final decided in the last leg, and 2016, beating Adrian Lewis 7-5. He reached six world finals in all, including two BDO finals in 2010 and 2011 before switching codes, and lost the 2017 and 2021 finals to Michael van Gerwen and Gerwyn Price respectively. He also won the 2011 Premier League among more than ten televised majors. His throw is famously effortless — a short, fast release that other professionals openly envy — and at his best he is capable of scoring bursts nobody can live with, including a run of 180s in the 2015 and 2016 championships that remade the tournament's records. Chronic back trouble and an unconcealed distaste for the travelling circuit have limited his output rather than his ability.

The most decorated champion in the women's game and the most repeatedly dominant player on this list after Taylor. Gulliver won ten world championships — the first seven consecutively from 2001 to 2007, then 2010, 2011 and 2013 — reaching at least twelve world finals in a career that ran alongside her work as a carpenter and joiner. She was the inaugural Women's World Champion when the BDO introduced the title in 2001 and defined the event for more than a decade, adding a long list of Winmau World Masters, World Trophy and international titles among more than twenty televised and major championships. Her significance is not only the trophies: for most of her career the women's game had almost no prize money, no television and no professional structure, and she sustained a world-class standard anyway. Every subsequent breakthrough — Fallon Sherrock at Alexandra Palace, the PDC Women's Series, Beau Greaves — is built on the visibility she created.

The first player from outside the United Kingdom to win a world championship, and the only man to win world titles in both organisations and beat Phil Taylor in a final to do it. Darth Maple won the BDO title in 1994 as an unheralded Canadian, then crossed to the PDC and won the 2003 world championship by beating Taylor 7-6 in a deciding set — ending an eight-year reign and producing one of the sport's genuine upsets — before adding a third title in 2008. Four world finals in all, from a country with no darts infrastructure to speak of and a transatlantic commute to every tournament. He remains the benchmark for non-European players and the proof that the sport's talent pool was never geographically fixed. His post-playing career as a commentator has made him the most respected analytical voice in the game, and his articulate deconstruction of checkout routes taught a generation of viewers how professionals actually think.

The only player to win a world championship at the first attempt in both organisations. The Menace took the BDO title in 1991, beating Eric Bristow 6-0 in the final on debut, then joined the 1992 breakaway and won the inaugural WDC World Championship in January 1994, beating Phil Taylor 6-1. He reached six world finals in all, losing four of them to Taylor across the late 1990s, and won a Winmau World Masters among more than eight televised majors. Being the second-best player of the Taylor era is a thankless historical position, but Priestley's peak was genuinely close: he was world number one, he won the sport's biggest title in two separate universes, and in an era without Taylor he would plausibly have collected five or six world championships. He continued competing into his sixties, having also fought and beaten prostate cancer during his career.

The sport's most visually extravagant champion and the outstanding example of late-career transformation. Snakebite spent two decades as a journeyman, dropped off the circuit entirely to work outside the game, and returned in his forties with dyed mohican, painted snake and a wardrobe designed by his wife. He lost the 2014 world final to Michael van Gerwen, then won the title in 2020 at 49 by beating van Gerwen 7-3, and again in 2022 against Michael Smith. Three world finals, two titles, plus the 2019 World Matchplay and the 2017 UK Open among more than eight televised majors, and a spell at world number one. He is also the sport's most restless technician, changing darts, stems and flights mid-match and carrying dozens of setups to every event — the opposite of the received wisdom that a professional should find one dart and never change it.

The first Welsh world champion and the most physically imposing presence the sport has known. A former professional rugby union and rugby league hooker who played for Cross Keys and Glasgow Warriors, Price took up darts full time in his late twenties and won the 2021 World Championship by beating Gary Anderson 7-3, becoming world number one in the process — the first Welshman to hold the ranking. He won three consecutive Grand Slam of Darts titles in 2018, 2019 and 2020, the 2020 World Grand Prix and the 2020 World Cup of Darts alongside Jonny Clayton, part of more than eight televised majors. His aggression and roaring celebrations made him the pantomime villain of the Alexandra Palace crowd, and he embraced it, at one point wearing ear defenders on stage. Beneath the theatre is a genuinely elite scorer whose transition from a contact-sport career remains unmatched in darts.

The youngest world champion in the sport's history and the biggest audience driver it has ever had. Littler reached the 2024 World Championship final at 16, losing 7-4 to Luke Humphries after arriving as a qualifier ranked outside the top 150, and won the title a year later on 3 January 2025, beating Michael van Gerwen 7-3 at 17 years and 347 days old. In between he won the 2024 Premier League at his first attempt, beating Humphries in the final, and the 2024 Grand Slam of Darts, among a major haul already larger than most professionals manage in a career. He throws quickly, appears immune to the occasion, and has averaged above 100 in televised finals since he was a schoolboy. His 2024 run drew the largest television audiences in the sport's history and a surge in board sales and junior participation across Britain, the Netherlands and Germany.