Raymond van Barneveld
Gary Anderson
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Dead even across the measured categories. Our all-time ranking places Raymond van Barneveld at #4 and Gary Anderson at #6.
The case for Raymond van Barneveld
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 case for Gary Anderson
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.