World Grand Prix Darts Format: The Double-Start Major
The World Grand Prix darts format explained for UK fans: double in, double out, short sets, the 32-player draw and why the double start causes upsets.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished PDC & Major Tournaments22 min read
- First staged
- 1998
- Field
- 32 players
- Legs in a set
- Best of 5
- Every leg
- Double in, double out
The World Grand Prix format is double in, double out, played in sets. Every leg must begin with a dart in a double or the inner bull, and nothing counts until that dart lands; every leg must also finish on a double, as in ordinary 501. Sets are the best of five legs. Thirty-two players take part: the top sixteen on the PDC Order of Merit as seeds and sixteen qualifiers from the ProTour Order of Merit. The first round is the best of three sets and the second round and quarter-finals the best of five, with longer semi-finals and final. It is the only televised major in which the double start is used, and since 2021 it has been played at the Leicester Arena in the English Midlands, after a long run at the Citywest Hotel in Dublin.
A player steps up to the oche in the first round, needs a double to get going, and misses all three. The scoreboard does not move. He sits down having thrown three darts for nothing, while his opponent, who found double 20 with the first dart of the next visit, is already on 401 and scoring. That is the World Grand Prix in a single visit, and it explains why the PDC's October major produces so many strange results.
Double in under the Darts Regulation Authority rules
The rule is short. In a double-start game a player's score is not reduced until a dart lands in a double. The double that opens the leg is the first score, and any darts that follow it in the same visit count normally. Darts thrown before it in that visit count for nothing.
So a visit of double 20, treble 20, treble 20 opens the account with 40 and scores 160 in total. A visit of single 20, double 20, treble 20 scores 100, because the first dart came before the start and is ignored. And a visit of treble 20, treble 20, treble 20, which would be a maximum anywhere else, scores nothing at all. It is a strange thing to watch: a perfect set of trebles that leaves the player exactly where he was.
Which doubles start a leg
Any of the twenty doubles on the outer ring will do, as will the inner bull, which counts as double 25 and opens the leg with 50. The outer bull, worth 25, is a single and does not start the leg. There is no requirement to begin on a particular double, and the Darts Regulation Authority rules make no distinction between them; the choice is tactical.
| First dart lands in | Counts as a start | Score from that dart | Typical reason to aim there |
|---|---|---|---|
| Double 20 | Yes | 40 | Leaves the hand in position for treble 20 |
| Double 16 | Yes | 32 | Large target on the left, a favourite finishing double |
| Inner bull | Yes | 50 | Rarely aimed at; usually a fluke or a deliberate gamble |
| Outer bull | No | 0 | Single 25, does not open the leg |
| Treble 20 | No | 0 | Scores nothing until a double has landed |
How a failed start appears on the scoreboard
Television graphics and the caller treat a visit with no starting double as "no score". The remaining total stays at 501, and the dart statistics record three darts thrown. That matters for the averages discussed below, because those darts count in the divisor without adding anything to the total. At the World Grand Prix, starting doubles are tracked as a statistic of their own: the percentage of attempts at a starting double that succeed, shown alongside the finishing-double percentage. The general principles of the closing double are covered in our guide to why every leg in darts ends on a double; at this event the same discipline is required at both ends of a leg.
- Bull-up or alternate throwThe player throwing first in the set aims to open the leg; the throw alternates within the set.
- First double neededDarts that miss the double ring or the inner bull score nothing, and the total stays at 501.
- Leg openedThe first dart to land in a double counts, and every dart after it in that visit scores normally.
- Scoring phasePlayers reduce from their new total exactly as in standard 501.
- Double to finishThe final dart must take the score to zero on a double or the bull, or the visit is bust.
The sequence in any double-in, double-out leg as played at the World Grand Prix. Finishing follows the ordinary 501 rules.
World Grand Prix round by round: sets and match lengths
All 32 players start in the first round. There are no byes and no preliminary round. The matches lengthen as the week goes on, but even the longest is short by the standards of the World Championship, because the event fits its whole schedule into about a week of evening sessions in early October.
The first round is the best of three sets, so the winner needs two sets, which means as few as six legs. The second round and the quarter-finals are the best of five sets. At the 2025 edition the semi-finals were the best of nine sets and the final the best of eleven; the final had been the best of nine as recently as 2023, and the semi-final and final distances have changed more than once over the event's history. The PDC publishes the format for each edition, so the precise figures for a given year are best checked in that year's draw. What has stayed constant is the shape: very short at the start, steadily longer, the final the longest.
| Round | Players | Sets needed to win | Legs per set |
|---|---|---|---|
| First round | 32 | 2 (best of 3) | Best of 5 |
| Second round | 16 | 3 (best of 5) | Best of 5 |
| Quarter-finals | 8 | 3 (best of 5) | Best of 5 |
| Semi-finals | 4 | 5 (best of 9, as in 2025) | Best of 5 |
| Final | 2 | 6 (best of 11, as in 2025) | Best of 5 |
Sets without the World Championship trimmings
Each set is a race to three legs. If a set reaches two legs all, the deciding leg is thrown by whoever started the set. There is no two-clear-legs requirement within a set and none at match level; the format is plain set play with the double start layered on top. Our explainer on the difference between legs and sets in darts covers how the throw passes between sets and why set play limits the damage of a bad spell.
How short is short
A best-of-three-set match can last six legs. At the Matchplay in Blackpool the first round needs ten legs just to win. The World Grand Prix asks the seeds to survive a match that can be over in twenty minutes, and the double start gives the underdog extra chances inside it. Those two facts together are the format.
Why the first round produces so many upsets
Two sets. That is all the unseeded player needs. In a best of three sets, a player can lose the first set 3-0, win the second 3-2 by breaking once with a lucky start, and then win the decider by holding throw three times. The sample is small enough for one good spell to settle everything.
The double start makes it smaller still. In ordinary 501, a top seed who throws first in a leg is a strong favourite to win it, because his scoring advantage builds over four or five visits. Under the double start that advantage can disappear in the first visit. If the seed misses three starting darts and his opponent hits double 20 first time, the seed is effectively throwing second in a leg he was meant to throw first in. He is stuck on 501 while his opponent scores. Over a long match that would even out. Over six or seven legs it often does not.
A seed's nightmare first night
The pattern is well known to anyone who has followed the event. A highly ranked player arrives in October in good form, plays a lower-ranked qualifier on the first or second night, misses a run of starting doubles in a deciding set and goes home before the tournament has properly started. The seeds who have gone out on the opening nights include major champions, and first-round exits for highly ranked players are common enough here that they barely surprise the crowd. The short first round and the double start together make the seeds more exposed here than at the leg-play majors, and that is a large part of why some players say they dislike the event.
That dislike is worth taking seriously, but the upsets are also why it is worth watching. A format in which the best player wins nearly every time is a format with little tension. The World Grand Prix trades predictability for jeopardy, and a darts calendar with only one event like it is the right balance.
Why the second round is calmer
The step up to the best of five sets helps the stronger player. Three sets, nine legs minimum, start to give a better scorer the room to recover from one poor spell on the doubles. Upsets still happen in the second round, but at a rate closer to other events.
A first-round match, leg by leg
Take an invented but entirely ordinary case. The seed wins the bull and throws first in the opening set. He opens on double 20 with his second dart, scores well, and holds. His opponent opens with the first dart of his visit in leg two and holds as well. Leg three is the seed's throw again, but he misses all three starting darts, then two more, and by the time he is on the board his opponent is on a finish. Break of throw. The seed wins leg four against the throw, the set goes to a deciding leg, and that leg is his to throw first.
Nothing unusual has happened yet. Then he misses the starting double again. His opponent, throwing second, opens on double 16, scores steadily and takes out 101 before the seed has caught up. Set to the underdog, 3-2.
In ordinary 501 the seed would have been under real threat in only one of those five legs. Under the double start he lost a set in which he outscored his opponent across almost every visit after the opening one. Repeat that pattern in one of the next two sets and he is out, and the post-match statistics will show a higher scoring average for the loser. This is not a quirk of a single match. It is what the format is designed to produce often enough to keep every first-round tie uncomfortable for the favourite.
Why the seeds cannot simply play safe
A seed cannot reduce the risk by aiming somewhere easier. There is no easier double. The only alternative to the outer ring is the inner bull, which is a smaller target. The start is the same test for everyone, and the stronger player's only protection is to be better at it, which in a short match is not always enough.
- 1998First staged
- 32Players in the draw
- 3Legs to win a set
- 2Sets to win a first-round match
Fixed features of the event: the year it began, the size of the field, the legs needed to win a set and the sets a player needs to win a first-round match.
What the double start does to averages
A three-dart average is the total points scored divided by the darts thrown, multiplied by three. Under the double start, any visit that fails to open the leg adds three darts to the divisor and nothing to the total. A player who needs two visits to get started has thrown six darts for perhaps 40 points. His average for that leg is wrecked before he has thrown at a treble.
The effect is large. A player who would average in the high nineties at an ordinary ranking event might average around ninety at the World Grand Prix while playing just as well in every other respect. As a rough rule of thumb, a ninety here stands comparison with something nearer a hundred elsewhere, though the gap depends on how quickly each player found his starting doubles and is not a fixed conversion. The general method, and what counts as a good figure in ordinary 501, is explained in our guide to how the three-dart average is calculated.
Starting doubles as a statistic
Television and the PDC's statistics service record starting-double success separately, as a percentage of darts thrown at a starting double. It is often the most telling number of a World Grand Prix match. A player who opens legs with his first or second dart is effectively playing ordinary 501 while his opponent is playing something harder. A match in which one player has a starting-double rate far below the other's is usually decided by that alone, whatever the scoring averages say.
Low winning averages
Because of the start, the event has produced some of the lowest winning averages of any televised major, in finals as well as early rounds. A champion can win the title with an average that would raise eyebrows at the Matchplay in July. The specific record lows are not repeated here, because the figures quoted in different places do not always agree on how the averages were calculated in the event's early years. The mechanism is the useful part: the double start lowers every average, and the drop is greatest for the players who miss the most starting doubles.
Tactics for getting away on the double start
The main choice is which double to aim at. The two common answers are double 20, known as tops, and double 16.
Double 20 sits at the top of the board, directly below the treble 20. A player who opens on tops has his throwing arm already set for the treble 20 for the rest of the visit, which is the main reason most players start there. A dart that misses tops outside the board scores nothing but costs nothing either; one that drifts inside lands in the single 20, which scores nothing under the double start but tells the player his line was straight.
Double 16 sits on the left side of the board. Some players prefer it because they finish on it regularly and trust it more than tops. Its disadvantage is that a successful start leaves the player moving his hand up to the treble 20 for the second and third darts, a small but real change in the middle of a visit.
Switching after a miss
What to do after missing the first starting dart is a matter of style. Some players stay on the same double regardless. Others switch: a dart that has landed just outside double 20 may be partly blocking the double, so they move to double 1 or double 5 on either side, or to the 16 on the other side of the board. A few switch to a completely different area to avoid crowding. There is no correct answer in the rule book. There is only what works for a given player under pressure, which is why commentators spend so much time on it.
Throwing second
The double start changes the value of throwing first. Normally, the player throwing first in a leg has a head start of one visit. Under the double start, if he misses his starting doubles and his opponent hits with the first dart of his visit, the player throwing second is effectively the one ahead. Players throwing second in a deciding leg therefore tend to concentrate first on opening the leg rather than scoring heavily; if the opponent has missed, getting started at all is a break opportunity. The deciding leg of a set falls to whoever threw first in it, but at the World Grand Prix that advantage is noticeably smaller than elsewhere.
What the opening double does to the rest of the leg
The start also changes the arithmetic that follows. A player who opens on double 20 and follows with two treble 20s has scored 160 and is left on 341. One who opens on double 16 with the same follow-up is on 349. The difference looks trivial, but it carries through to the finish: the scores players are used to leaving after three or four visits in straight-start 501 are not the ones they leave here, and the familiar set-up shots arrive on a slightly different number. Experienced Grand Prix players talk about having to think about the finish a visit earlier than usual.
A slow start compounds that. A player who needed five or six darts to open is often a visit or more behind, and is tempted to chase big scores to catch up. Chasing is usually wrong. The better players accept the deficit, score steadily and rely on the opponent's finishing to give them another chance, because over a set of five legs one missed finishing double is common.
Practice for a once-a-year format
Because the double start appears only once in the professional calendar, players who take the event seriously build specific practice for it in the weeks before October: repeated attempts at a starting double, with the session counted in starts made rather than points scored. Others do nothing different and accept that the week is a lottery. The results of the two approaches are not tracked anywhere public, so the question of which works better remains a matter of opinion. The finishing side of the same practice is the familiar routine set out in our checkout chart for every finish from 170 down, which applies here exactly as it does in any other event.
For readers coming to the format from pub darts, the general principles of 301 and double-start leagues are covered in our guide to how a leg of 501 is started, scored and won.
The double-start nine-darter
A nine-dart leg needs 501 in nine darts. Under the double start, the first dart has to land in a double, which rules out the most common route: two maximums and a 141 finish. The standard double-start route is 160, 180, 161. The first visit is double 20, treble 20, treble 20, for 160. The second is a maximum. The third is treble 20, treble 17 and the bull, for 161.
Other routes exist. A player who opens on the inner bull, worth 50, could follow with two treble 20s, but that leaves an awkward combination, and nobody aims at the bull to start a leg in a professional match. The 160, 180, 161 route is the one players chase because double 20 is where they aim to start anyway.
Brendan Dolan, 2011
Brendan Dolan, from Northern Ireland, threw the first double-start nine-darter on television at the 2011 World Grand Prix, at the Citywest Hotel in Dublin, in his semi-final against James Wade. It earned him the nickname the History Maker, and he went on to reach the final that year, losing to Phil Taylor. The leg followed the standard route: double 20 to start, a maximum and a 161 finish on the bull. It was a perfect leg in the one format where perfection is hardest, at the event that had become the Irish major.
Two in one match, 2014
In 2014 James Wade and Robert Thornton each threw a double-start nine-darter in the same second-round match, which Wade won 3-2 in sets. Thornton went on to win the event the following year, beating Michael van Gerwen 5-4 in the final. Our page on the perfect nine-dart leg covers the ordinary routes and the arithmetic of the 141 finish that the double start rules out.
The rarity of the double-start version is the point. An ordinary nine-darter on television has become an occasional event; the double-start one remains a matter of three legs at this event by the end of the 2026 edition, all following the same 160, 180, 161 route.
How players qualify for the World Grand Prix
The field is thirty-two. The top sixteen players on the PDC Order of Merit, the two-year prize-money ranking, are seeded one to sixteen. The other sixteen places go to the leading players on the ProTour Order of Merit, the one-year ranking built from Players Championship floor events and the European Tour, who are not already in through the main list. There are no invitations.
| Route | Places | Seeded | Ranking used |
|---|---|---|---|
| PDC Order of Merit | 16 | Yes | Two-year prize money from ranking events |
| ProTour Order of Merit | 16 | No | One-year prize money from floor events and the European Tour |
| Wildcards | 0 | Not applicable | Not used at this event |
| Associate qualifiers | 0 | Not applicable | Not used at this event |
The cut-off is set shortly before the tournament, in the early autumn. Because the World Matchplay in July uses the same structure, the two fields often overlap heavily, but the ProTour list has moved on by October and a player with a strong summer on the floor can be in Leicester having missed Blackpool. The ranking itself, and why the two lists differ, is explained in our guide to how the PDC Order of Merit is calculated.
How the draw is made
The sixteen seeds are placed in a bracket so that the top two cannot meet before the final, and every first-round match pairs a seed with one of the sixteen unseeded ProTour qualifiers. The PDC confirms the draw after the ranking cut-off, about a week before the tournament; in 2025 it was confirmed on 29 September for an event that began on 6 October.
Because every seed meets an unseeded qualifier, the upsets described above are not the product of seeds being drawn against each other. They are the product of the format: a seed is facing, on paper, a lower-ranked opponent, and still goes out.
From Rochester and Rosslare to Citywest and Leicester
The World Grand Prix began in 1998 at the Casino Rooms in Rochester, Kent, and was held there again in 1999. In 2000 it moved to Rosslare in County Wexford, on Ireland's south-east coast, and in 2001 to the Citywest Hotel on the south-western edge of Dublin. The Citywest years made it the Irish major. Its October dates and an enthusiastic Irish crowd gave it a distinct character, and for many British fans the event and the hotel became the same thing.
Citywest hosted the event every year from 2001 to 2019. In 2020, with crowds banned, the PDC moved it behind closed doors to the arena in Coventry then known as the Ricoh Arena, part of a season in which the whole televised calendar was improvised around empty halls. In 2021 it moved to the Leicester Arena, which has carried more than one sponsor's name since, and it has been played there every year to 2026.
What each venue brought
The Citywest was a hotel conference hall, and the event had the feel of a convention: players, staff and many spectators staying in the same building for a week. The crowd was knowledgeable and noisy, with a large Irish contingent and travelling British fans. The move to Leicester brought the event closer to the PDC's English base and to the Midlands floor-event venues where many players spend much of the year. It also put a second autumn major in the English Midlands, along with the Grand Slam of Darts in Wolverhampton.
The move had critics who felt the event lost its Irish character. That is fair. It also gained a venue with simpler travel for most of the field.
How the World Grand Prix began in 1998
The PDC wanted an autumn major. Its predecessor was the World Pairs, a doubles event held from 1995 to 1997, and the World Grand Prix replaced it in 1998 as a singles tournament with a format distinctive enough to stand apart from the World Championship and the World Matchplay. The double start provided that. Double-in games were familiar from pub darts, particularly 301, and putting the format on television gave the PDC a third major with a different test from the other two.
Phil Taylor's eleven titles
Phil Taylor won the first World Grand Prix in 1998, beating Rod Harrington, and went on to win eleven in all, the last in 2013, making him the dominant figure of the event's first sixteen years. Michael van Gerwen won his first PDC major at the 2012 World Grand Prix and by the end of the 2026 edition had six titles: 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2019 and 2022. James Wade won it twice, in 2007 and 2010, and Luke Humphries twice, in 2023 and 2026.
| Champion | Titles by end of 2026 | Years |
|---|---|---|
| Phil Taylor | 11 | 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013 |
| Michael van Gerwen | 6 | 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2022 |
| James Wade | 2 | 2007, 2010 |
| Luke Humphries | 2 | 2023, 2026 |
| Alan Warriner | 1 | 2001 |
| Colin Lloyd | 1 | 2004 |
| Robert Thornton | 1 | 2015 |
| Daryl Gurney | 1 | 2017 |
| Gerwyn Price | 1 | 2020 |
| Jonny Clayton | 1 | 2021 |
| Mike De Decker | 1 | 2024 |
| Luke Littler | 1 | 2025 |
The table is dated to the end of the 2026 tournament and should be read that way; every October can add a name. Mike De Decker's win in 2024, his first major title, beating Luke Humphries 6-4 in the final, is the clearest illustration of how open the double start keeps the event. Daryl Gurney's 5-4 win over Simon Whitlock in 2017 was another first major for a player outside the event's usual winners.
Why van Gerwen was so good at it
The double start rewards a player who hits doubles reliably under pressure at both ends of a leg, and who scores heavily enough once started to recover lost visits. Van Gerwen at his peak did both, and his record here is arguably more impressive than his titles at events with a straight start, because the format is so much less forgiving of a slow start.
Double in beyond the televised game
The World Grand Prix is the only televised PDC major that uses the double start, but the format is much older than the event. It was the standard way of playing 301 in many English pubs and clubs for most of the twentieth century, and some local leagues still use it, more in some counties than others. A league that plays double in will say so in its rules, and if the rule sheet is silent the start is straight.
The arguments for the format are the same at every level. It makes every leg start with a test of accuracy rather than a race of scoring, and it makes a player who scores heavily but misses doubles look ordinary. The arguments against are that it drags legs out and can make good players look poor.
Why the professional game uses it only once
The PDC calendar is built around straight-start 501 because it produces the scoring the television audience comes for. One double-start major is a variation; a calendar full of them would be tedious. The World Grand Prix works because it is the exception, the week when the doubles matter even more than usual and the seeds are at their most vulnerable.
For the wider schedule of PDC events and how the October major fits between the World Matchplay in Blackpool and the Grand Slam in November, the England section's sports hub gathers the guides in one place, and the site's latest articles cover the wider sporting calendar.