We have a very exciting evening session in prospect tonight at the World Championship with four darting heavyweights in action.
Peter Wright returns to the Ally Pally stage, fresh off a superb performance in dumping out the defending champion Luke Humphries. He will have to play similarly tonight as he faces the very impressive Stephen Bunting.
‘The Bullet’ is looking extremely sharp so far in this tournament and will need to be sharp once again to reach his 2nd PDC World Championship semi final.
Rounding off the evening we have the teenage sensation Luke Littler in action and he’ll be looking to put on another show after his brilliant last 16 victory over Ryan Joyce. He plays Nathan Aspinall which will not be easy if ‘The Asp’ finds his best form.
Luke Littler has once again been sensational at the World Championships and he is starting to look much more comfortable, which is a scary proposition for the rest of the players left in.
He’s definitely looked very edgy at times at this tournament but he showed his character and fight during his last 16 victory.
Littler came through a brilliant match with Ryan Joyce, who pushed him all the way. ‘The Nuke’ won 4-3 with 103.14 average and 14 maximums, including a 110.89 average in the final set when under enormous pressure.
Putting in a performance like that will really help the young man going forward and it will make him even more dangerous tonight.
In PDC World Championship history, 47 players have at least one match average over 100 and 15 players have had 5 or more. Luke Littler already has 7 which is more than Price, Bunting and Clayton, amongst others.
Unbelievably it's only taken the teenager 10 matches to reach that feat which shows you how consistently excellent he performs.
Luke Littler has had 36 180s so far which is the most in the tournament and when he’s attempted three darts at a treble 20 thus far in the World Championship he has scored 180 38% of the time. That's mind boggling and shows you how unbelievable his scoring power is.
He is in his second consecutive World Championship quarter final and if he wins tonight he will rise up to Number 2 in the World Rankings after just one season on the PDC tour.
Nathan Aspinall continued his return from injury with a 4-0 victory against a completely out of sorts Ricardo Pietreczko. This was a match I thought would be a potential banana skin for ‘The Asp’ because of how solid the German usually is, but he had a complete stinker and averaged just 78.46 and won only 2 legs.
Aspinall averaged 94.28 with a 38% checkout rate and 6 180s. In truth I don't really know how much we can take from that performance as the German was acting very strangely and Aspinall did well just to keep his composure.
It's still very hard to predict right now how Aspinall is going to perform because he's clearly still a little rusty from his long injury lay off and here and there you can still see his dartitis woes in his throw.
Nathan is so experienced though and is clearly still an elite dart player so I dont think it will take much longer before he’s back to his brilliant best.
If Nathan Aspinall settles early tonight and looks as if he’s flowing smoothly then he will certainly cause Littler problems. That's definitely a big if though as for me he still just doesn't look quite right and if he doesn’t hit the ground running he could easily get blown away by the teenager.
In my opinion I can't see ‘The Asp’ causing Littler too many problems tonight as he’s just breezed through to this stage without any of his opponents being at their best so he may struggle to handle the brilliance of ‘The Nuke’.
Littler has been threatening a 9 darter already at this tournament and now he looks more settled, I think we could potentially see one tonight, especially as it's over a longer format.
His running average so far is 100.88 and I expect him to put on a real statement performance tonight.
Bet £5 Get £30 in Free Bets
| Min. Deposit | £5 |
|---|---|
| Max. Amount | £30 |
| Turnover | No wagering |
| Expiration | 7 days |
| Min. Deposit | £5 |
|---|---|
| Max. Amount | £30 |
| Turnover | No wagering |
| Expiration | 30 days |
| Min. Deposit | £10 |
|---|---|
| Max. Amount | £50 |
| Turnover | No wagering |
| Expiration | 7 Days |
| Min. Deposit | £5 |
|---|---|
| Max. Amount | £30 |
| Turnover | No wagering |
| Expiration | 7 days |
| Min. Deposit | £10 |
|---|---|
| Max. Amount | £20 |
| Turnover | No wagering |
| Expiration | 7 days |
| Min. Deposit | £10 |
|---|---|
| Max. Amount | £30 |
| Turnover | No wagering |
| Expiration | 7 days |
| Min. Deposit | £10 |
|---|---|
| Max. Amount | £30 |
| Turnover | No wagering |
| Expiration | 7 days |
| Min. Deposit | £10 |
|---|---|
| Max. Amount | £30 |
| Turnover | No wagering |
| Expiration | 7 days |
| Min. Deposit | £10 |
|---|---|
| Max. Amount | £20 |
| Turnover | No wagering |
| Expiration | 7 days |
| Min. Deposit | £10 |
|---|---|
| Max. Amount | £60 |
| Turnover | No wagering |
| Expiration | 28 days |

James is a former professional dart player who enjoys writing about darts, golf and football. In 2012, he was crowned the PDC World Youth Champion and these days, he puts his expertise to use with betting tips for BettingLounge readers.