The stats
How the matchup projection works
Updated November 9, 2026
The matchup tool lets you put up to 4 players on each side and see who is projected to win a game. This page explains where that percentage comes from, how far to trust it, and what it leaves out.
What goes in
Two numbers for every player: their career regular-season 3-dart average and their career marks per round, across every Queens league they have thrown in. For doubles and triples the side’s figures are the plain average of its players.
The projection then looks at the gap between the two sides on each stat. It doesn’t matter whether both sides are strong or both are weak. Only the difference counts.
How the gap becomes a percentage
Each stat’s gap is multiplied by a weight, the two are added, and the total is run through a standard S-shaped curve that turns it into a chance between 0 and 100%. Even sides come out at 50%, and each extra bit of edge moves the number a little less than the one before.
The weights were not chosen by hand. They were fitted to results, and these are the effects:
| Side A’s edge | Side A wins |
|---|---|
| 5 points better on 3-dart average, same MPR | 53% |
| 10 points better on 3-dart average, same MPR | 57% |
| 0.20 better on MPR, same 3-dart average | 60% |
| 0.50 better on MPR, same 3-dart average | 72% |
| 5 points and 0.30 MPR better | 67% |
The thing to notice is how much MPR is worth. Half a mark per round is a bigger edge than ten points of 3-dart average. Part of that is scale, since MPR runs over a much narrower range. Part of it is that a team’s cricket seems to say more about how its games go.
Where the weights came from
They were fitted on 1,982 real league games from the Fair Play Dart League where the lineups on both sides are known. To keep it honest, each game’s players were rated only on their other seasons, so a game was never used to predict itself.
Tested on games it had not seen, the projection picks the winner about 66% of the time. A coin flip gets 50%. So it knows something, and it is wrong about one game in three.
Why it never goes above 90%
When the gap between two sides was very large, the raw numbers claimed more certainty than the results supported. Big favourites lost more often than predicted. So every projection is capped: no side is given more than 90% or less than 10%. The page tells you when a result has hit the cap.
That matches what anyone who plays already knows. On one leg, anybody can beat anybody.
What it leaves out
- The game being played. The projection uses both stats for every game. In real life a cricket set leans on MPR and an 01 set on the 3-dart average.
- Who throws first. Winning the cork is an edge, and it isn’t in here.
- Current form. Career numbers move slowly. A player on a hot month, or one coming back from a long break, looks the same as ever.
- How partners fit. A side is averaged, as if any two players combine the same way. The partner table on each player page shows that they don’t.
- Uneven sides. Each side is judged by its average player, so two against three isn’t counted as an advantage for the three.
- Small samples. Under 20 career games, a player’s averages are shaky, and so is any projection built on them.
- One game, not a match. The percentage is for a single game. Over a full night of sets the stronger team’s edge adds up, so the better team wins the match more often than it wins any one game.
How to use it
Captains use it to try lineups: swap one player in a doubles pair and see which way the number moves. It is also a fair way to settle an argument at the bar. Treat anything between 45% and 55% as a toss-up, and remember that 70% still loses three times in ten.