The darts world rankings.

The PDC Order of Merit is the ranking that decides seedings and who qualifies for what. It is not a points system or a form table: it is simply prize money won over the last two years.

How the Order of Merit works

Every PDC ranking event has prize money attached. Whatever a player wins goes onto their total, and stays there for two years before dropping off. The Order of Merit is that running total, sorted highest first. There is no separate points table and no bonus for beating a big name.

Two things follow from that, and they explain most of what looks strange about the list.

• It lags. A player who has a brilliant three months does not shoot up the list, because they are still carrying two years of history. Equally, a former world champion can sit high in the rankings for a year after their form has gone, until the old prize money rolls off.
• The big events dominate. A deep run at the World Championship is worth more than a whole season of floor tournaments, so the table is shaped by who does well in December more than by anything else.

The table updates immediately after each ranking event finishes, which is why the order can change several times in a single week during the busy floor-tournament blocks.

Why the top 16 and top 32 lines matter

The cut-offs are the whole reason players care about their exact position.

• Top 16. Seeded at the World Championship, which means a bye into the second round and a theoretically easier draw. Also exempt into the later stages of several other majors, so fewer matches to win for the same prize money.
• Top 32. The seeding cut at the Worlds and the automatic qualification line for a number of events. Below it you are into qualifiers.
• Top 64. Broadly the line for keeping a comfortable living from the tour, and the qualification cut for the Players Championship Finals.

Positions just outside a cut-off are where the tension is. A player at 17 or 33 in November has a very different World Championship ahead of them than the player one place above.

The other rankings you will see quoted

The Order of Merit is the main one, but it is not the only list, and commentators switch between them without always saying which.

• ProTour Order of Merit. Prize money from Players Championship and European Tour events only, over one year. Decides the Players Championship Finals field.
• European Tour Order of Merit. European Tour money only. Decides the European Championship field.
• Nine-dart or averages tables. Statistics, not rankings. They have no bearing on seeding.

So a player can be, say, 20th in the world and still qualify comfortably for the European Championship, because that event is decided on a different list entirely.

Tour cards

Being ranked at all requires a PDC Tour Card, which is what lets a player enter ranking events. The top 64 on the Order of Merit keep theirs automatically. Everybody else has to win one back at Q-School in January, along with a few hundred hopefuls competing for a couple of dozen cards. It is the least glamorous and most brutal week of the darts year.

Also here: the tournament schedule, where to buy tickets, and what counts as a good average if you want to know how your own game compares.

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