Price Took The Form Lead, But Littler Stayed Close

Gerwyn Price overtook Luke Littler at the top of the OChE form ranking in the PDC’s 27 September 2026 report. The margin was tiny: analyst Christopher Kempf estimated that Price would win only one additional leg per 300 against ProTour opposition. In the 9 September report, Littler had led the field by eight points. Price therefore finished the later September snapshot ahead, but this was a recent-form ranking—not a change of official world number one. Sources: 27 September PDC Form Guide and 9 September PDC Form Guide.

Select a September report to see its leader, reported margin and limits.

The September Reports Showed A Reversal, Not A Large Late Gap

The two reports put the same players at the front, but in a different order. Littler led both OChE and average in the earlier snapshot; Price led both in the later one.

Report	OChE Leader	Average Leader	Reported OChE Gap
9 September 2026	Littler	Littler	Eight percentage points
27 September 2026	Price	Price	One expected leg per 300

In the earlier report, Price was second in both measures. In the later report, Price was first ahead of Littler. The earlier eight-point statement described Littler’s lead over the field; with Price second, it identifies the gap to his nearest challenger.

Both reports used each player’s last 200 legs played. Neither was an average restricted to matches played during September. The publication date tells you when the snapshot appeared, not that every leg in it belonged to that calendar month.

That distinction changes how the comparison should be read. These are two rolling views of recent performance, rather than a September-only league table. A player’s sample changes as newer legs enter and older legs leave. Without the underlying leg-by-leg data, the reports do not tell us exactly how much of either player’s earlier sample remained in the later one.

The defensible verdict is therefore specific: Price led the later published form snapshot, while Littler led the earlier one. The reports do not establish a single aggregated winner across all matches played in September.

OChE Measures Leg-Winning Efficiency Against A ProTour Benchmark

OChE means Ordinal Checkout Efficiency. The PDC describes it as the percentage of legs a player would expect to win on the ProTour, calculated from a weighted average of four-, five-, six- and seven-visit checkout rates. The definition and the last-200-leg basis appear in the 9 September metric explanation.

The measure connects scoring to finishing. A player has to reduce the remaining score quickly enough, leave a usable finish and complete that finish. OChE is concerned with the resulting checkout speed across those visit lengths, rather than treating scoring and doubles as unrelated achievements.

It is consequently not just another name for doubles accuracy. A strong percentage on doubles does not, by itself, describe how soon a player gets a shot at one. Equally, heavy scoring does not guarantee a fast completed leg if the player cannot convert the finish.

The ProTour benchmark also limits the interpretation. The percentage describes expected leg-winning performance in that setting. It is not automatically a player’s observed win percentage, a forecast against every possible opponent or a transferable win rate for a local league.

The draft evidence does not provide the model’s numerical weights or either player’s absolute September OChE value. Those omissions matter: the definition explains what the rating represents, but it does not supply enough information to reconstruct the rating from an average or a doubles percentage. The published lead and margin can be compared without pretending to have the full calculation.

Price Improved While Littler’s Latest Results Lowered His Form Position

On 9 September, Littler was the only player averaging above 100 across his last 200 legs. Price had risen to second in both average and OChE after a semi-final appearance in Czechia improved his efficiency by more than two points.

By 27 September, Kempf attributed Littler’s loss of the leading form position to his World Series of Darts Finals defeat. Littler’s high-90s averages there were below his exceptional Blackpool figures. That comparison is about Littler’s recent performance relative to his own stronger results, not a claim that a high-90s average is generally poor.

Price, meanwhile, reached the Amsterdam final, beating Jonny Clayton and James Wade along the way. Kempf credited Price’s 140-hitting and superior setup play with an average advantage of just under one point over Littler. These explanations come from the 27 September report.

Setup play helps explain why this was more than a contest over isolated maximum scores. The useful outcome of a scoring visit is not only the points removed; it is also the position left for the next visit. In an efficiency measure built around completing legs, the route to the finish belongs in the comparison.

The reports nevertheless do not give a numerical breakdown assigning a particular share of the ranking reversal to 140s, setup play, doubles or individual matches. Kempf’s explanation identifies the performance changes behind the snapshot. It is not a published decomposition of the OChE calculation.

Price moved ahead on both reported measures, but their gaps remained distinct: his average advantage was just under one point, while his OChE advantage was expressed as one expected additional leg per 300. Those figures describe different things and should not be substituted for one another.

One Extra Leg Per 300 Is About 0.33 Percentage Points

Because OChE is expressed as an expected leg-winning percentage, the earlier eight-point lead means eight percentage points, not an 8% relative advantage. A percentage-point difference compares the two percentage values directly. A relative percentage difference would require a baseline value, which is not supplied here.

The later margin can be put on the same scale: one additional expected leg divided by 300 legs, multiplied by 100, is approximately 0.33 percentage points.

That conversion describes the difference, not either player’s absolute rating. It cannot tell us Price’s or Littler’s OChE percentage without at least one of those values. The available evidence supports “Price narrowly ahead,” not an invented pair of ratings chosen to produce the reported gap.

“Expected” also does not mean that Price must win exactly one more leg in every block of 300. The statement expresses the modelled advantage against the ProTour benchmark. It is a scale for the margin, not a schedule of outcomes.

Most importantly, this is not a Price-versus-Littler head-to-head probability. Comparing their expected performance against benchmark opposition does not directly calculate how often Price would beat Littler in a match. A match forecast would be a different claim and would need its own evidence.

The reports also supply no uncertainty interval or significance test for the gap. It is fair to call the reported margin narrow; it is not justified to attach a confidence level or declare that the difference was statistically significant.

A High Average And A Fast Checkout Are Related, Not Identical

A hypothetical 501 leg illustrates the distinction without supplying any new player data. Suppose the visits are 140, 140, 140 and 81, with the 81 finished through treble 19, single 12 and double 6. That is a four-visit, 12-dart checkout.

The leg’s three-dart average is 501 ÷ 12 × 3 = 125.25.

The average records points scored per three darts. The visit count records how quickly the player completed the leg. Here, the two descriptions refer to the same excellent completed leg, but they are not interchangeable measures across a larger sample.

OChE combines checkout rates across several visit lengths using the model’s weights. One 12-dart leg cannot establish an OChE rating, just as one exceptional leg cannot establish a player’s last-200-leg average. The September comparison concerns repeated performance across that sample, not the best individual leg either player produced.

The separation is visible elsewhere in the earlier report. Clayton led finishing accuracy despite averaging 94.62, which placed him 20th by average. The 9 September report therefore had different leaders for different metrics.

For the Price–Littler comparison, the fact that Price led both average and OChE does not establish that he also led doubles accuracy. The supplied evidence supports the two named leads. It does not support extending them to every statistical category.

Form Number One Is Separate From Official World Number One

The official PDC world ranking is based on prize money earned in ranking tournaments over a two-year period. OChE instead evaluates recent performance against a ProTour benchmark. The PDC rankings explanation sets out the official ranking basis.

These systems answer different questions. The world ranking orders players through ranking prize money accumulated over its stated period. The Form Guide examines the performance in a recent leg sample. Being first in one does not establish being first in the other.

That is why “Price overtook Littler” needs its qualifier: Price overtook Littler in the OChE form ranking published on 27 September. Dropping “form” turns a supported statement about recent efficiency into an unsupported statement about official status.

Neither September form report, as represented by the supplied evidence, establishes a change of official world number one. For the separate historical record, see PDC world number one reigns.

The same care applies to timing. “September leader” is convenient shorthand, but the precise claim is that Price led the later September snapshot. It does not mean he led on every day of the month or that the table measured September matches alone.

The Missing Values Limit Further Calculation

The available reports give enough information to identify the ranking reversal and describe its scale. They do not provide every number needed for a complete statistical comparison.

Available Evidence	What It Establishes
Last 200 legs	The stated sample basis
Earlier eight-point lead	Littler’s reported margin
Later one-leg-per-300 lead	Price’s narrow reported margin
No absolute OChE values supplied	Individual percentages remain unknown

Without the absolute OChE values, there is no sound way to calculate each player’s relative percentage improvement from the margins alone. Without the model weights and underlying checkout-rate data, there is no sound way to reproduce the rankings independently. Without uncertainty estimates, there is no sound way to quantify how secure the later lead was.

For pub and league players, the useful part of this comparison is the separation of scoring, finishing and completed-leg speed. Recording an average alone leaves out some of what OChE is designed to capture; recording doubles alone leaves out the work required to reach them. But the professional percentage remains tied to ProTour opposition. It should not be relabelled as a local-league win probability.

The September result needs no stronger claim than the evidence permits: Littler had the clear earlier lead, Price took the later top spot, and the later expected-performance margin was only one leg per 300.