Littler Defeated On Debut But Humphries On Track To Retain Title

Teenage darts star Luke 'The Nuke' Littler made an incredible impact in the game the other year as a fresh faced 16 year old and it seems that the now 17 year old is more than on track to continue taking and making the headlines.

But as long term fans of the sport will know, his age means he will often have periods of inconsistency, not reach the levels we know he is capable of and at points someone will simply out shoot him through no fault of his own as they show slightly better form.

The sport is all about slotting the arrows into the right part of the board, and there will be those fans out there who enjoy playing the games available at the likes of slots uk where you could potentially win a bit of prize money for yourself as well as just whiling away a little bit of time and enjoying yourself whilst you wait for the next pair at the oche.

He is also obviously pretty new to the overall professional darts tour and this week he made his debut at the World Grand Prix at Leicester's Mattioli Arena. Littler went into his opening clash with 2018 debut World Championship winner Rob Cross as pre-tournament favourite, but he ultimately fell to a 2-1 defeat on Monday evening.

The youngster did made six maximums in their tie up, but he struggled to really get going in the double start format, although he did manage to level the match at 1-1 after being edged out in the first set.

34 year old Cross, however, held his nerve to finish with a bullseye in the fourth set to take what is only his third victory in the tournament. The Englishman will now face German player Martin Schindler in the second round clash on Wednesday.

Littler will undoubtedly be back in future competitions and many will tip him to do better at the next time of asking now that he has a better experience of the double start format, the Arena, and even though he was ultimately defeated, he can again take confidence from his performance and the way he began fighting back.

Littler and Cross were obviously not the only talents on display on Monday, reigning champion Luke Humphries was drawn against Masters winner Stephen Bunting, and the 29 year old fought back from a set and two legs behind to take a 2-1 win.

Having celebrated his maiden TV ranking title with a win over Gerwyn Price 12 months ago, Humphries is bidding to become only the third player in the competitions history to retain the title following on from Phil Taylor and Michael van Gerwen but having lost the opening five legs against the former world number one, many would have felt that this was in doubt at that moment in time.

However, Bunting missed a double 16 to secure the win, and simply had to watch on as Humphries hit back to take the next three legs to level, before then pulling clear to take the victory himself.

He is now set to face German Ricardo Pietreczko, who took a 2-1 win over Dutch five time world champion Raymond van Barneveld.

In Monday's other results, Ryan Searle suffered a 2-1 defeat to Nathan Aspinall, whilst Schindler took a 2-0 victory over Brendan Dolan. Ryan Joyce, Jonny Clayton and Ross Smith also took 2-0 wins as they respectively faced off against Josh Rock, Ritchie Edhouse and Gian van Veen.

All eye's to the next encounters now as we find out who earns the £120,000 winning prize money.