Gian van Veen proves to be master of cover shooting ahead of Van Gerwen, Price, Anderson and Littler as new benchmark

In his latest column, PDC statistician Christopher Kempf casts an in-depth look at the most effective "cover shooters" in darts: the players who perform best when they decide to deviate from the traditional route via the triple 20, and Dutch super-talent Gian van Veen appears to do this best.

Last weekend the current world champion (Luke Littler) and World Youth Champion (Gian van Veen) faced each other in a showdown that showed how important switching is these days. Littler, normally known for his impressive 180's, managed only two in eleven legs this time. Van Veen, on the other hand, gave a true master class in variety and scoring ability.

With an average of nearly 111 - and only one more 180 than Littler - Van Veen particularly excelled in his timing and precision in switching. With his second dart, he hit 50% of his triple 20 attempts, and a whopping 75% of the remaining triples, including a perfect 100% score on triple 18. Littler, on the other hand, hit only five of his 16 attempts outside the 20.

Ultimately, Van Veen's impressive run in Munich ended only against Michael van Gerwen, ironically the man whose game is pre-eminently built on switching between triples.

Whereas cameramen used to be able to keep zooming in on the triple 20 almost continuously during matches, things are different today. In the 1983 World Cup final, only 5% of the darts were thrown at other triples - often only leading up to a finish.

But times have changed. In the current Premier League, there are seven players (excluding only Stephen Bunting) who choose a triple other than 20 on more than 15% of their pitches. Switching has become perhaps the most important strategic change in darts since the era of Bristow and Deller.

And it is mostly young players who have fully embraced this technique. Only two active top darters - Peter Wright and Jonny Clayton - throw less than 10% of their darts on "smaller" triples, and both are now past 50.

No player averages more points per dart on triples 17 through 19 than "GVV The Giant": 35.18 points per throw. Although Gary Anderson and Wesley Plaisier are slightly more accurate in these situations, Van Veen's consistency is second to none.

More importantly, what matters in this context is not who hits a triple most often, but who gets the most return from his darts. And that is exactly where Van Veen excels. On average, he scores three points more than Littler per "switch visit" of two darts.

Michael van Gerwen still holds the record for most triple 19s in a televised match (85, World Championship 2019). But although he is still among the elite with 34.34 points per dart, the differences with his competitors have narrowed.

Van Gerwen in 2025 is the player with the most visits in which he throws one dart at triple 20, one at triple 19 and one at triple 18, a sign of his versatility but also of his reliance on switching. This is evidenced, for example, by his 19 scores of 134 points in the World Cup final against Littler.

Still, Van Gerwen is not yet a "switch addict" like Rob Cross, with more than a quarter of all darts going towards the triples 17 to 19. However, Cross' accuracy (41.3%) on these triples is lower than that of Van Gerwen, Littler and Luke Humphries.

However, the proportion of darts on the smaller triples does not say everything. With players like Cross or Van Gerwen, it can also be a sign of difficulty grouping on the triple 20. Van Veen throws "only" 17.7% of his darts on the smaller triples - just below the PDC average - and that is probably exactly where his strength lies: switching effectively when needed, without becoming dependent on it.