Schedule Thursday Grand Slam of Darts 2024: Littler and Anderson remain as top favourites left in wide open draw

Thursday night will reveal who will join Mickey Mansell, Cameron Menzies, Martin Lukeman and Rob Cross in the quarter-finals of the Grand Slam of Darts. The program is one to savour.

Gary Anderson and Luke Littler are probably the two main names who are still involved after the huge seed cull and will hope to avoid similar fates to Humphries, Van Gerwen and Smith.

We begin the session with Jermaine Wattimena and Dimitri van den Bergh. Wattimena continued his form of recent weeks, with the European Championship final as the absolute highlight, with a convincing group win. 'The Machine Gun' won convincingly over Mike de Decker (5-2) and Michael Smith (5-1), before also beating Mensur Suljovic (5-4). Van den Bergh did not have a scintillating start to the group stage. He beat Lourence Ilagan 5-1, but his play clearly left much to be desired. Then followed a hopeless 5-1 defeat against Luke Littler.

'The Dreammaker' then had to beat Keane Barry to reach the last sixteen. Van den Bergh did just that with a 5-1 win over the Irishman with an average of 104.58. It was his first 100+ average in a PDC match since August. In the head-to-head, Van den Bergh leads 8-4, but the only meeting in 2024 was won by Wattimena.

Gian van Veen managed to impress the most in the group stage out of all the participants at the Grand Slam of Darts. 'GVV The Giant' was prior to the event perhaps thought to have the least chance of making it to the knockout stage, but emerged victorious in the pool after victories over Josh Rock (5-2), Stephen Bunting (5-1) and Wessel Nijman (5-4).

In doing so, the 22-year-old recorded scores of 110.39, 114.71 and 103.99 respectively. Combined, his average ended up at 108.89. This meant a considerable improvement on the group stage record of Phil Taylor (107.12). Van Veen's opponent Ryan Joyce was responsible for Michael van Gerwen's exit in the group stage. In a straight fight for a spot in the knockout phase, 'Relentless' won 5-4. It is only the first time Van Veen and Joyce have faced each other in an official match.

After Luke Humphries' exit, Luke Littler is the biggest favorite for the title at the Grand Slam of Darts. After first-round exits at the ranking majors World Matchplay, World Grand Prix and the European Darts Championship, 'The Nuke' has convincingly survived the first shuffle at the Grand Slam of Darts. The 17-year-old teenage sensation had a formidable start to his tournament in Wolverhampton on Saturday by beating Keane Barry 5-0 thanks to an average of 112. This was followed by a 5-1 victory over Dimitri van den Bergh with a moyenne of 106.98. In an attractive duel, he was then also too strong for Lourence Ilagan (5-3) with 102.05 average. Mike de Decker gets the difficult task of trying to unbalance Littler. The World Grand Prix champion made it to the last sixteen for the first time in his career at this tournament, which obviously goes for debutant Littler as well. De Decker lost his first group match against Jermaine Wattimena (5-2), but then won decisively against Mensur Suljovic (5-2) and Michael Smith (5-0). Earlier this year, the Belgian and the Englishman met at a Players Championship tournament, then the win went 6-3 to Littler.

We conclude the second round with a delicious cracker between Gary Anderson and Stephen Bunting. Anderson is competing in the Grand Slam of Darts for the seventeenth time and just as many times 'The Flying Scotsman' managed to get past the group stage. The Scot did so as group winner after victories over Ryan Joyce (5-1), Michael van Gerwen (5-4) and Noa-Lynn van Leuven (5-4). Especially in his opening match against Joyce, Anderson left a rock-solid impression with an average of 113.20. Bunting finished second in the pool of death. 'The Bullet' lost to an unleashed Gian van Veen, but did pick up wins against Wessel Nijman (5-4) and Josh Rock (5-2). With averages of 103.02, 104.17 and 106.66, the Englishman showed he is in top form. In the mutual balance, Anderson has a big lead over his upcoming opponent. Of the twenty previous duels, fifteen were won by the two-time world champion,including the last three encounters. On the ranking majors, the score is even 5-0 in favor of the Scottish darts legend.

Sky Sports is showing the tournament in full in the UK. As usual, the tournament begins with a group stage with eight pools of four players each. The group stage takes place from Saturday through Tuesday, with all players playing three times.

The top two players from each group will advance to the knockout phase. Starting Wednesday, Nov. 13, the knockout phase will begin with the first matches of the final sixteen. This round will be completed on Thursday, Nov. 14. The quarter-finals will be played on Friday, Nov. 15, and Saturday, Nov. 16, before the semifinals and finals are finished on Sunday, Nov. 17.

The event has been part of the PDC calendar since 2007. Back then, the prize pool already included £300,000, with £80,000 going to the winner. The prize pool was thrown up a few times in the following years, and in 2019 more than half a million prize money was distributed at the Grand Slam of Darts for the first time. Since the 2022 edition, the prize pool includes £650,000.

Every participant in the Grand Slam of Darts is guaranteed £5,000, which is the prize money you will be paid if you finish last in your pool. This amount can eventually go up to a sum of 150,000 pounds for the winner of the tournament. The players who win their pools in the group stage receive a bonus of 3,500 pounds. The Grand Slam has been a ranking tournament since 2015, so the prize money won counts toward the PDC Order of Merit.

Jermaine Wattimena v Dimitri Van den Bergh

Gian van Veen v Ryan Joyce

Luke Littler v Mike De Decker

Gary Anderson v Stephen Bunting