After weeks of anticipation, the World Darts Championship is finally upon us and Day One didn’t disappoint.
Four games took place on the first evening session of the tournament as three round-one ties and one round-two tie kicked off the Alexandra Palace event.
World No. 1 and defending World Champion Luke Humphries rounded off the night in trademark fashion as he looks to become the first back-to-back World Darts Champion since Gary Anderson.
Here are three things we learned from the World Darts Championship on Day One.
Luke Humphries avoids slip-up against Thibault Tricole
As defending champion, Humphries has been put in the comfortable position of opening up proceedings and receiving a long-wait until after Christmas to reconvene his World Darts Championship defence.
Cool Hand’s second-round match against Thibault Tricole, who defeated Joe Comito earlier in the evening, couldn’t have gone much better.
Tricole made life easy for Humphries, missing a string of doubles early on in the tie as the World No. 1 was acclimatising to life on the Alexandra Palace stage.
Eventually, Humphries didn’t even need to get out of second gear to defeat the French No. 1 and secure his place in the third round by not dropping a single leg.
Keane Barry impresses against Kim Huybrechts
There’s been a lot of talking about the rising stars of the tournament heading into this year’s event, but Keane Barry has gone under the radar so far.
That won’t be the case after his exceptional performance against former World Darts Championship quarterfinalist Kim Huybrechts.
The Irish ace recovered from going a set down with some extraordinary scoring, averaging over 105 in the middle of the match.
With an out-of-form Gerwyn Price in the second round, there’s every chance Barry could become one of the stories of the tournament.
Jermaine Wattimena could go far
Despite currently sitting outside of the Top 32, Jermaine Wattimena is one of the form players on the PDC Tour.
The Machine Gun reached his first major tournament final at the European Championship and has proven he’s one of the tour’s best scorers currently.
Wattimena impressed in a 3-0 win over debutant Stefan Bellmont, who impressed in his first match at the World Championship.
A 98.54 average was enough for Wattimena to set up a second-round match with James Wade, which should be one of the early-round treats of the tournament.