World Darts Championship LIVE: Latest quarter-final action as Dobey faces Price before Luke Littler returns

Dobey kicks off the match with a 180! The fans get right behind him and he’s down to the checkout in no time and takes out 80 in two darts to win the first leg of the match.

Up first this afternoon will be Chris Dobey versus Gerwyn Price.

On paper this could be the match of the round with both players on form and wanting to kick on into the deeper parts of the tournament.

Price is tipped to beat Dobey but it’ll be a close run thing.

It’s almost time for the afternoon session to get underway with Chris Dobey and Gerwyn Price battling it out to become the first man into the final four.

Luke Littler remains calm as rival Luke Humphries clears the way for ‘The Nuke’ returning to the final.

Instead, Nathan Aspinall is up first before the winner takes on the winner of Peter Wright vs Stephen Bunting in the semi-finals.

36 – Luke Littler 26 – Callan Rydz 24 – Chris Dobey 21 – Michael van Gerwen 19 – Gerwyn Price, Peter Wright 15 – Nathan Aspinall 14 – Stephen Bunting

Checkout Percentages 52% – Peter Wright 47% – Nathan Aspinall 44% – Michael van Gerwen 40% – Callan Rydz, Stephen Bunting 38% – Luke Littler 34% – Gerwyn Price 31% – Chris Dobey

100.88 – Luke Littler 99.43 – Callan Rydz 98.26 – Michael van Gerwen 96.62 – Stephen Bunting 95.87 – Peter Wright 94.39 – Chris Dobey 92.29 – Gerwyn Price 91.22 – Nathan Aspinall

The 17-year-old is ranked fourth in the world entering the championship and filled with confidence. Victories in the Grand Slam of Darts, the Premier League and World Series Finals have been some of the highlights from a glittering year as Littler mania has taken the sport by storm.

And ‘The Nuke’ survived a scare against Ryan Joyce to advance to the last eight. Here’s everything you need to know about Littler’s next match in this year’s championship and who he might meet further down the line:

In one of the all-time great pieces of nominative determinism, the man at the epicentre of the poker boom was called Chris Moneymaker.

Moneymaker found himself in the eye of a perfect storm: interest in poker surged after the 1998 film Rounders starring Matt Damon and Ed Norton, at a time when the internet’s arrival spawned poker websites which drew millions of American players. In 2003, ESPN took a punt televising the biggest event in poker, the World Series.

They struck gold with Moneymaker, an accountant from Georgia who became the world champion, beating 852 opponents and turning his $40 buy-in into the $2.5m winner’s prize. He was an ordinary American Joe and his story had an inspirational effect. People who’d never before picked up a deck of cards suddenly wanted to be the next Moneymaker.

Luke Littler came through an exacting test of his credentials as favourite for the World Darts Championship with a tense 4-3 victory over Ryan Joyce to book a place in the quarter-final.

Expectation on last year’s runner-up was ramped up following defending champion Luke Humphries’ surprise exit and the 17-year-old had to withstand intense pressure at Alexandra Palace.

His class showed when it was needed most as he averaged 111 in the final set, having hit 14 180s in the match.