Luke Littler has ramped up the pressure on the 20 amateur players aiming to take £501,000 off him live on Netflix later this month — and he has no intention of showing any mercy. In Q&A material released by Netflix ahead of Beat Luke Littler, the world number one made clear exactly how little margin for error exists in the format: each challenger gets one leg of 501, and if one of them beats him, Littler's night is over.
“You don't know who the twenty are, you don't know how they are going to play and they only have to have one good leg and I'm done,” Littler said. “I think they are going to be nervous though because they're up against me and because the money they could win would be life changing. So I am just going to try and relax and enjoy it and hopefully beat everyone, but if it's not to be, it's not to be.” The two-time defending world champion insisted there would be no easing off against amateur opposition: “No way! There's half a million quid up for grabs, I won't be going easy at all! I'll be wanting to beat everyone who comes up. Maybe the first few legs could be a bit nervy, but once I get going then I don't think anyone will stop me.”
Asked what advice he would give the challengers before walking onto a major stage with £501,000 resting on one leg, Littler initially offered a rather less helpful suggestion. “Ha! I don't want them to settle down. I want them to be nervous for the whole leg,” he joked. “No, I think they've just got to look at it like they have this one chance, this one leg to beat me for half a million quid and then just go out there and throw the kitchen sink at me.” It has been so long since Littler last lost a leg of 501 to an amateur that he cannot remember when it happened: “I must have done at some point but it is so long ago I can't remember.” The 19-year-old also has little interest in any attempts to unsettle him — if a challenger tries sledging or mind games, he says he will simply leave them to it. “My mentality is that if I play at my best, no one can beat me.”
Richard Osman, the show's expert analyst, sees rather more uncertainty in the numbers. He previously calculated Littler's chance of surviving all 20 challengers at around 15 per cent, and his latest assessment puts greater emphasis on something statistics cannot properly measure: what happens when an amateur suddenly looks down at a double worth more than half a million pounds. “The numbers will tell me there's a pretty good chance that someone's gonna beat him,” Osman said. “These are good players, they are not random people taken off the street and while Luke Littler is possibly the greatest darts player ever to live, he does lose sets. So, in my head, of course I think someone will beat him and win that half a million pounds – but – to do that you will, at some point, have to throw one dart at a double, in front of an enormous live crowd, knowing you're about to win a life changing amount of money – and that makes a mockery of all the statistics.”
Osman expects the selected amateurs to average somewhere around 80, with consistency and handling pressure separating them most obviously from the professional elite, and he is convinced somebody will at least get close. “I genuinely believe there's going to be at least one who gets a single dart to win the whole thing. I almost guarantee it,” he said. For some of the 20, he expects the occasion to prove overwhelming; for others, he believes it could become their “Rocky moment”. Host Gary Lineker is similarly unwilling to dismiss an upset, describing Littler as “unbelievably consistent” but believing the combination of an amateur producing their best darts and the world champion having one below-par leg gives the challengers a genuine opening. Asked whether Osman's calculation bothers him, Littler was dismissive: “As long as I get through the first few games, I'm just gonna be relentless.” Littler says he still does not know who the 20 opponents are or exactly what styles they will bring to the stage — he will find out when Beat Luke Littler goes live exclusively on Netflix from 19:00 on Friday, October 30, with presenting duo Gary Lineker and Richard Osman joining him on the show.
