Luke Littler enters the World Darts Championships on Saturday aiming to go one better than last year and win the tournament. To boost his confidence, a supercomputer has backed the teenage sensation to the hilt.

The Nuke burst onto the world darts scene last winter at Alexandra Palace - then a 16-year-old - by becoming the youngest ever entrant to storm to the final, where he was defeated 7-4 by Luke Humphries.

A year has passed since that heartbreak - a first year on the Pro Tour, no less. Over that time Runcorn-born Littler has won three PDC titles - the Premier League included, won BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year award, is set to become the professional face of ITV's upcoming reboot of Bullseye plus has taken home a total prize pot exceeding £1m.

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On Saturday night he begins his next shot at the Sid Waddell trophy in the second round against Ryan Meikle, who beat Fallon Sherrock earlier this week to advance.

Anything can happen at Ally Pally - Littler being evidence of that 12 months ago. But having been installed as tournament favourite this time, he will be hoping all will go as expected.

If he needed that extra motivation on top of the £500k winners' prize, a supercomputer from The Sports Daily has handed Littler the best statistical chance of coming out on top.

They explain that that it uses player performance metrics, historical data, and recent form to simulate the tournament thousands of times. Each player’s progression through the rounds is evaluated based on win probabilities derived from this comprehensive data analysis.

Key factors such as head-to-head records, scoring averages, and finishing accuracy were integrated into the model to produce exact probabilities. For Littler to win the final on Friday, January 3, the supercomputer has given a majority 21.3 percent backing.

Last year's winner 'Cool Hand Luke' Humphries trails closest with a 14.7 percent probability, three-time champion Michael van Gerwen is placed with 11.6 percent and 'The Flying Scotsman' Gary Anderson has 9.3 percent.

Below are the rest of the percentages the supercomputer calculated for potential tournament winners:

• Wessel Nijman - 4.2%

• Gerwyn Price - 3.9%

• Chris Dobey - 3.6%

• Jonny Clayton - 3.2%

• Stephen Bunting - 3.1%

• Rob Cross - 2.9%

• Jermaine Wattimena - 2%

• Damon Heta - 2%

• Gian van Veen - 2%

• Josh Rock - 1.9%

• Ryan Searle - 1.6%

• Dave Chisnall - 1.4%

• Martin Schindler - 1.1%

• Luke Woodhouse - 0.5%

• Nathan Aspinall - 0.2%