Sky Bet have plenty of markets for PDC World Darts Championship bets

Big guns: Phil Taylor and Adrian Lewis

It's Christmas time, and Christmas would just not be the same without the PDC World Darts Championships, which will again light up the Festive period at Alexandra Palace - live on Sky Sports.

Adrian Lewis is the double defending champion and looking to become just the third man to ever win any world title three times on the spin, joining Eric Bristow and Phil Taylor as the only other hat-trick heroes in world darts.

Jackpot's last defeat at Ally Pally was in January 2010 but despite that fantastic run he is just third favourite at 8/1 with Sky Bet for the title behind 15-time world champion and perennial market leader Phil Taylor and the in-form Michael van Gerwen.

At 7/4 'The Power' is his longest price for a long time despite winning the Players Championship Finals recently, while World Grand Prix winner van Gerwen is 9/2 to make his first big impact at the worlds - and what would be a mouth-watering final between the two stars being an 11/2 chance.

As always with the darts, Sky Bet has a huge range of markets available if you're struggling to pick an outright winner so it may pay to look elsewhere for some Christmas wagers such as the specials on scoring.

The crowd love 180s at the World Championship and the bookies are obviously expecting a bumper crop of maximums this year with the under/over mark set at 580.5 with it being 5/6 to be more or less - so it's worth noting that the record for the tournament is 554 set in 2011.

A maximum checkout ins 170 and is a tough shot with two treble 20s and the bullseye needed to take it out - there were four in last year's event and that again is the mark with even money on there being three or less this time around and 8/11 on there again being four or more.

And what of the perfect nine-darter? For 19 years we waited for someone to emulate Paul Lim's achievement with a World Championship nine-darter, and like London buses suddenly they all came at once with on in three successive years.

Raymond van Barneveld hit successive nine-darters before Lewis nailed one in his first final, but the run ended last year and Sky Bet go 8/13 that we will again go without seeing the perfect leg and 6/5 that someone can add their name to the select list.

There are always some shocks in the opening round of the World Championship, and there are some tasty ties early on and some tricky ones for the big name players to try and negotiate to make their way into the latter stages.

Former PDC Under-21 world champion Aaron Monk has a good chance of upsetting Peter Wright and is 5/4 to do so, while Stuart Kellett is also 5/4 to get the better of the streaky Vincent van der Voort and Peter Hudson 7/2 to beat the inconsistent James Wade.

Mervyn King is 4/5 against Dean Winstanley (evens) in one of the big ties of the round, with another being Ronnie Baxter (4/7) versus veteran Dennis Priestley, who is now just playing for fun before retirement and could be dangerous at 11/8 to win that one.