After Richie and Giovanni’s early exit from the competition last weekend, we thought it would be fun to look over the stats to see which Professional Male dancer overall has had the most Strictly success to date.

Of course, it depends a bit on how we define success – is it the number of top scores achieved, or should we consider also who has consistently achieved higher scores across the range of dances?

We have chosen to look at both dimensions, and the results make quite interesting reading. Who’d have thought that Trent Whiddon (remember him, the one who danced with Pixie Lott in Series 12?) – would top the Male Pros for highest scores, or that Pasha Kovalev wins hands down for most top scores but fails to feature on the high scores leaderboard at all. And to our surprise the wonderful Aljaž Škorjanec doesn’t feature on either and he won in 2013! Who knew?

Male Pro Top Scores Leaderboard

For this we needed to consider who has scored the most “full marks” throughout the Show’s history. This is usually 40 (4 judges each scoring 10) but can also be 30 (3 judges, each scoring 10 as in Series 18) or occasionally 50 (5 judges each scoring 10, as in Series 7 and Series 12). We will add the data showing these scores as a % of their overall scores but are basing this leaderboard solely on the number of top marks awarded. (Figures are rounded to the nearest whole number.)

#	Top scores	Pro	Top scores as a % of overall scores
1	13	Pasha Kovalev	15% of his 85 dances got top marks
2	11	Giovanni Pernice	12% of his 95 dances got top marks
3	5	Gorka Màrquez (includes 3 scores of 40/40 and 2 scores of 30/30)	12% of his 43 dances got top marks
3	5	James Jordan	7% of his 71 dances got top marks
4	4	Brendan Cole	3% of his 128 dances got top marks
5	3	Artem Chigvintsev	6% of his 53 dances got top marks
5	3	Kevin Clifton	3% of his 101 dances got top marks

Male Pro High Scores Leaderboard

How would looking at the range of “high scores” each male pro dancer has achieved change the results? Would the same pros dominate? We used the following ranges to classify dances as high scoring: 25-30/30 for dances scored out of 30; 30-40/40 for typical 4-judge dances; 42-50/50 for performances with an extra judge scoring.

As different pros have performed various numbers of dances, we are basing this leaderboard on their high scores as a % of their overall scores and not on the number of high scores awarded. (Figures are rounded to the nearest whole number.)

#	High scores	Male Pro	High scores as a % of overall scores
1	10	Trent Whiddon	83% of his 12 dances score high marks (but no full marks)
2	41	Artem Chigvintsev	77% of his 53 dances score high marks
3	76	Kevin Clifton	75% of his 101 dances score high marks
4	67	Giovanni Pernice	71% of his 95 dances score high marks
5	49	James Jordan	69% of his 71 dances score high marks
5	11	Kai Widdrington	69% of his 16 dances score high marks

We hope you’ve enjoyed digging a bit deeper into the Pro Male dance data with us – please send your thoughts or questions in the Comments below. Watch out too for the Pro Female leaderboards which will be coming soon.