Worlds evening day 8, day 9 reaction post

Round one is in the books. Surprisingly, more than half the seeded players' matches passed the piss break test, so I guess we can condone the expansion of the tournament, or more accurately the format of it, I've said before if the expansion had been done as a flat bracket (i.e. bottom 64 qualifiers in round 1, add 32 from Pro Tour in round two, add the seeds in round three) would have been much better and I'm still convinced it would be, but anyway, let's blast through the last twelve matches of round one.

Also, Dom Taylor, for fuck's sake.

Wattimena/Gruellich - Give some props to Dominik here, he did enough to keep things close against a clearly not on top form Jermaine, didn't work out in the end, as Wattimena just powered away in sets four and five, but a good sign for potential stage games going forwards.

Chisnall/Sherrock - Lots of missed doubles here. 3/23 is not a good look, but if you will only ever play in events where you are only likely to ever have to hit a double under pressure against one possible opponent, that's kind of on you for not pushing yourself. Play the fucking Challenge Tour, it's not difficult.

van Gerwen/Tatsunami - Was surprisingly tight. Don't think the qualifier did anything special, just took advantage of MvG pretty much not being on his game, getting what he could, but still not having enough to clean the game out. I guess Michael just puts this in the "just glad to be through round one" locker.

Ratajski/Toylo - A bit of a better game, but as I thought, Krzysztof is exactly the sort of player who will not be disrupted by a slower player, and he allowed pretty much nothing.

Doets/Dennant - Fairly solid showing from Matthew. Got the first, and was not far away from the remaining sets. Kevin was playing better, but with a bit better "timing" (god I hate that term) then maybe this match plays out differently. Certainly seemed closer than the scoreline and statistics suggested.

Meikle/Salate - No trouble here for Ryan. Jesus I guess was just a bit overwhelmed, it got a bit more interesting in the last set but the game was done by then.

Mansell/Gates - Now a lot of people here are giving this the Mansell/Long award. That might be a tad harsh, the first two sets weren't too bad, but then Mickey just turned off. Somehow got an eleven visit break and got things back to 2-2 on the back of that, but then the last set just reverted to type. This one more or less kept me at break even today, and for round one, thought this sort of game at the worlds was past Mansell but I guess not.

Rock/Hayter - Seems like Josh was just going through the motions here. Not really at full blast, Gemma played pretty decently let's not confuse matters, but I think if Rock wanted to 3-0 this one he could have done, but hey, a win is a win.

O'Connor/Kciuk - One of the performances of the tournament so far. It probably doesn't look quite as good in my database as it does in other media, mainly due to the only last dart kill Willie had being the 167 out, but it's good. Kciuk didn't play badly at all - he was just hugely outclassed on the night.

Gurney/Greaves - This was a real fun one to watch. On a lot of other days, Beau takes this, just a case of the occasional missed double at key times, and Daryl hitting the key checkouts at key times. It's an L for Greaves but a clear marker, as if any were needed, that she can mix it with the upper ends of the PDC ladder.

Aspinall/Ilagan - Fuck knows what was going on with this one. Seems like a perfect storm of Lourence looking maybe the best we've ever seen him on a PDC stage, and Nathan not being quite on his game. He got it done, but having piled on Aspinall at very short odds, this was a lot closer than it really needed to be.

Barry/Pusey - Alright from both. Keane coming back as he did in the first set I think might have taken the sting out of Tim a touch, if Pusey bags the first I think this one could have played out a lot differently, but while the Aussie didn't play bad at all, I think he was just consistently that half a visit or more behind, and it showed in the result, particularly after set one.

Into the sorting wheat from the chaff stage for real now. Lot of players will have nicked their way through one, but getting through the second is going to properly sort things out. I'll try and get daily thoughts updates out, as I'm at football tomorrow I'm not sure if I do it for the Saturday matches, or at least at decent timings, but we'll see.

Worlds day 7, afternoon day 8 reaction post

I was going to hold off until the first round was done, and then just do twenty matches at once, but there's actually quite a bit to talk about in these two sessions so I'll jump the gun and throw my thoughts out.

Campbell/Sevada - Not really sure what went on in this one. I don't know whether this was the pressure from Matt knowing he needed to win to have any chance of saving his tour card, but whatever, first set was a combination of having neither scoring nor checking out, levelled at 1-1, then Adam played probably his best stuff with some decent check outs, although the key thing was probably Matt missing two set darts. After that, the scoring just went and that was that. Disappointing, and if he's not able to reclaim his card then that's a HUGE set back for the entire North American region.

van Barneveld/Bellmont - Oh dear oh dear oh dear. I wasn't watching this game, but lost a fair chunk on it (I was also on Matt in the first game for full disclosure). Got first leg, couldn't score, missed a couple of doubles, loses set, misses more doubles to gift Bellmont the second, then another mediocre scoring leg to kick off the third seals the deal. I didn't watch the game, but by all accounts he had a severe case of cantbearseditis, and if you can't get yourself up for a world championship, what can you get yourself up for?

Wade/Azemoto - Pretty much a textbook Wade performance. Had the scoring advantage, finished steadily, didn't really give Azemoto a sniff. Nothing really to talk about here.

Schindler/Burton - And this one, coupled with the Campbell match earlier, pretty much seals the tour card situation for 2026. Seven of the eight players have now dropped who were right below the cutoff line, only Beveridge getting the win but he's going to need round 4 to change anything. Decent first leg from Stephen but then Martin took control, Burton upped his game a lot in the second to take things to 1-1, but couldn't win another leg after that, just being strongly outscored for the most part and missing what few chances he was given.

Rydz/Kovacs - Another one with not much to talk about. Patrik had the odd flash, actually keeping pace with Callan in terms of scoring for a lot of it, but couldn't really do it consistently enough to give Rydz too many problems, advancing in straight sets.

Tricole/Sakai - I'm not overly surprised by this one. Many of the Asian players have enough about them to be able to hang about with someone in this if they get a good draw, and no disrespect to Thibault, this is one of the best draws he could have got. He did need to rely on a pretty darned bad display of doubling from Tricole to get the first, but the second was very steady, while the third was again a display of mutually missed doubles, and you wonder if the fight had gone out of Thibault at that stage being two down.

Joyce/Bates - Another disappointing one for me, having taken the underdog who never really got out of the blocks. Bates just could never get any scoring going whatsoever, while Ryan was impeccable on the outer ring, which denied Owen a dart at a double in the first two sets, outside of the one leg he won. Bates did perk up in the third, did zero in the first leg but was allowed three clear at 40 and the same at 36 in the next two legs, but couldn't convert either chance which you simply have to do at this level. Would have been an enormous way back from there, but at 2-1 in legs the game would actually have been back on throw at that point. Oh well. Also a memo to both players - going bull with 66 left is really, really stupid. Stop doing that.

de Decker/Munyua - Jesus christ have Belgium had a bad worlds. Huybrechts, Vandenbogaerde, van den Bergh and Baetens already went out, and now de Decker falls as well to make it a very improbable clean sweep for the non-Belgians. Oddly, he started looking fine, Munyua got a nice twelve in the first set but Mike was otherwise not in trouble, but then he started out really not scoring in set 2, going down 2-0, pulling it back despite missing eight darts in the third which gifted David a chance for the set, the last two legs being very solid again. Then he was down 0-2 again with more poor play in both aspects of the game, dodging a lot more set darts, but letting Munyua take it, missing a bunch more doubles in the fourth, including three for the match, then the fifth was more weirdness - going seven perfect to start the set and break, but then miss a dart for 2-0 seeing David check 135 on the bull, missing more for the third leg, before not scoring as he went out.

I'll update the second round predictions post after the evening session. Might be late tonight, might be tomorrow at some point.

Round two projections

Right, these are going to go in order of play, and will go in short-medium-long-composite projection order. Where someone's got limited data, I will indicate that. This will clearly be edited as and when more second round matches are known.

Dobey/Gilding - 81/66/67/71

Bunting/Kumar - 100/100/100/100 (limited long data, extremely limited other data)

van Duijvenbode/Hurrell - 79/73/80/77

Searle/Dolan - 86/81/78/82

Clayton/Taylor - LOL/LOL/LOL/LOL

Smith/Zonneveld - 31/38/48/39

Harrysson/Sakai - 53/76/65/65 (limited short data)

Chisnall/Pietreczko - 56/60/59/58

Littler/Davies - 97/98/97/97

Cullen/Suljovic - 47/42/52/47

Heta/Bellmont - 94/94/88/92

Cross/White - 73/90/83/82

Woodhouse/Hopp - 68/62/70/67

Price/Plaisier - 80/75/80/78

Joyce/Ratajski - 53/53/43/50

Schindler/Barry - 60/70/77/69

Humphries/Lim - 95/88/96/93 (limited short/medium data)

Nijman/Clemens - 89/89/78/85

Munyua/Doets - 0/0/1/0 (extremely limited on all data)

Aspinall/Gates - 99/95/91/95 (limited short data)

Wade/Evans - 42/60/57/53

Manby/Sevada - 83/86/80/83 (limited short data)

van Veen/Soutar - 95/85/83/88

Beveridge/Razma - 54/54/36/48

van Gerwen/O'Connor - 81/73/72/75

Wright/Merk - 21/92/97/70 (extremely limited short data, limited other data)

Anderson/Scutt - 77/78/68/74

Wattimena/Williams - 71/64/72/69

Noppert/Hood - 61/61/67/63

Tata/Meikle - 18/26/30/25 (extremely limited on all data)

Rock/Comito - 91/98/98/96

Gurney/Rydz - 27/48/36/37

Worlds day 5-6 reaction post

Thought I was only one day behind on one of these. But it's two. Whoopsie. Still, that keeps in cadence with how often I have actually been posting, so that's fine. Vamos.

Dolan/Dudeney - Let's give credit to Tavis here. He has had a really hard year, but got here, and did not play that badly at all. Dolan did enough, but against a lot of other qualifiers might have been in some bother here, but this seems like more for something that Dudeney can build on in year two of the card rather than a big confidence builder for Brendan.

Menzies/Manby - Well that was a thing. I think most things that have been said about this game have already been said, I don't want to add anything to it beyond that I think Cammy needs some help, and he should get the help he needs, which I think he will. In terms of Charlie, which has clearly been hugely overlooked here, I don't think that's his best game by some stretch, it was alright, but I'll put that down to first game things.

Suljovic/Cameron - Not really sure why the averages were so high in this one. Seems to be the other player keeping things in good order and not too many missed doubles, rather than really good power scoring. We thought Mensur would move on, and he did.

Wright/van Leuven - Meh. Poor game between poor players. Peter needed to do basically nothing, but we thought doing that would be enough for the win, and it was. Probably won't get away with that against Merk.

Lukeman/Hopp - Another not particularly good game, but it went with form. Martin's not in it, I'm not sure if Max is in it, but he's closer to being in it than Lukeman is, and that was enough.

van Duijvenbode/Baetens - This seemed like a fun one. Andy finally bringing the game that we know he has, and Dirk doing just enough to respond to it. Nice match gents.

Clayton/Lipscombe - Feels like one where the seed did just enough to get through and not expend more on the game than they needed to do. Adam's performance looks fine on paper, just an awkward draw.

Scutt/Whitlock - Got to give some credit to Whitlock for battling back into this one, at two sets down this could easily have been a case of ok nice to be back but done now, but two last leg wins, he kept going. I suppose if you've been on the other end of one of the sport's big comebacks you'll have the intent to keep going.

Soutar/Harju - Wowza. Did not see this coming as it did, particularly after Alan started like a train winning the first six legs. Unfortunately, he continued like a train, not being able to go more than fifteen minutes without breaking down or otherwise being cancelled, letting Teemu right back into it to the point where he was getting match darts, for full disclosure I was on Harju, but I have no complaints. No business getting darts to win in the first place, can say I was on the right side of the line, we move on.

Kenny/Hood - Really good debut for Justin. Nick wasn't playing badly, was merely Hood just playing lights out and bringing it when it would have been really easy for him to take a set or so to get used to the stage. We'll come on to Noppert in a bit but that's the sort of showing that'll ask some questions.

Williams/Nebrida - Kind of the same really. Paolo was perfectly fine, didn't do much of anything wrong, was merely a case of Williams putting in towards the top end of the performances we've seen of him, and getting the results which we might not have done so quite so often.

Dobey/Zong - I mean realistically Chris was never in any sort of massive trouble, but Zong did look to miss quite a few doubles, it's good signs of progress so maybe next year we see a Kumar sort of thing where he's developed for another year, gets a more favourable draw and then moves on.

Pietreczko/de Sousa - Weird one. Ricardo looked to be doing just enough, but all three of the first three sets went to deciders. Not overly convincing from Pikachu, maybe on another day things fall a bit differently and we're still talking about Jose maybe being able to retain his card. But we won't.

Noppert/van der Velde - Thumbs up to both players here. Jurjen was bringing things in all aspects, but in one of the few matches I've actually watched this year, Danny, when under what was probably a bit of unexpected pressure, brought the big key visits when it needed. Very good signs for both.

Price/Gawlas - Huge disparity between the players. Adam only got a couple of legs because, in all honesty, Gerwyn let him. Solid enough showing from Gezzy, Gawlas still looks as inconsistent as ever. Back to back visits of 180 and then 3 demonstrate that perfectly.

Springer/Comito - Now this was the real big shocker. Joe looked a bit better than we expected, probably quite a lot better, but I have no idea what that was from Niko. He was not good. I mean if he was still suffering from whatever he pulled out of Minehead for then maybe, but I don't think that was the case. It just seems like a really off day coupled with Joe being very opportunistic when needed, so fair play to him for that.

Gambling continues to go well. Monday was excellent. Today (yesterday by the time this post goes live) was break even, if Harju had have nicked it we would have been in fantastic shape for the tournament, but we won't be greedy. We're getting close to a round two projections post so keep checking in for that one.

Worlds day 3-4 reaction post

Lot of stuff went down over the weekend so let's go through game by game.

Vandenbogaerde/Davies - Clearly didn't think Mario was an overwhelming favourite or anything like that, and Davies clearly had chances, but that was a pretty darned poor showing, only coming close in two sets? With your tour card on the line? Sure, as things have transpired he only needs a double to retain but that's probably the most important match he's had for two years and he was not close in it.

Gilding/Crabtree - Really expected a lot more from Cam here. Sure, not necessarily a get the win sort of performance, but conceding the first six legs basically kills the game.

Woodhouse/Krcmar - This looked like a fairly solid display from Luke in one that could have got twitchy with a very solid opponent taking the opening set, but very steady stuff from there saw him safely through.

Anderson/Hunt - This was weird. Hunt kept this one a lot closer than it really should have been, and if I remember the gameflow right, he was in position to actually win the match. Gary came through, but that was a lot less comfortable than it really should have been.

de Graaf/Lim - This one was really great to see, and it looked to be mainly Paul bringing it rather than Jeffrey throwing it away. Big story and real happy to see this one happen - not least because I bet on Lim.

Nijman/Sedlacek - Mentioned this was a tough draw for both pre. Maybe Karel could have got a bit closer on some of the sets, but Nijman did more than well enough to keep him at arms length with one of the better showings so far.

Humphries/Evetts - Another one that can go in the dull matches pile, Luke really not being touched at all, before Ted played OK for a set, only for Luke to finish it off in the fourth. Not much to say here.

Clemens/Spellman - This was very disappointing from Alex. He's a good player and this looked like a more than reasonable draw, but to win just the single leg is really quite a shame. Not as if Clemens was blowing him away, seven of nine won legs were in more than five visits so the game was open for Spellman.

Edhouse/Tata - Think most people had identified Edhouse as a seed that might be in danger early, and Tata as someone competent enough that he could cause problems, but I don't think anyone was really seeing a straight sets win for Jonny. Not a bad showing.

Taylor/Lukasiak - Straight forward win for Dom here, dropping just the one leg. Very good showing, Oskar's probably a bit overrated, but Taylor's really very good so to get through this easily ought not to be that much of a surprise.

Veenstra/Kumar - Now this is the shocking one. This is very much being opportunistic - Veenstra was averaging a fair chunk more and the two sets he won were very comprehensive. That said, Nitin came through when it mattered so fair play to him for getting this result after years of trying. Nice job.

Cullen/Brooks - Another one that was disappointing. Joe just doing his usual thing of deciding to show up at the worlds after doing not a great deal all year. Brooks missed a couple of chances but looked a bit below what he had been doing and should have had more than a couple of chances in all honesty. Thankfully I tempered my suggested betting size on this one.

Wenig/Plaisier - Lukas did well to pull this one back to some degree, could have run a bit out of control after Wesley won the first set to love, but couldn't get the key leg in the third set to really make things interesting.

van den Bergh/Beveridge - God knows what's up with Dimitri. I didn't have high expectations, but that was below even what I thought he might have been able to do. An absolute gift for Darren.

Bunting/Bialecki - Oh wait, we've got tiebreakers in the first round. Nice of someone to mention this rule change. Of course, this shouldn't have been anywhere near a tie breaker with Bunting two sets up and Bialecki not exactly tearing things up either, but Stephen will move on. Just about.

Hurrell/Buntz - Had a small flier on Stowe in this one. Think he was slightly unfortunate here, he had the chances to take this to a deciding set but Hurrell had just about enough.

Betting is going OK, as long as Brendan clears up this fourth set, got a few moderate sized bets in play today, Manby winning would put us in a really good spot so let's see what happens there.

Worlds day 1-2 reaction post

Very simply? Boring. Let's go through game by game and look at how things went:

Huybrechts/Merk - Arno was better than expected, but man Kim was bad. Thankfully this is why we have sample size warnings on projections

Smith/Ashton - Seed wins 3-0 boring

Littler/Labanauskas - Seed wins 3-0 boring

Razma/van den Herik - This was at least moderately close but Jamai just couldn't bring it when it mattered

Zonneveld/Puha - Hopes wasn't bad, but Niels just rolled for the most part

White/King - Some people have called this the Mansell/Long of this tournament. I would not disagree. That was just terrible

Searle/Landman - Seed wins 3-0 boring

Cross/Dekker - Seed wins 3-0 boring

Smith/Harrysson - ZOMG AN ACTUAL INTERESTING GAME INVOLVING A SEEDED PLAYER!!! I mean Andreas is one of the players that we would think has a reasonable chance of bucking the trend, and fair play to getting it done, but jesus christ Ross, all the chances were there to kill the game

Evans/Leung - Moderately tight sets, but better player gets it done, I guess not the worst game

van Veen/Reyes - Seed goes up 2-0, other guy tries a bit of a comeback but can't get it to the interesting part so boring

Heta/Lennon - See above

I feel the only thing we've actually learned is that Arno Merk might be a tad better than expected, so against the player he might play maybe he has round three potential, and also that Ian White is playing worse than expected by some distance, so that makes Cross even more of a favourite than he should be. Tiring few sessions. Will be at football tomorrow obv, may get back in the evening with these sorts of thoughts but might be Sunday.

New stupid tournament idea - Basho!

WARNING - NO WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP CONTENT IN THIS POST

I mentioned before I started on the worlds previews that I had a new stupid tournament format idea. So with the previews all done, let's look at it. For better or worse, I've been watching a lot of sumo over the past couple of months. Probably directly relates to them having a tournament in the UK for the first time since Phil Taylor had one world title, but whatever. What I liked about it was three fold, ignoring the actual merits of the sport:

a) Matches are quick. They can literally be over in seconds. Perfect for the Tiktok/ADHD addled generation.

b) The entirety of the pro scene has one continually moving, fluid divisional system, where competitors can rise or fall very quickly and will do so after a very good or bad tournament.

c) As such, every match matters - not just for those that want to win the outright title, there's a heck of a lot of pressure on getting the eighth win to have a winning record for the tournament, and conversely avoiding the eighth loss. But even after you've hit either mark, it still matters, as the amount you go up and down the rankings is not static, someone with a 7-8 record will only have a small drop, but end up 3-12 and you'll plummet.

So I then thought this could actually be a pretty good kind of system for darts in an odd way. How I would configure the tournament is like this:

- It runs across a seven day period starting on a Monday and ending on a Sunday, in something similar to a Euro Tour venue, replacing one European Tour and two Pro Tour events in the calendar. Total prize money would be relatively the same - the events being replaced would amount to £425k in prize money, but let's bump it to half a million (with revenue from additional sessions of live play open to the public, that does not seem absurd). Would probably look to hold around four of these per season, and each day's play has two sessions.

- The list of tour card holders is broken up into three roughly equal divisions - the top 40 who will play on the stage, then the next 40 and last 48 in lower divisions, who will play backstage on a pair of streamed boards. Whoever wants to enter plays, if there are fewer than 40 who enter in the bottom division, then Challenge Tour players complete the field just like in a Pro Tour. The bottom division stream on the afternoon session, the middle division on the evening session. If the stage schedule is running ahead of schedule then additional matches can be pulled from the stream room to fill out the time.

- Matches are a potentially very short format - first to gain a two leg lead wins the match, sudden death if 5-5. In other words, very similar to a tiebreaker deciding set at the worlds, except that if someone goes 2-0 up the match is over. To avoid the situation where it is the same player who is trying to hold to stay in the match all the time, rather than alternating legs, someone will have the darts in leg 1, then the other player will have it for the next TWO legs, and they swap throw every two legs after that.

- Opponents are determined for the following day after the previous day's matches are finished - there is no fixed match list. Who a player will get is typically based on trying to give an even structure of players ahead and behind them in the previous rankings in the first few days, before trying to match up those with more even records and clashes between the highest ranked players in later days. This has two purposes - it ensures that players will normally play someone in the same kind of tournament situation as them to increase the importance of each match, and loading the biggest match ups towards the end of the tournament helps to increase the excitement and hype around the business end. Should a player or players decide to not enter a given tournament, or withdraw midway through for whatever reason, then they are not outright replaced like for like - instead, each day will see players at the top end of the division above get a call up, the result counting in each player's respective division, the bonus for the player moving up being that they're playing for bigger prizes on the day.

- Whoever has the best record in each division wins. If two or more players are tied with the best record, then a playoff match(es) will take place to determine the winner. Following the tournament, players will move up or down the rankings, and up or down divisions, based on their records. Additionally, to take into account the tour card system, players who lose their tour card but don't regain it will be removed from the rankings, and everyone below them slides up a place.

In terms of prize money, this is how I would break it down for top/middle/bottom divisions:

Outright division winner: £50k/£30k/£20k

Individual match win: £1k/£600/£400

Tournament winning record: £60k/£36k/£24k split evenly between the respective players. Should the bottom division run with more than 40 players then the £24k will be reduced to account for more match win prizes needing to be paid.

Sounds complicated? It really isn't, but I'll do a walkthrough of how a typical tournament would operate in a separate post. That said, I hope there's enough explanation there to demonstrate how this would generate a lot of evenly matched content, and give everyone across the 128 a fair chance of having a solid week. Just getting to 4-3 in the bottom division would get you more than two and a half grand, which for a lower tier player isn't bad given that, in the tournaments this would replace, you're probably not qualifying for the Euro Tour and you'd probably need to beat a seed twice in the Pro Tours to do that.