Switzerland round one

OK, penultimate Euro Tour coming up, we have this one in Basel then one next week in Maastricht, and we're done. Fairly big one looking at the Dortmund cutoff, it's going to take some work for those presently outside the cutoff to get anything done, but they've got an outside chance at least. Thankfully it's the last year of this utter bullshit. In terms of qualifiers, Bellmont we know about, Roman Wellinger is a completely new name who performed pretty well in the quali despite zero help from his opponents in terms of averages, Bruno Stoeckli has been here before and has a win at this level, against Dirk, meh, dunno about that, while Fehlmann was also here two years ago but didn't do much of anything. We don't have much of anything on the eastern Europe qualifier, although he's not a new name, while Haavisto we only have long data on, so let's get into what we can get into:

Zonneveld/Brooks - 46/51/57/52

O'Connor/Haavisto - 73 (Only long data on Haavisto)

Bialecki/Sedlacek - 50/48/47/48 (OF COURSE number 34 and 35 in the Euros race get drawn against each other)

Cullen/Bissell - 45/50/49/48

Menzies/Reyes - 63/56/54/58

Cross/Vandenbogaerde - 79/72/68/73

Gilding/Bellmont - 67/81/77/75

de Graaf/Lap - 67/65/66 (No short data on Lap)

Chisnall/Soutar - 53/37/45 (No short data on Soutar)

van Barneveld/Kuivenhoven - 45/44/45/45

Smith/Owen - 35/43/39 (No short data on Smith, but what there is sucks)

Doets/Kenny - 87/83/79/83

Surprising number of card holders who don't have short data, but heck, we just ticked over into a July-September dataset. I mention that specifically with Smith as his short data was really rough, talking 80-20 in favour of Owen. Looking back at what he's done since July, at least on the Pro Tour (he may have been in one or more Euro Tours but I'm just looking at DC), we had:

- 6-4 loss to Lishman averaging 81, then whitewashed by Griffin the day after

- Meh win over Ritchie before a big loss to Pilgrim averaging 76

- Beats Szaganski, looks alright against Crabtree, then steamrollered by Nijman

- Averages 81 in 6-5 loss to Hurrell

- Does alright against Lukeman then wins one leg against Schindler averaging 81 again

- Then most recently 2b2 70 averages. One he gets away with because Marvin Kraft was just as bad, but then only just broke 80 against Dirk, but the other he didn't win a leg against Bialecki, and the 76 average there wasn't brought down by bad doubling - he wasn't on a double once.

Yikes. Meanwhile in other news Matt Edgar has a seemingly short fuse with a very weird reaction to comment that his latest Youtube vid which had no need to be made was basically the entire length of the video too long. I mean the literal title is "should young player be allowed to play in youth championship". If that needs more than a one second response, then good lord.

Final

So we have the number 2 in the world based on scoring over the last twelve months at 96.53, against the number 3 in the world at 96.29. That for me will make for a more exciting final than if we had the guy that's over 99 - yes it might have ended up being good anyway, and if we were to have had somewhat of a repeat of Littler/Price from last year (not that, given the bracket, that was possible) I don't think anyone would have said no, but an evenly matched duel between two elite players is good stuff. Over the full data this rates 52% Humphries. Over just the last six+ months it's 56% Humphries, but then over the last three+ months it's 66% Price, which gives a weighted average of 53-47 in favour of the Iceman. This kind of makes sense if you look at a rolling average graphic I have. I won't repeat it here, but it shows Luke steadily ahead on a past 60 days set, with a bit of a spell for Price in between the UK Open and Matchplay, before Humphries jumps ahead nicely. However, Price takes the lead back from around the start of September (i.e. starting from samples which include something like all of July/August and rolling onwards) and doesn't relinquish it from there. What does this show? Is Humphries the better player? Yes. Is it by much? No. Is Price playing better darts right now? Maybe. Who's playing the better darts in this tournament? Probably Humphries.

Frankly this Dev Tour race is more interesting. As it's the one before the (youth) worlds we've got a lot more of a varied lineup than usual - nobody from far flung places has done a great deal yet, but it's always good to see. Obviously Bialecki has the Slam spot by miles, but the races for cards and (senior) worlds spots are super tight and could go any number of ways, although if someone like van den Herik/Beeton/Self goes on a tear in the next couple of hours they can make a very strong claim for both.

I'll just do updated FRH rankings now.

1 Luke Littler

2 Gian van Veen

3 WHOEVER WINS THE FINAL

4 WHOEVER LOSES THE FINAL (up one/down one if Price wins, unchanged otherwise)

5 James Wade (UP 1)

6 Wessel Nijman (DOWN 1)

7 Jonny Clayton (UP 1)

8 Ryan Searle (DOWN 1)

9 Ross Smith (UP 1)

10 Danny Noppert (UP 1)

11 Josh Rock (DOWN 1)

12 Nathan Aspinall (UP 3)

13 Gary Anderson (DOWN 1)

14 Luke Woodhouse (DOWN 1)

15 Chris Dobey (DOWN 1)

16 Jermaine Wattimena (UP 2)

17 Stephen Bunting

18 Krzysztof Ratajski (DOWN 2)

19 Michael van Gerwen

20 Dirk van Duijvenbode (NEW)

Joyce is now up to 24, Zonneveld to 28. That's your lot for today.

We've got semis on

Real quick as I'll be at a match tomorrow:

Aspinall/Price - 44/51/36/44

Wade/Humphries - 58/36/18/37

That second one is a bit of a surprise, but yeah, Wade is actually outperforming Humphries in winning legs since the start of July. Of course, it's only just and doesn't have an enormous sample for obvious reasons, but it is what it is.

GP quarters

Pretty disastrous second round going 2-4 on bets including losing one big one on Noppert, been a pretty bad tournament full stop but there's still seven games where we might be able to claw something back. Let's see:

Aspinall/Joyce - 88/85/83/85

Price/Clayton - 60/63/74/66

van Veen/Wade - 30/37/62/43

Humphries/Zonneveld - 69/78/77/75

Yikes that disparity in short and long form between van Veen and Wade!

As such, it looks like the only value, and it's huge value, is in laying Joyce, which has gone brilliantly so far...

Grand Prix round two

Not the greatest of results, some people underperforming fairly badly, and notably seeing Littler out, which throws things wide open. We're down to sixteen and up to a best of five set run, so let's project things:

Woodhouse/Aspinall - 35/40/38/38

Noppert/Joyce - 80/71/74/75

Price/Smith - 65/65/69/66

Clayton/Nijman - 49/37/39/42

Humphries/Wattimena - 72/73/78/74

Zonneveld/Anderson - 34/27/26/29

van Veen/Searle - 53/49/59/54

Wade/Bunting - 55/60/46/54

Let's go.

Grand Prix round one

There's been a bit more meat on the bones in relation to the calendar, and boy, choices were made, but that's a problem for future TA Towers and we've got the Grand Prix to project. Now as I mentioned above, I don't actually have a specific setting in the master computer for a best of two sets match. Presumably I thought as that only happens in a double start event where my data doesn't have a direct exact similar computation, let's not bother. But I'll treat this as a best of 11 match. For one, you need to win six legs in this, and for two, a first two three set match (which I do have projected) appears very similar in win chances to a best of 17/19 game in leg play, so it seems close enough. We're only talking a fraction of a percentage difference in any case. As always, I'll give four numbers - the win chance using data from the last three completed months (plus September), then 6+ months, then the last year, and finally an average of the three.

Littler/Woodhouse - 85/78/81/81

Aspinall/Doets - 65/60/59/58

Noppert/Springer - 61/55/62/59

van Gerwen/Joyce - 69/71/74/71

Price/Bialecki - 76/77/82/78

Smith/Menzies - 52/55/56/54

Clayton/Ratajski - 68/55/58/60

Nijman/Cross - 53/57/62/57

Humphries/Chisnall - 70/74/81/75

Dobey/Wattimena - 70/63/63/65

Rock/Zonneveld - 54/54/56/55

Anderson/Heta - 56/67/69/64

van Veen/van Duijvenbode - 50/46/55/50

Searle/O'Connor - 64/60/64/63

Wade/Cullen - 68/58/57/61

Bunting/Gilding - 67/59/63/63

Looks like there might be some value in some places, but I've got Challenge Tour etc to catch up on.

Calendar is out!

And there's a lot to break down in it, so let's jump straight in.

The big one is the long rumoured additional major has been called in - there's no specifics about the European Open, as it's called, other than it'll be in Salzburg the week after the World Cup. Now if this is just a replication of the UK Open, it should be pretty cool. But I guess the proof will be in the pudding, and we'll wait and see what the actual gig is.

The next thing to note is that the European Championship is now over six days, rather than the current four. You've got to assume that it'll be a longer format as a result, the additional two days looking incredibly natural to expand things to 48 players, but again, no specifics yet. If that is what it is and ends up being a pretty simple 1-16 get a bye and 17-48 face off in round one, in other words exactly like a Euro Tour except on steroids, that should be good.

The Premier League has once again snubbed the south west of England, with the nearest place being Cardiff. It's something that happened last year but I didn't really notice, but that seems a little bit harsh. They've had Exeter before as a natural lead in to the UK Open, why they need both of Birmingham and Nottingham, or all of Liverpool/Manchester/Sheffield/Leeds, is a wee bit odd, but whatever.

Euro Tour in France. OK then. I have no idea whether it will sell well, but it's a bit of an open question as to how strong the players there will be. Barring some sort of miracle late season Pro Tour run, Tricole is losing his card (and even if he sneaks into the worlds, he might lose it anyway). Labre has fallen off a cliff. Thuillier who we saw at the World Cup seems better than Labre at this stage. They've got a few who've played some of the Challenge Tour but nobody who looks that close to breaking an eighty average. There's someone called Damien Decla who isn't doing horribly on the Development Tour, but still is clearly a work in progress. So somewhat of a mixed bag. I doubt it'd be any worse than the ones in much of Eastern Europe. Weekend in Krakow is tempting!

The Development and Challenge Tours have been cut to 18 events a piece from 24, and are now running at just one per day over six weekends. I think this makes a lot of sense, assuming that the prize money per tournament increases to compensate, even if the overall amount pumped into each tour stays the same.

World Youth Championship clashes with the final day of the Grand Prix. One has to assume they think Littler isn't going to enter it?

Expect something for the Grand Prix on Sunday. It'll likely just be an attempt at projections, the model I have doesn't have anything that can really adjust to the double in start, nor does it have any standard option to look at how a best of three sets match will go, so the first round will likely be pretty rough.