Quarter finals

Small pickup, but it is a pickup. Pity that the Schindler punt didn't project as much larger than basically the absolute minimum. Onto the quarters:

Ratajski/Noppert - 58/43/43/48

Aspinall/Smith - 51/55/53/53

van Gerwen/Nijman - 39/48/49/42

Schindler/Price - 19/18/27/21

Couple of surprising things there. Firstly, I don't know if Krzysztof is playing better than expected, or whether Danny is playing worse, but that's one heck of a deviation in the recent stats. Yep Noppie is super consistent, but Ratajski is only at 1.5 compared to Danny's 0.76, both of those numbers being super super small - the database average is 5. If you've not seen me use this number before, it's what you get when you subtract the points per turn in the legs you've lost away from the same in the legs you've won. A low number typically indicates you're playing better than your actual results suggest if you think about it.

Secondly, I thought Price would be favoured over Schindler, but that much is a bit eye opening, only Martin playing a bit better in the middle of last year even getting the composite number into the 20% range. Couple of markets are up, I'll place my actual punts when the others are and there's a bit more liquidity, nothing is jumping out as value at this stage anyway.

In terms of the semis, the first two are close, so whoever comes through ought to be similar in terms of quality of opposition. Aspinall's projecting a touch better than 60/40 overall against Noppert, just to pick two of them. Then Nijman/Price is oddly about the same - with Price being the one that's favoured. van Gerwen would be a bit more of a dog again, going at about a one in three shot, with the form based (last three full months including what's in April) dragging him down to that mark. Looking at the MvG/Nijman numbers in comparison, it's either consistent that MvG is not having a great 2026, or both Nijman and Price are both kicking ass at the same time. Frankly, it could be both. Although looking at the consistency numbers for van Gerwen, he's actually scoring MORE in the legs he's lost than those he's won. Which is frankly absurd. Only Rob Cross is also showing that, at least in terms of card holders (Derek Coulson also has a pretty big sample size in 2026, but is Challenge Tour). Just something to bear in mind in that the overall numbers may be understating van Gerwen ever so slightly.

And that was a shitshow, but for other reasons

Day 2 is in the books and day 3 is close upon us, and for the second time in two tournaments Gian van Veen crashes out at the first hurdle and undoes a lot of our good work. Now Friday was so good (mainly the afternoon, and mainly thanks to Mickey Mansell) we're still up for the tournament, but it's not the hugely up it could have been. Still, could have been worse, Danny Noppert nearly completely shitting the bed could have been disastrous. Let's look at the last sixteen:

Cullen/Ratajski - 48/46/47/47

Noppert/Springer - 54/68/59/60

Wade/Aspinall - 40/34/40/38

Rock/Smith - 50/54/59/54

van Gerwen/Wattimena - 56/61/59/59

Bunting/Nijman - 29/41/52/41

Clayton/Schindler - 60/63/63/62

Price/Dobey - 67/63/60/63

Even the non-seeds that didn't get through are pretty much well known names, so we're probably not seeing much in terms of value. Mostly even form throughout the board, but mother of god that recent Bunting/Nijman form number. Noppert/Springer being this close in the short form is also a touch surprising. There's really not much in terms of value, I'm taking small plays on Ratajski, Aspinall, Schindler and Price but that's about it.

Oh my god what an absolute shitshow

Not talking about the betting, that went fine, got nice lumps on Gilding, Mansell and Heta, couple of other small pickups, Dirk let us down but that's fair enough, Kim's playing well and it was only a small play so we'll allow it, but what in the living fuck was that Gurney v Lukasiak game? Jesus christ. Thankfully we can pretend that one didn't happen and just move straight on to day two with more money in the bank than we had 24 hours ago

de Decker/Ratajski - 36/47/52/45

Wattimena/Doets - 36/44/48/43

Searle/Nijman - 43/43/47/44

Noppert/Lukasiak - 89/92/90/90

Dobey/Gilding - 62/65/62/63

Anderson/Springer - 80/82/73/78

Bunting/Mansell - 54/64/76/65

Rock/Barry - 67/73/80/73

Smith/Menzies - 74/62/66/67

Price/Chisnall - 86/87/77/83

Aspinall/de Zwaan - 74/77/78/76

Wade/Huybrechts - 45/50/59/51

van Veen/Cullen - 74/78/72/75

van Gerwen/Unterbuchner - 75 (still long data only on Unterbuchner, and oh my god is this one going to be fun for the referee)

Schindler/Heta - 32/36/42/37

Clayton/Melderis - still insufficient data on Melderis

There's a few feels in the afternoon session but will recalculate on the evening session once I know results.

ET5 day one

Yikes, they've really loaded the afternoon session full of what looks to me like the better set of seeds. If I order the players in question in terms of yearly points per turn, we get the following order:

DvD (evening)

Nijman (afternoon)

Heta (evening)

Cullen (evening)

Cross (afternoon)

Ratajski (afternoon)

Doets (afternoon)

Zonneveld (afternoon)

Gilding (afternoon)

Gurney (evening)

O'Connor (evening)

Sedlacek (afternoon)

Springer (evening)

Menzies (evening)

Chisnall (afternoon)

Wright (evening)

So yeah, the evening session gets three of the top four, but then there's a run of five afternoon session players, with 5/7 of the bottom being in the evening. Blimey. I mean we can't blame them for putting Wright and Springer there, but even so... we have insufficent (or no) data on Melderis, Hurtz, Krivka and Masino, only long data on Unterbuchner and no short data on Krohne, so let's get into what we can get into:

Nijman/White - 86/86/84/85

Zonneveld/Barry - 58/66/68/64

Doets/van der Velde - 83/79/78/80

Gilding/Krohne - 77/72/75

Cross/Mansell - 52/48/63/54

O'Connor/Unterbuchner - 63

Cullen/Kuivenhoven - 65/55/58/59

Wright/de Zwaan - 31/36/46/38

Menzies/van Barneveld - 58/63/57/59

Heta/Razma - 76/63/70/70

van Duijvenbode/Huybrechts - 55/66/70/64

Gurney/Lukasiak - 83/82/83/83

As always, it's the newest data first. Shows some trends we might expect to see - Barry is playing real good stuff right now, Cross not so much, Cullen's picked things up a touch, as has Huybrechts. Let's see how this goes, anyone punting on the "wants it less" derby between Menzies and RvB does so at their own risk.

How's things been going so far? (4/4)

Let's finish this series off:

No surprised at the top. Nijman having a really good start to the year sees him up amongst the big names, while in the middle, there's a group of Ando, van Veen, van Gerwen and Bunting, all of whom you would expect to be higher, but either haven't played much, aren't playing quite as well as you might have thought, or both. The bottom end looks pretty much exactly like you'd expect - Wright and van den Bergh bringing up the rear of everything (heck on the live tour card race, Dimitri is losing the card which from the top 32 is insane), we've then got a couple of people who are holding on basically just down to one major performance. Menzies doesn't look like he's got that worlds breakdown out of his system, while Schindler looks like he's dropped off a bunch. That group of Dirk, Damon and Jermaine are players you'd think might be higher up, but for whatever reason, aren't.

I'll be back tomorrow for ET5 thoughts.

How's things been going so far? (3/4)

Onto those that fall into two main groups - those that are looking to push to the top 32, be that overall or in the Pro Tour, and those that are just looking to stay around for another season. At the top we've got the unsurprising Dutch pair, neither's actually won anything yet, but if we were to redo the next new winners post (will probably do one of those in the lead up to the Matchplay), those two would be on the list easily. Probably the name highest up the list that's surprising, outside of Soutar who's playing really well, is probably Keane Barry. He's had some runs, and he's also putting in the performances. Like a few we've mentioned earlier, he's also got into the Euro Tour today, so a good staging post. Looking a bit lower down, O'Connor I would have thought might be a tad higher, while Barney is really looking completely done. At that bottom, Vandenbogaerde had his card saved, but that's probably going. Kenny did the work last year, but needs to up things urgently, then if anyone was thinking Lukeman's collapse in form following his Grand Slam run might turn around, it really isn't.

How's things been going so far? (2/4)

And here's the second year guys. Sedlacek unsurprisingly tops the list, then we've got known good players in Hopp and Kist in the top three. Bissell has made a great start to the year, bot in terms of numbers and then results as well (and he's just made another Euro Tour today as well), so with a bit of luck, maybe he can pull something together and save his card. He's probably left too much to do I'd think, but one or two good runs and who knows? He's not THAT far off the Grand Prix spots and the PC Finals is looking decent so far. There's then a clutch of players who made the worlds last year and are doing fine so far, if they can get in again then who knows, maybe they can push up to the next post. Brooks being so far down is a real surprise. He looked so incredibly good for the vast majority of 2025, but the form seems to have collapsed and what was looking like a pretty safe card retention is now in no way certain. From him down it's the same as the first, about half the list being players who are more or less just making up the numbers, there's been some that are scoring OK but not getting results, and some that have got the odd result but not really done anything fantastically statistically, but not doing the two combined obviously. Much like the first, this shows more or less what we expect it to.