Leverkusen round 2

God damnit Willie, pin any of the four (fact check me on that?) match darts you had, and this is a glorious day, as is we get out for a small win, but nowhere near the enormous plus we could have had. Still, we move on, an awful lot of today's games were an absolute cluster but let's look at what we have.

Damon Heta v Rob Owen - 56/60/61/59

Mike De Decker v Jan Schmidt - insufficient data on Schmidt

Luke Woodhouse v Dragutin Horvat - insufficient data on Horvat

Danny Noppert v Sebastian Bialecki - 59/61/66/62

Jermaine Wattimena v Kim Huybrechts - 43/46/52/47

Chris Dobey v Dirk van Duijvenbode - 59/53/52/55

Wessel Nijman v Bradley Brooks - 77/78/67/74

Krzysztof Ratajski v Max Hopp - 63/62/61/62

Stephen Bunting v Ryan Joyce - 72/67/74/71

James Wade v Maik Kuivenhoven - 78/71/71/73

Jonny Clayton v Karel Sedlacek - 64/64/70/66

Michael van Gerwen v Joe Cullen - 62/57/63/61

Gian van Veen v Niko Springer - 54/66/71/64

Martin Schindler v Kevin Doets - 39/36/41/39

Nathan Aspinall v Mickey Mansell - 79/73/74/75

Ross Smith v Niels Zonneveld - 62/61/59/61

Feast on that as you will.

Matchplay field set

Well it was really only going to come down to one of two things - if someone on the fringes made a hero run (they didn't), and if not, who was going to be the one man to miss (Gurney). One thing I'd kind of like to see, given that the Matchplay is the obvious choice to be the next tournament for expansion, is to make it 40 players, and have a day one on the Friday where 9-16 on the Pro Tour would play 17-24 in the Pro Tour to make the event proper (or, for that matter, 1-8 not qualified just based on the Pro Tour in 2026, so that new card holders have more of a chance). Whether you do it as one session first to six kind of like a Euro Tour event, one longer session first to eight, or two where it's first to ten just like the first round as is, I don't know. Probably depends on how many tickets they think they can shift, which right now should be "all of them". That would give us Gurney, Huybrechts, Bialecki, Sedlacek, de Graaf, Reyes, Veenstra and Clemens, which is frankly a thousand times more interesting than the bottom eight who did make it (although the number 9 in Zonneveld is someone who I really want to see how he does on debut), and right now that gives you seven different nationalities in that group, none of them English. Which would be a GREAT Euro selling point, although granted that is quite clearly just circumstances for this year. Let's hope some of those will push on to the Grand Prix - Reyes is in a spot right now at the expense of Schindler, other than that it's just the same field, I really hate how the two hardest to qualify for majors have basically zero churn in them. The Euro Tour doesn't help that and we'll come to Leverkusen in a minute.

I wondered what a field would look like if you went off of my database based on the same qualifying criteria, but instead of money, you went with legs won or averages. Now my database filters down to just the last year (as I use it for betting, and anything more than a year old really isn't relevant), so instead of two years all money/one year Pro Tour, I'll go the full year for the first sixteen, and then just 2026 for the next lot. For scoring, you would get:

Littler, Humphries, Price, Anderson, Dobey, van Veen, van Gerwen, Nijman, Bunting, Rock, Clayton, van Duijvenbode, R Smith, Cross, Aspinall, Wade - Doets, Hood, Heta, Ratajski, Woodhouse, Searle, Zonnveld, Cullen, Noppert, Wattimena, Huybrechts, de Graaf, Greaves, Gilding, Scutt, Rydz

For legs won, you would get:

Nijman, Noppert, Dobey, Doets, Woodhouse, Wattimena, R Smith, Ratajski, van Veen, Clayton, Bunting, Gilding, Wade, Price, Rock, O'Connor - Bialecki, Cullen, van Duijvenbode, Searle, Chisnall, Reyes, Zonneveld, Gurney, Greaves, Huybrechts, Heta, Sedlacek, Bissell, Manby, Springer, Menzies

That second one would be complete carnage, as you'd be missing all of the top four in the world. But hey, if you mail the season in in favour of exhibitions, that's on you.

OK, Leverkusen. As always, numbers are short, medium and long data, with the composite value last.

Joyce/Varila - insufficient data on Varila

Huybrechts/Price - 75/78/74/76

Sedlacek/Griffin - 67/69/65/67

Vandenbogaerde/Horvat - insufficient data on Horvat

van Duijvenbode/van de Weerd - no data on van de Weerd

Wenig/Brooks - 43/49/36/42

Cullen/Manby - 53/58/53/55

Gilding/Owen - 53/54/57/55

O'Connor/Bialecki - 59/61/61/60

Doets/Gruellich - 85/82/80/82

Gurney/Kuivenhoven - 60/55/56/57

Menzies/Schmidt - insufficient data on Schmidt

Mansell/Smejda - no data on Smejda

Zonneveld/Klose - 81/82/81 (no short data on Klose)

Springer/Labanauskas - 65/65/64/65

Cross/Hopp - 70/61/63/65

Of those we have not much on, we kind of know what Horvat and Klose are. van de Weerd is a complete random but didn't drop below 87 in the qualifier and beat Krohne, Roetzsch and Barkhausen, so doesn't seem that bad. Varila's won an SDC tour this year but hasn't really impressed that much. Schmidt played ET4 and took Springer to a decider but didn't look too impressive while doing so. Smejda played a Euro Tour back in late 2024 and was not impressive against Aspinall. Be back Friday evening for round two, the Sunday might be a bit late as I'll be coming off a full day at the football, both live on TV, which doesn't end until gone midnight.

Matchplay fast approaching

Well that's another Euro Tour in the books and it's yet another win for Nijman, making it an astonishing eight titles and we're not even half way through the year (although we're well over half way through all the tournaments that will be played. At this stage, one's got to think that he's played himself into a spot where he should be being considered for a World Series call up in 2027, I would use the P-word but until he does something on TV, you can't really consider it yet. Heck, they've spurned players who HAVE done something on TV multiple times in the past, so even that doesn't mean anything. He's top five in scoring this year of players that you think would play the PL (I'm excluding Anderson here) behind only the two Lukes, Price and Dobey, so the game is there and the titles are there. Except on TV. Here's what it's done to the FRH rankings:

1 Luke Littler

2 Gian van Veen

3 Luke Humphries

4 Jonny Clayton

5 Ryan Searle (UP 3)

6 Wessel Nijman (UP 5)

7 Gerwyn Price (DOWN 1)

8 James Wade (DOWN 3)

9 Josh Rock (DOWN 2)

10 Danny Noppert (DOWN 1)

11 Gary Anderson (DOWN 1)

12 Chris Dobey

13 Stephen Bunting

14 Nathan Aspinall (UP 1)

15 Ross Smith (UP 2)

16 Michael van Gerwen (DOWN 2)

17 Luke Woodhouse (DOWN 1)

18 Jermaine Wattimena

19 Krzysztof Ratajski

20 Rob Cross (NEW)

I didn't immediately post this as Nijman was so close to Searle (who got a nice bump after a Pro Tour final) that he might have got into the top 5. Not yet, but give it until the end of the week and he'll be there. Everyone else in a fairly close race between 4th and 11th shuffles down a bit, apart from Clayton who's got a small buffer at the top. Aspinall and Smith having good runs moves them above MvG who's looking like he's going to need to really go deep in the worlds to maintain any sort of ranking. He's only just in the top 20 in the tour card race. Cross picking up a bit of form with a Pro Tour win and Sunday's final sees him back into the top 20. A bit lower down since the last one, de Decker's found a little bit of form and arrested the slide, although realistically he's out of the Matchplay at this point, Beau Greaves is into the top 64, surprise Pro Tour finalist Maik Kuivenhoven is just shy of the top 75, while another good floor run for Tom Bissell gets him into the top 80. In other Tom news, Sykes is up into the top 100 after a fantastic Euro Tour debut.

I would talk about the Matchplay race, but it's really pretty dull at this point. There's only two events left before the cutoff, I thought ET10 counted but it doesn't. As such, there's really only three spots to play for and Gurney, Menzies and Heta have a big edge. Heta's over 5k ahead of Chisnall who's the last one out. Huybrechts, Bialecki and Sedlacek are within 10k of Heta, but that's a Pro Tour final so is going to be a very tough ask. de Graaf and Veenstra are mathematically alive but would need a win and some help (Veenstra actually needs more than a win being just over 15k behind). The next two are remarkably Cristo Reyes and Beau Greaves but that's only noted for just how good they're both playing. The Grand Prix race looks a lot more interesting but we'll cross that bridge after the Matchplay.

ET9 round 4

Not too often that you win two bets with the same three figure checkout in each player's last possible chance to hold, but we got there, Jermaine also did the job so that session saw a very healthy profit. Into the quarters now, not that I usually project the semis/final in the running anyway, but won't today, but will give a quick twelve month gauge for some possibilities. Anyway, quarters:

Cross/Aspinall - 43/40/40/41

Sykes/Wattimena - 49/48/48/48

Gilding/Smith - 36/37/37/37

de Decker/Nijman - 38/33/36/36

Not a huge amount of seasonal/form variation there, only the last one shifting any significant amount and even that isn't a big deal. In the top half, if it was Aspinall/Wattimena, that'd be around a 60/40 in Nathan's favour, and if it was Smith/Nijman in the bottom half that'd be really too close to call, maybe Wessel's just edging it. Aspinall's pretty similar to Nijman's numbers in a potential final year long as well. So we could be in for some tight ones - we thought that this afternoon, and Nijman and Aspinall crushing aside, we weren't too far wrong with everything else going 10+ legs, so this could be a late one.

ET9 round 3

Wasn't much of value on day 2. Heta losing to Doets, meh, that's fine, Kevin's playing great, just seemed a tad overvalued. Then Tom Sykes. Very nice. Only takes us back to where we started at the outset of the tournament, but hey, definitely the MVP of this event so far. Onto the last sixteen.

Cross/Doets - 46/41/47/45

Searle/Aspinall - 46/48/46/47

Menzies/Sykes - 43/45/48/45

Noppert/Wattimena - 42/48/50/47

van Gerwen/Gilding - 64/60/63/62

Dobey/Smith - 54/50/52/52

Joyce/de Decker - 35/38/38/37

Bunting/Nijman - 39/40/50/43

Christ. Not a single projection anywhere that is more than a 2-1 dog, and only six of 24 are greater than 60-40 one way or another. This ought to be a good one.

ET9 round 2 part 1

Getting this out of the way as I'll be watching the US WC game later and don't want to rush back and have to go through sixteen games. Probably after having a few. Bonus points if you can spot the deliberate mistake in the previous post - of course Pratnemer can't play in the home nation qualifier for this. That'd require him to be from Slovakia, and not Slovenia. Small distinction, but one that we'll try not to repeat. Down small on this section, mainly thanks to Pratnemer and/or Hood not converting a 4-1 lead. Thorpe gave us a nice pick up, but while King, Bates and Engstrom did alright for minimum plays, none of them got really near enough to make things exciting. Got three more pending tonight, DvD hitting against what hopefully might be a bit tired late call up in Razma (although, to be fair, we don't know when the withdrawal took place and he might have known for weeks and the PDC just didn't make it public until the draw) will be the key one but got another couple of small plays at evens as well. Anyway, those first eight games:

de Decker/O'Connor - 44/43/49/45

Heta/Doets - 44/45/47/45

Nijman/Pratnemer - 82/81/80/81

Wattimena/Chisnall - 62/64/64/63

Dobey/Thorpe - 75/73/75/74

Woodhouse/Gilding - 65/59/54/59

Clayton/Joyce - 66/68/72/69

Bunting/Zonneveld - 50/52/61/54

Actually, I'll just list the eight undecided ones here, and then edit the post later rather than making a fresh one:

Noppert/Razma - 64/61/65/63

Searle/Huybrechts - 51/55/61/56

Aspinall/Long - 86/80/83/83

Schindler/Sykes - 44/46/48/46

Price/Menzies - 74/80/74/76

van Veen/Cross - 50/67/65/61

van Gerwen/Ratajski - 57/53/62/57

Smith/Cullen - 58/61/64/61

If I end up bokking Menzies, Cross or Cullen by saving two seconds now and not listing their opponents then so be it :)

ET9 round one

So now we head to Slovenia, where Pratnemer didn't read the rules, and didn't enter his home nation qualifier, made it anyway, so we've got five home players in the draw. 71, 77, 73, 77, 76, 85, 77, 68, 79, 72, 69, 71, 72, 67, 72, 76, 62, 72. That's the averages from the players in the HNQ that actually made it. Of course there's going to be some level of drag factor but holy shit this could be even worse than those early Hungary Euro Tours in terms of quality, I'd bet the farm on under 10 legs won by the qualifiers, and if they got five that'd be a pretty huge achievement, no combination of who they could play would be remotely easy given the PDC riggage of the draws, but Cross, Menzies, Chisnall and Zonneveld is pretty tough regardless. At least in terms of other randoms, we know Kelemen but he has insufficient data throughout, while Engstrom only has long data, so we've got ten games to have a look at in full.

Hood/Pratnemer - 79/78/74/77

Sedlacek/Thorpe - 62/58/59/60

Gilding/King - 56/59/59/58

Doets/Bates - 71/70/69/70

O'Connor/de Graaf - 48/50/51/50

Joyce/Engstrom - 66

van Duijvenbode/Razma - 76/70/72/73

Huybrechts/Barry - 65/66/63/65

Gurney/Long - 78/63/66/69

Springer/Sykes - 44/47/45/45

Ratajski/Reyes - 58/60/53/57

Some notes. Thorpe does seem legitimately that close, as does Gilding. Long being that big a dog on that short sample seems odd but the numbers say he is just that bad. Sykes has a pretty significant consistency issue, but at the same time, Springer's is as well and the overall numbers are close to identical. Then you have Ratajski/Reyes, which is equal parts fun and disgusting for a first round match. Also big props for when you host a Euro Tour in a country for the first time, and put their best player (and you can stick an ever in that sentence as well) on first in the afternoon. Seriously, the PDC need to get fucked at times.