Well that was quite the silly tournament

OK, two things that kind of need addressing/fixing ahead of next year's Euro Tour:

One is the fact that both of the tour card holders from Czechia were missing this weekend. That really, really sucks from a perspective of a home fan. The tricky thing is how you fix that in a fair way given the countries that are going to be hosting a Euro Tour. If you just go back to how it was with the top two in one of the orders of merit getting in automatically, that would be fine for Sedlacek and Gawlas, and likely fine for half the events, but for the German events, it just gives Clemens plus one other (Pietreczko, despite losing his 30 grand from his bink last year just now, looks like he'd just about hold in the automatic Pro Tour invites, so probably Hempel) getting an absolute shit load of opportunities for nothing. Maybe if you say that two of the ten from the tour card holder qualifier must be from the home nation? If you switch it down to eight going through automatically as opposed to ten this could work. If you get two out of the eight from the host nation, then just take the eight final round losers and have them play down to two to fill things out to ten. If you don't get two, then look through who got through to the furthest round in the qualifier and add them in - playing off as necessary. Clearly for countries where there are very limited numbers of card holders from the country in question, this would not necessarily be needed. It also has the effect of further limiting spots for domestic (UK) card holders - so maybe pull those two spots from the Pro Tour list and only invite 14 instead of 16? It's a tough one to work fairly for sure.

Then we have the situation we had with the replacements coming in. This was ridiculous. Before the draw came out, Ando and Joyce (again?) withdrew, and in came Razma and Hempel. This is fine. Then, after the draw, Cross dropped out, and was replaced directly with Huybrechts. This is not fine at all. What should have happened is that whoever was the highest ranked player on the Pro Tour should have slotted into Cross's seeding position, and then Huybrechts fills the empty first round spot. I can't work out who that would have been - I'm guessing it was one of Clayton or Gurney, but who it was is irrelevant. The thing is that Huybrechts became a de facto seed, and had to beat one standard qualifier to win £4k in ranking money. Razma and Hempel needed to win two. Which of these paths is the easiest - Ratajski then van Gerwen, Soutar then Ross Smith, or sit on your arse then Luke Woodhouse or Marko Kantele? If you said anything other the last one, go home, you're drunk. This of course became even sillier as Huybrechts went on to reach the final, where he thankfully lost, otherwise he would have made the European Championship where not only did he not qualify for a single event, but he didn't play a top 32 player at all until the final. No disrespect to Woodhouse, Drtil, Wattimena and Zonneveld, but if you can show me an easier path to a European Tour final, I'd be delighted to see it. Then we had Price dropping out after the event started, and then being replaced by Kuivenhoven. Nope. That shouldn't happen. After the event has started, you don't replace anyone. That's bullshit. RvB should have got a bye for that one. You could argue Price didn't play a game yet and can be replaced, but I'm not having that. What would have happened if Humphries had beaten Littler then felt a nerve twinge in between the semi and final? If Huybrechts would have got a free win then, then van Barneveld should have got a free win on Saturday. The tournament has started. Nobody would take the event seriously if, say, Paul Krohne had decided to go watch the event yesterday and said "I'll sub in, cue my music!" in such a circumstance. 

Still, the Euro Tour is done, and we've got 25 of the top 26 (van den Bergh excepted) in the event, and nobody outside of the top 40 in FRH in it, so the PDC have got the stacked field they always wanted, even if it just looks like a redo of the Grand Prix or Matchplay, give or take a Wattimena or Dirk. I'll look at those games in the coming days, but for now, an FRH update:

1 Luke Humphries

2 Michael van Gerwen

3 Rob Cross (UP 1)

4 Dave Chisnall (DOWN 1)

5 Luke Littler (UP 1)

6 Michael Smith (DOWN 1)

7 Stephen Bunting (UP 1)

8 Damon Heta (DOWN 1)

9 Jonny Clayton (UP 1)

10 Chris Dobey (UP 1)

11 James Wade (UP 2)

12 Gerwyn Price

13 Dimitri van den Bergh (UP 3)

14 Peter Wright (DOWN 5)

15 Ryan Searle

16 Ross Smith (DOWN 2)

17 Josh Rock

18 Mike de Decker (NEW)

19 Martin Schindler (DOWN 1)

20 Danny Noppert (DOWN 1)

Aspinall is the player to drop out, but is within a Pro Tour final of getting back on, not that there are many there to work with. This does include first round European Championship final money - Dimitri would be a couple of places higher up otherwise. As stated, the entire Euros field is inside the top 40 - Wattimena climbs up there, while looking back a bit further, Wesley Plaisier is now into the top 60. Check back later in the week for Dortmund thoughts.

Prague day 1

OK so life has been hectic, what a week for the low countries with de Decker binking the Grand Prix, Plaisier binking not only the World Masters but a first Pro Tour to boot, and both finalists in the world youth being from the Netherlands. That, and MvG binked the other Pro Tour that took place. I'm a bit behind on entering data to be sure, I've got PC27 in the database but not PC28, which I will try to put in tomorrow, but that would either require doing it while at work or typing like a madman after work before the Leeds game, as well as copying whatever I need to from the last Euro Tour, and oh yes I'm out all day going up to Scotland on the Saturday which doesn't help matters at all. So don't expect much.

Tomorrow, I'm not going to touch the games including the Czech qualifiers, there's a couple that I've heard of, and one who was even in the FRH rankings prior to today, but yeah, if odds to show I doubt I look at them. But for what is on? I'd look at Ratajski on VC but he seems palpably short, Dolan's form is short that Clemens at longer than 1/2 seems actually tempting, maybe Clayton is a touch undervalued against Dimi, maybe Menzies ought to be a punt but who knows how much we are underrating Peter at this stage, and maybe Smith is a tad undervalued as well? I'm suggesting nothing, I will try as hard as I can to catch up on everything before round 2, but assume I won't. 

Grand Prix days 3-4

What a topsy-turvy round one that was. Littler gone, van Gerwen gone (in straight legs no less), Dobey gone, Smith gone, Wright gone, Bunting gone (which should have been Humphries gone, but hey ho). It's been madness, and is likely going to give us one of two things - the most open major we've had in some time, or another routine Humphries win. First we've got to get down to the quarters so eight games to look at.

Humphries/Pietreczko - This one has the potential to be a bit LOL, Luke dodged a huge bullet (see what I did there) after losing five legs to start his match before winning 6/7 to claim a remarkable win, while Ricardo got a good last set against Barney, despite what can only be described as some Grand Prix moments. Should be routine, seeing Luke at over 80%, the market has it even more one sided but there's nothing that makes me feel good about Pietreczko's chances to pull the almighty upset.

Clayton/Smith - Jonny had a good win on paper with a solid average against Edhouse, the 2-0 set score maybe playing closer than it appears, while Ross looked pretty darned good himself (just looking at the numbers) in a one-sided rout of van Veen. Looks like one where Ross should be favoured, let's put it in the 60% to 65% range, the market has it a bit tighter but nowhere outside of real fringe books is offering us close to the numbers that we'd want to see before firing on Ross in this one.

Cross/Schindler - Rob was able to get through a back and forth tie with Littler, putting aside some bad form he's had in this event to get through, while Martin didn't have a great deal to do against Dolan, dropping just the two legs and looking fairly comfortable. Would say this looks about the same as the last one, with Cross favoured, but Martin's form is real so I'm going to call this 60/40 in Rob's favour, which aligns exactly with his 4/6 pricing.

Aspinall/Joyce - Nathan was the only player on day one to be forced to a deciding leg, this was by Searle, who just didn't score enough in the last leg until it was way too late, while Joyce got a good win early on against Rock, the first set appearing close but Ryan came through strongly in the second set. This is showing in projections as a coin flip, but Joyce is available at 11/8, and he was someone who we were considering in the opening round. I guess it's a case of if you think Aspinall is not right and the data is mainly from when he's been right, then go with it, but if you think he's back to his best and there's enough data in the sample from where he's not been 100%, it can take things out of having an edge. I don't try to gauge players where there's been injury issues so will just pass what might be a little bit of an opportunity.

Anderson/de Decker - Gary needed every bit of his match with Smith to get over the line, Smith missing I believe a match dart or two, while Mike also went the distance in a fantastic match (especially on the doubling) with Heta, if you've not seen that one, stop whatever you're doing and go watch it right now, it's a match of the year contender (and Heta definitely did miss a match dart in that one). Gary is strongly favoured in the projections as you might expect, being closer to three in four than two in three, both have a bit of freedom having been in bad spots in the first round so that sort of intangible I feel offsets, the market has Gary at 2/5 which doesn't seem unreasonable in the slightest.

Price/Wade - Gerwyn came through a very tough opponent in Noppert, who was 2-0 up in the deciding set but was not able to generate more than the singular match dart, while Wade could have made things easier against Wright, squandering a 2-0 lead of his own in the opener which Peter took, although as Wright only took one further leg after that I doubt James will be that concerned. Price is better here, and I've got projections showing him as getting close to two in three chances. Maybe that's a bit harsh given Wade's form, and the market certainly has it a little tighter, and while I don't think the 4/6 available on Price is in any way bad, I'll give Wade's levels right now enough benefit of the doubt to not take the bet here.

Gurney/Cullen - Now we see the two players with probably the biggest upsets of round one - Daryl won ever leg against MvG and the numbers looked pretty darned solid, while Joe was able to come from a set down to take out Chris Dobey who just couldn't get away after the opener. This I feel is an OK spot for Daryl, but Cullen's doing enough to keep this at around a 55/45 sort of game, the market's in more or less the same spot so an easy no bet here.

Chisnall/van den Bergh - Dave had the joint most routine win of the opening round, not dropping a leg against Menzies (go full time already ffs), while Dimitri got embroiled in a high quality game against Woodhouse and needed to come from a set down to take the spoils. Dave has been showing enough for some time that he looks solidly better and I'm floating a projection as around a 2-1 favourite. Maybe Dimi is one that can up things slightly on TV, and he did look really good in round one (not that Dave looked bad), so maybe there's enough slight intangibles that a 4/6 line for Dave isn't quite enough to take Chizzy to reach the quarters.

So still no bets, but a few things you might want to consider if you want to push things out a touch.

Grand Prix day 2

We continue...

Chisnall/Menzies - A right banger to start, Chizzy being pretty much the number 1 seed on the floor getting almost all the cake, while Menzies is probably the best player right now without a title to his name and now just pushing on to majors after not quite reaching the Matchplay. I can barely separate the two, maybe having Cameron a percentage point or two better, but with it being a debut I think just calling it a coin flip is completely fair. With Menzies being the odds against player at 11/10, there's nothing of value to look at in the opener. (note - this was written up yesterday due to oddschecker being useless in terms of the order of games shown, Menzies' price appears to have drifted a bit since then, but not enough to consider a bet. At least on 365, as now oddschecker seems to have canned the game completely)

Woodhouse/van den Bergh - Luke continues his consolidation within the world's top 32, and has a decent shot here against a player who is much more widely known in Dimitri, but who compares very closely statistically and the UK Open winner, who may not have even been here if it weren't for that win, can't really be separated in terms of projections, so lines which put Woodhouse as a tiny underdog don't seem unreasonable.

de Decker/Heta - And we get back to back Belgian involvement, Mike also looking to push up into the top 32, building on a first Pro Tour title a couple of months ago, but faces a tough opponent in Heta, who's claimed a couple of Pro Tours himself this season and sits in that tier of players who are not elite, but almost as good, which is enough of a differential over de Decker to put Damon at approaching 60% chances to get through. This is another one that oddschecker isn't pricing up because reasons, but 365 have Damon at 8/13, which is round about where I'd expect things to be and doesn't show any signs of value unless there's a complete outlier/misprice I can't see.

Wright/Wade - Two veterans of the scene who are having resurgent seasons, Wright having shown he's still relevant by picking up a Euro Tour and looking much stronger since then, while Wade hasn't really converted into results (although he has had some good runs), he is scoring better than he has done for quite some time, which translates to a high 50% projection for this one against Snakebite. I'm happy to pull that down to maybe 55% given there is evidence that Peter's playing better than a larger historical set of data, which would put things right at the 4/5 Wade line, which we naturally won't be touching.

Price/Noppert - Two players now who've been somewhat underrated throughout this year. While Price's numbers have tailed off slightly, it's still not far off elite levels at all, meanwhile Noppert may be the most underrated player on the circuit, with a title to his name this season (which is more than Price has) and numbers which are only one place behind Price when it comes to overall scoring, which puts him as an underdog for me, but not even 55/45, this one is that tight. The market is shading things a bit further in Gerwyn's favour, but we'd realistically need to be getting 6/4 before I'd look to fire on Danny, and we can't even get better than 11/8.

Smith/Anderson - Ah shit, here we go again. Repeat pretty much everything I said in the Matchplay. Anderson is really good, Smith not so much, Michael may be not doing as well as he should on the Pro Tour compared to TV, but I can't think he's mailing it in or anything, that doesn't seem like his nature. Fortunately, this time, we won't be piling in, I still see Ando as a good favourite, but only around the 2-1 margin, after possibly factoring in maybe Smith playing better in major events, and with prices hovering shorter (often more than one or two ticks shorter) than the 4/6 I'd probably want to be able to bet Ando, we can ignore this one and just hope we get a good game.

van Gerwen/Gurney - Michael may be getting back to his best, having broken a fairly long title drought with a Pro Tour in mid September and a Euro Tour the weekend afterwards, and translating that to numbers the count of players who are outscoring him at the moment is very small indeed, we're talking legitimate world championship contenders and that's it. Gurney's doing alright for himself, and this is a tournament he's done historically alright at, but this is one of the few games that feels like a real mismatch, with the only pertinent thing being whether Daryl is closer to a one in three shot or a one in four shot over what is a very short format. With him being priced around 9/4, the bookies seem to concur with that approximation.

Dobey/Cullen - Chris is playing so well at the moment that only Anderson and Humphries are outscoring him in the sample I'm using, that's just how good he is. Picking up multiple Pro Tours, including on the recent three day stint, he faces Cullen, who seems to be one of the most out of form players in the tournament, and given some of his social media posts and other thins said this year, may not be in the place he needs to be to truly threaten Chris, who's projecting about the same as MvG is in the previous game. And, annoyingly, the market's doing more or less the same in this one as that as well.

So nothing today, and with nothing yesterday, I very much doubt that we see a spot generated in the tournament where we'd want to bet, but I will look at the last sixteen after today's games just in case.

Grand Prix day 1

Alright, all the warm ups are done, we had a solid three days of Pro Tours to get final data, now let's look to see what we like. I'll split round one into two posts, if only because of time limitations, I don't want to get half way through Tuesday's games only for the early start to force me to get out what I can. So let's go. These are always harder to judge with the double start, and a short format not used anywhere else, but we'll go with what we have.

Rock/Joyce - Interesting one to start. Rock's maintaining steady form, albeit not quite at the levels we have seen in the past, but it has got him titles at Pro Tour and European Tour levels this year, but Joyce isn't too far behind, despite not having had a phenomenal 2024 with his biggest result towards the rankings coming at the back end of last season. I've got this one as fairly close to being good value on Ryan here, I think his winning chances are well into the 40% range, maybe slightly nearer 50%, so 6/4 would ordinarily be worth a look. However, some recent withdrawals from events and non-entries make me wonder whether there isn't some intangible I'm not aware of that might be affecting his game. I'll pass on it, but if you're confident in Joyce don't let me stop you.

Dolan/Schindler - Complete opposites of form here, Schindler bagging a second Euro Tour title to end September, while Dolan seems a long way removed from that Pro Tour bink he got in May, with scoring well below 90 and a projection where I think 30% chances of winning this one might be generous, although it is a tournament he has had some successes at previously, albeit at a different venue. Market tends to concur putting Schindler at a best price of 1/2 so we can move on quickly.

Clayton/Edhouse - Jonny continues to make his resurgence, climbing back up the scoring charts and generally being in a bit of a better spot than his game was earlier in the year, while Edhouse just keeps doing his thing, nearly having a bit of a Pro Tour breakthrough recently, but not really getting the raw levels of numbers that Clayton is, and as such to me only has a touch more than a one in three shot. I'll give Ritchie some benefit of the doubt for getting better results than the stats might otherwise suggest, and if that can translate into getting the double in quickly, who knows? Clayton at 4/7, from what I've just written, seems pretty much the correct ballpark.

Aspinall/Searle - Nathan looks to be back on the mend following his recent injury issues, but I'm still not confident he's at 100%, meanwhile Ryan might not be in the greatest of spots after missing all those darts to make the European Tour breakthrough we've been thinking has been coming for a while, hopefully I'm wrong and we don't see another Dirk sort of thing where it takes a while to get back to that point. The market has Searle as a small favourite, I think that's fair enough - the data I have gives this as completely 50/50, but the majority of that data is from a fully at the races Aspinall, so shading the line towards Ryan is completely reasonable.

van Barneveld/Pietreczko - Raymond had a pretty nice Pro Tour midweek, getting close to the business end of tournaments and showing a good standard of play. Ricardo meanwhile is hard to call, with any number of form and injury related things being sent to try the pundits - showing some flashes like the Euro Tour final but those are still somewhat the exception and not the rule for me. The projections actually put the two fairly close, although there is a consistency issue of biblical proportions, so I'm just going to ignore it and say that Ricardo at a widely available 7/4 does not seem like the sort of number I would be interested in, and I don't think we can guarantee that Barney is anywhere near that much better right now either.

Humphries/Bunting - We get a repeat from last midweek - there the world champ just edged things 8-7, so pretty tight and it ended a streak of three straight Pro Tour finals for Bunting, who looks to be in red hot form as well with the numbers in the data set I'm using just cracking the 94 mark, putting him truly up with the elite. This one could genuinely go either way - Luke's better, but it's not by that much at all and it has the feel of a real 60/40. Sadly Stephen is only as long as 13/8, so we can't consider anything here.

Cross/Littler - Back to back games which could easily be tie of the round, with Littler getting a right bastard of a draw in back to back majors. Cross has had a solid if unspectacular year (at least compared to Luke), but has picked up a Euro Tour and remains in that cluster of players that are just off the true top 5-6 right now, so absolutely still with the game to challenge anyone in the world. Littler should be favoured, but not by a huge deal, I'd have projected a fair line at around 8/11, which means the Littler hype is real and Cross at 7/4 is fairly close to being in betting consideration.

van Veen/Smith - Our final game of the evening sees van Veen, somehow still without a title, against Smith, one of the biggest scorers in the game and very much in that Cross tier of those who can threaten just about anyone, not least Gian, who's scoring a bit less than Ross is in the data and calling this one a 60/40 (in Smith's favour) would probably be overestimating how often Gian should win this, that's just how good Ross is. There may have been some places originally offering 4/5 on Smith, those have now gone but 8/11 doesn't exactly scream out as a -EV bet if you must have something tonight.

Tuesday picks ASAP.

Brief post-Basel update

Didn't see a whole lot of great value on the rest of the tournament. Fuck knows how Searle didn't win that, some real good wins from the locals, and Schindler's now got two of these. No Leicester field shocks, although Rydz did make it interesting for a short while, quick FRH update:

1 Luke Humphries

2 Michael van Gerwen

3 Dave Chisnall (UP 4)

4 Rob Cross

5 Michael Smith (DOWN 2)

6 Luke Littler

7 Damon Heta (DOWN 2)

8 Stephen Bunting (UP 3)

9 Peter Wright (DOWN 1)

10 Jonny Clayton (DOWN 1)

11 Chris Dobey (UP 2)

12 Gerwyn Price (DOWN 2)

13 James Wade (UP 1)

14 Ross Smith (UP 1)

15 Ryan Searle (UP 3)

16 Dimitri van den Bergh (DOWN 4)

17 Josh Rock

18 Martin Schindler (NEW)

19 Danny Noppert

20 Nathan Aspinall (DOWN 4)

Three days of Pro Tours for the final tune ups before Leicester, always worth watching for the most recent form reads. With the tournament seemingly starting on Monday, I've got some time to get pieces together after the Pro Tour and before the event starts.

Quick day 1 bets

Sedlacek/Williams - close on Karel but no

Woodhouse/Nijman - line seems accurate

Ratajski/Stoeckli - Krzysztof probably safe but silly odds on line

de Decker/Hall - line is fine

Razma/Fehlmann - 0.5u Razma 2/9, Alex didn't impress me, Madars is playing well this week

Gilding/Prez - half tempted to do the same but Andrew is less convincing

Hertig/Meikle - same, Ryan too inconsistent to be really sure this is value

Rydz/Dolan - don't think there's quite enough there for a form based Callan punt, which is something that seems dangerous in and of itself

Edhouse/Wattimena - possible small Jermaine value if you don't believe that Ritchie outperforms his numbers, which we see moderately often

Ostlund/van Duijvenbode - think this is close, some places offering 1/4, Dirk is close enough to back, Ostlund isn't convincing but did get through a much harder qualifier than the domestic lads so will give some benefit of the doubt

van den Bergh/Wade - looks close enough to correct for me

Cullen/van Barneveld - maybe Barney's fractionally overvalued but it's neither here nor there

Menzies/Clayton - Cameron slightly favoured in the market. Doesn't seem wrong to me

Wright/Veenstra - Peter not being available at even 1/2 might be a bit too much of a hype train, but Veenstra hasn't really shown quite enough to make 7/4 that enticing

Walpen/Aspinall - 9/1 for someone who has played on this stage at all might actually be enough if you combine him actually winning legitimately and Nathan having a flare up and playing awfully

White/Smith - line might be slightly harsh on White. But only slightly.