In, out, in, out, shake it all about

Thank fuck Ratajski won through today's World Series qualifier

I guess the Venn diagram of people that read this blog and don't follow Burton on Twitter has no intersection, so I'm assuming everyone has seen this chart:

That's who's in the worlds. The question I'm asking is who are the weakest players that are in (for these purposes, I'm assuming that Jamie Lewis is not in for sure, and I'll chuck Razma and Rydz as in given I have data on them), and who are the strongest players that aren't? That's all just fun with filters, so let's pick 15 from each category, sorting by season long points per turn - for those that haven't made it I'll assume a 180 leg minimum sample size - if you're not turning up to all the Pro Tour events and getting dicked 6-0 then you don't deserve consideration, and plus, 180, woo:

Hmm, I was actually expecting a lot more overlap with good players not currently in at the top. Never mind - at least looking at that list, there's still chances for many of these to get in, even if it's just through the PDPA qualifier. No idea what Cadby is actually doing with himself, but the Oceanic Masters has to be on. Schindler could still get in through the Bundesliga. Harris could win the New Zealand qualifier (or Oceanic Masters for that matter). Petersen can win the Petersen qualifier. Rafferty is not drawing completely dead on the Development Tour, he'd need a hell of a weekend to overhaul Geert Nentjes, but it's possible. I don't know whether Lerchbacher's regional qualifier, if he opted for it over the PDPA qualifier (can they still do that?), has already gone, is he in the same region as the one Pratnemer won? Koltsov's got to be an overwhelming favourite to win the EADC event.

In any case, ooh, look, there's Simon Whitlock, let's invite him to our TV events!

Well, that caught me out

Thought this final pair of Pro Tour events were on Tuesday/Wednesday. Oops. At least today I was able to get Ratajski as part of an each way strike for a tiny profit after my book removed PC29 before the event, I guess they couldn't react to mass withdrawals quickly enough, especially when MvG and Ando were part of them - rule 4 doesn't apply to darts it seems. Probably for the best, I wouldn't have gone for Brendan Dolan who binked his second event of the year, might have gone with White, but we'll see. Peter Wright got the win today, the day after people went nuts for his 6-0 drubbing of Ratajski (14-1 over the two events!), given he hit some good darts. I demand they bring back the News of the World so that we can get even sillier record averages.

New FRH rankings:

1 Michael van Gerwen
2 Rob Cross
3 Michael Smith
4 Gerwyn Price
5 Daryl Gurney
6 James Wade
7 Nathan Aspinall
8 Peter Wright (UP 3)
9 Gary Anderson (DOWN 1)
10 Dave Chisnall (DOWN 1)
11 Ian White (DOWN 1)
12 Mensur Suljovic
13 Joe Cullen
14 Krzysztof Ratajski (UP 2)
15 Jonny Clayton
16 Simon Whitlock (DOWN 2)
17 Adrian Lewis
18 Glen Durrant
19 Jermaine Wattimena
20 Stephen Bunting

Super close from 7 to 11, less than a 10k spread between the lot of them. Ratajski making a final and quarter moves him above both Clayton and Whitlock, while lower down, Brendan Dolan hits the top 32.

That looks to clinch worlds and Minehead spots for everyone, for the worlds it looks as if Rowby just got in over Mansell, who's waiting on Jamie Lewis dropping out of the top 32 to get there, while Schindler, Petersen and Razma are among those just outside who may need other qualifiers to sneak in. Mansell did at least sneak into Minehead as the last man in over Ritchie Edhouse, leading a four way tie £250 behind the Cyclone, if as rumoured Barney doesn't bother then he'd get in. Was a bit surprising to see Jamie Hughes only finish 55th level with Ryan Meikle...

One other thing to mention is that they've announced the World Series invites. Smith, Price, Suljovic and White got the automatics, Aspinall and Chisnall getting invites is fine, then we go to international players - Wattimena fine, de Zwaan fine, Noppert fine, Clemens fine. Then we have Whitlock and Anderson. One who's putting in alright performances without the results, the other is doing neither. It seems incredibly uninspiring - you've got an Australian representative with Damon Heta being seeded, you don't need another two if they're not doing enough to warrant a pick. If you want an international feel, why not pick Jose de Sousa? Krzysztof Ratajski? Dimitri's done more this season than either of those two. I'd argue Max Hopp would be fine here. Heck, Glen Durrant? Doesn't need to just be limited to two UK players. Completely uninspiring. Still, those qualifiers to get into it are going to be fierce.

BDO worlds

That post I mentioned on the BDO seedings - that's coming up, but first, van Gerwen beat Chisnall, might have been a bit closer, but oh well, probably more of interest is that Keane Barry came from behind to take advantage of Liam Gallagher missing many, many match darts to claim his worlds spot. New FRH rankings:

1 Michael van Gerwen
2 Rob Cross
3 Michael Smith
4 Gerwyn Price
5 Daryl Gurney
6 James Wade
7 Nathan Aspinall (UP 1)
8 Gary Anderson (DOWN 1)
9 Dave Chisnall (UP 3)
10 Ian White
11 Peter Wright (DOWN 2)
12 Mensur Suljovic (DOWN 1)
13 Joe Cullen
14 Simon Whitlock
15 Jonny Clayton
16 Krzysztof Ratajski
17 Adrian Lewis
18 Glen Durrant (UP 1)
19 Jermaine Wattimena (UP 1)
20 Stephen Bunting (DOWN 2)

Not quite as much movement as you'd expect - Chizzy cracks the top 10 and is actually less than 5k behind Anderson and only 10k behind Aspinall, so with a couple of other good runs, maybe he can go higher? Wright's out of the top 10, but is less than a thousand points behind White so could reclaim that soon. Durrant's semi only cains him one spot, but Ratajski is less than 4k ahead. Dobey's semi final sees him rist to #23, King's quarter wasn't quite enough to get him into the top 20.

OK, the BDO. I'll talk mostly about the men's side, as there's not a great deal to talk about at this stage on the women's side other than that the Ashton side seems a heck of a lot easier than the Suzuki/de Graaf/Greaves/Dobromyslova side. First, the non-seeds - Bennett's the most exciting name, it's great to see new countries represented in France and Romania from the regional tables, Adams getting back is nice to see, the likes of Unterbuchner, Steyer, Landman, Hogan, Thompson, Chaney and Herewini could all cause damage. We'll know more once they've done the draw, but let's look at the seeding sections:

(1) Harms, (16) Waites, (8) Mandigers, (9) Mitchell

That's hard. That's potentially really hard for Harms, you've got the previous year's finalist, and also another previous winner meeting in consecutive rounds. I don't think Waites plays anywhere near the full tour, and I doubt Mitchell plays everything either, so these could well be underseeded. Harms has picked up quite a few wins this year, so fair enough that he gets the one seed. That leaves Mandigers - he had a nice purple patch in May where he picked up a large percentage of his qualifying points, but he does seem the odd one out here.

(4) Parletti, (13) Evans, (5) Warren, (12) Hamilton

This doesn't appear that strong really. Parletti seems to do alright on the circuit, but goes missing in the major events, but is anyone else stronger? Evans at least got two of his three biggest events last month, and has done decent work on the Challenge Tour and looked good in the couple of Pro Tour events we've seen him in, so might fancy his chances of a run. Warren's a pretty consistent performer and can't be taken lightly, then we've got the Hammer, whose qualifying performances are a bit underwhelming, lots of last 16 performances and his highest single event was back in 2018.

(3) Veenstra, (14) Robson, (6) Kleermaker, (11) Vandenbogaerde

Veenstra looks like the class of this section, having claimed the Dutch Open and made the World Trophy final, he should be way too strong for Robson, who's a bit like Hamilton in that his points to qualify haven't come from any real deep runs, it's certainly not been as good a year as his 2018 was but at least he's done enough to get in the seeds. Kleermaker has come along a lot in 2019, taking the Welsh Open and several other lower tier events and can certainly be considered a threat to Veenstra, while the Belgian claimed his biggest points haul winning the German Open back in May, but everything else seems a long time ago, or in much lower ranked events. Can't look past a 3/6 quarter final here.

(2) Williams, (15) Hogarth, (7) Kenny, (10) Smith-Neale

Williams has grabbed the first BDO major of the year, and has a string of other very good performances which makes him the clear favourite to advance to the semi finals from this part of the draw. Hogarth had a great run to the Dutch Open final but has been quiet apart from that, I don't know if he'll have enough to pressure Williams if they were to meet up. Kenny is back from a down year where he didn't even qualify and is putting together his best scores in the last couple of months, so is certainly trending in the correct direction, then we have Smith-Neale, who I don't think is playing anywhere near as well as he was twelve months ago when he was able to claim the World Masters out of nowhere, this looks for all the world like an all-Welsh quarter final.

I'll update the Second/Third Division Darts rankings shortly, with not long left to go it'll be interesting to see who can claim the titles there.

Grand Prix final

I didn't post about the semis, mainly because it seemed obvious what was going on - Chisnall and Durrant ought to be tight, and given every set from 1-1 onwards went the distance, it was, while Dobey put up a good fight but was a little bit outmatched by van Gerwen, he got five legs on the board in the first three sets, but I think that third set broke him - if he could have slotted in a 140 after the 180 he hit in the deciding leg to leave a two darter he'd have been very live, van Gerwen getting 108 is something you'd expect to get maybe one in three goes so certainly not a gimmie, as it was a visit of 58 effectively handed the Dutchman the set. Losing the second set as he did as well had to have been horrible, you're throwing for the match and by the time you finally get away, your opponent then steps up and is on a double to force a decider.

So, can Chizzy win it? I want to say yes and no. He's one of the players that is playing well enough that he can threaten, but will he start to have some of the Terry Jenkins always loses the final mentality? It's a long race, and you've got to be on the money on doubles from the get go, but he's not actually doing badly - 12/21 going out yesterday, 11/26 against Aspinall, 8/14 against Price (I'm chucking out the game against Bunting as he wasn't really threatened at all), so 0.1u Chisnall 10/3, hard to gauge set play but if this was a Matchplay final where you need 18 legs to take it (you're going to need 15 here, but with it being sets you'll end up playing more), he's hovering around a one in three range, which I think is enough to punt on Dave.

Regardless of what happens, Chisnall's now up into the top 10 of the FRH rankings (he's ninth, knocking Peter Wright out who's also been overtaken by Ian White) and can go fourth if he wins, and more importantly he's locked up a Grand Slam spot even if he loses. That's dumped out everyone from the European Tour except for White, who's hanging on by a thread.

In other news, Damon Heta did enough to make it to Ally Pally through the DPA rankings, it was going to take something super weird to deny him given the lead he had but he locked it up himself with a final in the first event, and we've got the Tom Kirby final tonight, where we've got Keane Barry against Liam Gallagher (no, not that one, although if he walks out to anything other than Oasis he's making a terrible terrible mistake), which should be a good one. I kind of want Keane to win given the hype there is around him, but whoever gets through should put on a good showing in the worlds. There's also been the WDF event where we've got a final of Peter Machin against Darren Herewini, Machin we know from the World Trophy a couple of years bach, while Herewini's a Kiwi who had a go at Q-School and the first Challenge Tour weekend, in the latter he made the last 128 or better every day but could never really get a good enough run going, while on the Challenge Tour he made a quarter final and last sixteen, so he can't be bad - he did take four legs off Phil the last time he played the Auckland World Series event after all. Who's to say he won't win the New Zealand qualifier for Ally Pally? That said, he is in the BDO event already. He'd certainly be live against Harris if he gives it a go. Nick Kenny and Martijn Kleermaker made the semis, was kind of hoping that Kleermaker would still be a bit under the radar and that, in a wide open Lakeside O2, he'd be a decent each way price, but 20's isn't appealing. The ladies event sees Hedman against Suzuki, in a weird event where there's not many of the top 16 I recognise - Pruim played Winstanley, I know those two, but Maria O'Brien's the only other name I know.

While I mention the BDO side, they've finalised their order, I'll go over it in another post, maybe later today, but the interesting thing is that Bennett is in (although not seeded), as is Greaves on the ladies side (being the 6 seed). Harms is the top seed, but I think I'd much prefer Williams from the 2 seed given how it looks, but as I say, that's for another post.

Tour card race

There's less than a week to go until the final Players Championship events of the season. That's come around fast. Who's in the running to retain their cards? Let's have a look at who's in the running, copying and pasting stuff from dartsdatabase - I'm assuming anyone from 101 down isn't going to go on any sort of miracle run:

I can't see any weirdness in terms of players expiring from below there making a miracle run, so let's just look at these. First thing to consider is whether anyone with two years can punch into the top 64 and knock one spot off for those looking to save a card. Evetts is the obvious choice, given he's in the European Championship (although he'd play Gerwyn Price) so has a non-zero chance of putting money on cheap, is also well safe for the worlds and just the right side of the Minehead cutoff as is. Ward, Boulton, Labanauskas and McGeeney are all going to be in both, although can they put upwards of £20k on? Entirely possible, just needs one win at Ally Pally to get to £15k.

Of those currently safe, Dekker is just the wrong side of Minehead qualification, as are Thornton and Petersen - it's a huge midweek for all of them. Norris has a lot of work to do, Edgar is at least in Minehead as it stands and has too many people that can pass him, but like last year he's right on the borderline of the worlds - one good run could see him get there. Jamie Lewis continuing to play crap would help - Noppert and Duzza should have passed him by now and have additional shots to do so, it'd just need Evans or van der Voort to get something going to free up another Pro Tour qualification spot for the worlds.

How about those on the outside? It's an enormous week for Tabern - right on the Minehead border, if he can get there, he would just need one win potentially once there. Owen is probably done, Woodhouse is giving himself a chance, just one good draw would be all he needs and he's got a little bit of a buffer to qualify for both. Richardson's in a similar spot. Meikle is only just outside of an automatic spot for the worlds if he wasn't to get there from the Dev Tour, which would be a backup route to save his card I guess. Monk has the game to put something together and save his card. van Duijvenbode does as well, but is way too far back from the worlds.

Grand Prix quarters

Wow, all the seeds apart from van Gerwen are gone, really didn't see that coming, but the quality of field we've got right now makes it not entirely surprising. Four quarters tonight, same format as the last couple of days, race to three sets, what do we like?

White/Dobey - Ian got past Michael Smith 3-1 to give us a winning bet (Noppert didn't, so we broke even on the round), while Dobey defeated Gary Anderson by the same score to avenge his world championship defeat. A semi final would, I think, be unchartered major territory for either player, both averaged fairly close to each other in the last sixteen, while Dobey was a little bit more impressive in the opening tie. Surely it's time for White to make the deep run he's been threatening to, if he's to get the Premier League spot his quality of play deserves, he surely needs to win this sort of game. Market has is slightly more than 60/40 in Ian's favour, that seems about right, maybe Ian's a very slightly better player than the market suggests, but there's not enough edge there to contemplate a bet.

Chisnall/Aspinall - Dave bagelled a fairly poor Stephen Bunting, while Aspinall needed all five sets to defeat Danny Noppert. Their averaging throughout the tournament has been extremely close, and the market thinks likewise, with Chizzy being just a shade odds on, while Nathan is evens, maybe slightly odds against in some places. I'm half tempted by a bet on Chizzy, he's certainly a little bit better than 10/11 season long, but it's much nearer 50/50 on more recent form, so I think we can pass on this one as well.

van Gerwen/King - Very nice display by Michael in round 2 to beat de Zwaan in straight sets, while King beat James Wade in four sets to set up a repeat of their UK Open match - which King won. King won their previous TV match as well, but that was unranked in 2014 so completely irrelevant. King's way too long - 0.1u King 11/2, I think he's got around a one in four shot, maybe slightly better, if his doubling can click he can certainly trouble MvG, it's not too long a format.

Durrant/Wattimena - Glen needed all five sets to take out Rob Cross in a matchup of world champions, while Jermaine reached what I think is a first major quarter final by beating Peter Wright 3-1, with probably the best darts I've seen him play in a long time. Glen's rated as a two in three shot, that looks about right over longer samples, over shorter ones the 9/4 that we're offered on Wattimena certainly looks worth the punt. If you like recent form over general class, then I won't stop you betting on the Dutchman, as mentioned, he looked real good yesterday.

Some Grand Slam implications - Aspinall's the only player who's already qualified in the bottom half, although Chisnall's tentatively got a spot from his Euro Tour win, while van Gerwen is in the same spot in the top half, although White's got a bit of a stronger claim on countback given his two Euro Tour wins. If one of those two goes out, someone's getting forced out, and it wouldn't take anything crazy for someone to go deep in other remaining events to close out the Euro Tour qualifiers. We'll see.

Grand Prix round 2 bets

Round one was looking quite ropey for a while, with Hughes, Whitlock and van der Voort not getting it done (the first two were at least close, the last one, not so much), but Wattimena and Noppert finally bringing what I know the two Dutch lads can do to actual results was a welcome development. Down to the last sixteen now, it's a bit of a longer format (I see Wade's had a bit of a whine about the first round format, it sucks, but it sucks for everyone) so what do we have?

Wade/King - speaking of Wade, he's nearly a 2/1 favourite after getting past Hendo in what was a bit more one sided than the 2-1 scoreline represented, King beat Dimitri by the same scoreline after van den Bergh blew a 2-0 lead in the deciding set. Hard to say exactly how to interpret the new longer format, King might have a bit more of a chance than the market suggests, but I'm still reluctant to punt on him given that he withdrew from an event just a few days ago. Might regret it, who knows.

Smith/White - Market has this close to even, Smith needed a deciding leg against Whitlock, White was taken to three sets in a strange one - Cullen won the first five legs, then White won the next six. Got to be annoying for Joe that one. I think we can nick 0.25u White evs, he's playing, at least since around mid-April, well enough that he's up above 60% to take this, how far depends on how you convert set play to leg play, White's a little bit better long term as well but the more recent form is good enough to play this one. Just don't fuck up on TV again.

van Gerwen/de Zwaan - Michael was a bit fortunate to hit a miracle out to break in the deciding set against Hughes at 1-1 in legs with Jamie waiting on a double, de Zwaan on the other hand looked really quite comfortable in only dropping one leg versus Beaton. I'm not actually sure I want to take a stab at this, JdZ is 10/3 (ooh, that rhymes), and he's only about one in four over what's still a fairly decent sample, Jeffrey probably played his best stuff earlier on in the year.

Anderson/Dobey - Gary won in straight sets against a misfiring Keegan Brown who couldn't hit doubles, while Chris looked very solid against Ricky Evans, dropping just two legs in the match. Gary's a large favourite, I think it's slightly too large, not quite enough to start betting on Dobey, but if Chris can play like he did on Sunday he'll be extremely live.

Noppert/Aspinall - Danny beat Gurney in straight sets after Daryl blew a few missed set darts in the opener, Nathan cruised against VVDV who was missing in all areas of the game at various stages. Noppert's longer than 2/1 and I'm not sure why as I can barely separate them at all over any sample, 0.25u Noppert 21/10.

Chisnall/Bunting - Dave took out Gerwyn Price in a deciding leg where Gerwyn took ten darts to get going, Bunting eased past Jonny Clayton in straight sets, and Dave's rated as having a two in three chance. This seems about right, there might be tiny value on Bunting if you consider very small samples, but Dave looked good and I'm not going against that.

Cross/Durrant - Couple of 2-1 wins here, Rob finally getting a win on this stage over Suljovic after Mensur missed two darts to force a deciding leg where he'd have the throw, Glen beat Ratajski from a set down where Krzysztof had exactly the same spot as Mensur did, missing 98 for 2-2 (which Glen then took out). I thought that 4/5 Cross was just a Durrant hype train price, but it seems fair enough, Rob is a little bit better than that year long but over shorter samples it's about right.

Wright/Wattimena - Peter won a scrappy game against Hopp 2-0, while Jermaine came from a set down to beat Adrian Lewis. Peter is very short, but I think it's nearly justified - it's certainly not too short to the point where we'll think about going with the Dutchman for a second straight match.