UK Open - Aftermath

Firstly, huge congrats to Peter Wright on picking up the ranking title that he's been due. Sure he may say that with no van Gerwen or Taylor present it might not feel the same, but it's got to be better to have got there when the opportunity presented itself, rather than wondering what might have happened if van Gerwen hadn't injured himself and not got a title.

Also congrats to Gerwyn Price, he rode his luck at times but has to be happy with making a televised final, qualifying for the Grand Slam (not guaranteed, but for all intents and purposes he's there), a nice payday and move up the rankings.

As far as betting was concerned this was an unprecedented disaster - dropping six units to go into the red overall, and hugely down for the year. It's hard to work out what went wrong at this stage, and whether to say I made any huge errors in my picks or whether it is just variance. It's fairly gutting to have four of the last seven bets to be full unit plays and to go down in ridiculously close situations when they previously had winning positions - Klaasen leading 6-2 on throw against van der Voort, being drawn back to 9-9 then missing a match dart and having Vincent take out 106. Huybrechts breaking to lead 9-8 and throw for the match, kick off 180 then only leave 140 after twelve darts, and you then hit two trebles and miss the double, let Norris equalise and then miss bull for the match in the decider. Whitlock throwing at 7-4, then losing five legs on the bounce, he did get it back to 9-9 and while Gurney finishing in twelve darts on throw is difficult to beat, it should never get to that stage. Norris leaving 40 after twelve darts to break Price at 9-9, missing the lot and having Price kill 100 to hold then allowing yourself to be broken in 15 darts. Picking up just a couple of those makes cuts the loss by more than half. Oh well, I'll plug the data in from this tournament (it seems to be fairly complete from boards 1 and 2, it's missing the Whitlock/Quantock match entirely and gave up on Gurney/Roy after three legs, but other than that it seems fine), play with the figures and see what happens.

New top 20 in the adjusted rankings:

1 Michael van Gerwen
2 Gary Anderson
3 Peter Wright
4 James Wade
5 Dave Chisnall
6 Raymond van Barneveld (UP 1)
7 Adrian Lewis (DOWN 1)
8 Phil Taylor
9 Mensur Suljovic
10 Jelle Klaasen
11 Kim Huybrechts (UP 1)
12 Benito van de Pas (DOWN 1)
13 Ian White (UP 1)
14 Simon Whitlock (UP 1)
15 Michael Smith (DOWN 2)
16 Alan Norris
17 Gerwyn Price (UP 2)
18 Daryl Gurney
19 Robert Thornton (DOWN 2)
20 Terry Jenkins

Some other notes from people that did well - Cullen's now one spot outside the top 20, van der Voort returns to the top 30, O'Connor's close to the top 64, Cross is inside the top 80, Tabern's just outside it.