European Championship quarter finals

Fairly disappointing from a betting perspective in round 1, but when you have mostly an underdog line, six of the eight seeds make the quarters and one of the two that didn't missed match darts in the game you bet on him, then that will tend to happen - at least some of the underdog punts were live, King really should have taken Norris down from 4-3 up with the throw and leaving a two darter after nine, Ratajski hitting one of the bull shots he had early or cleaning up the last leg a lot better than he tried to do and it could have been a different story.

As mentioned, with six of the eight seeds making it to this stage, and the other two being winners of TV events this year, we have some good data to work with, let's take a quick look - I've not yet put in this weekend's data and am running with information since the worlds:

van Gerwen v Whitlock - have van Gerwen taking this a shade over 83% of the time, compared to Whitlock's 17%. The odds have van Gerwen at 1/7 and Whitlock getting close to 13/2, so maybe, just maybe, there is tiny value in betting on Whitlock, who must be confident following his whitewash of Alan Norris, may want to make it personal after the "textgate" incident at the Matchplay, and there's always a small possibility that van Gerwen's ankle issue recurs, but I'm not going to be the one to do it.

Anderson v Suljovic - Anderson's stats are actually slightly better than Mensur's, although this is over a much smaller sample, with Suljovic having won over twice as many legs as Anderson has. This sample does not include either player's TV wins, both of those being unranked. I think this comes down to doubling - Suljovic has been absolutely lights out in the first two games with 16/27 hitting for nearly a 60% clip, whereas Anderson had huge chunks of missed doubles and slow legs in general, which Klaasen couldn't punish. Anderson's averaging in losing legs is perfectly fine, which isn't indicating a big consistency issue, but he's going to need to tighten up and take more of the chances he generates.

Wright v Gurney - this line (8/13 Wright) looks very close to accurate. I've got Wright claiming this around 63% of the time, so no chance of a bet here. Oddly, I'd have expected this to generate a Wright bet, given that my stats usually tell me to lay Gurney early and often, so maybe with my stats possibly underestimating Gurney, and Wright avoiding a possible upset against Jonny Clayton, it should be a Gurney bet instead? Who knows. I wouldn't be surprised to see Daryl pull this one off, but I won't bet again.

Cross v Smith - Same line as the Wright game, except in Cross's favour. My stats have this as being the closest game of the night, with the stats barely favouring Smith, not getting up as much at 55%, so I think I'll go with the Smith punt here. Cross is in unchartered territory, at least as far as major tournaments go, and has yet to be really tested here with Chisnall not being at 100% and Schindler putting up little resistance, whereas Smith needed a last leg break against van de Pas and didn't have it all his own way against Aspinall either, needing the youngster to throw one dart in fifteen in the treble at 4-4 on throw to allow him to generate the break chance he needed. Will go fairly small here - 0.25u Smith 6/4