Thursday 16 November 2017

Grand Slam - very quick quarter final thoughts

Haven't watched tonight or even looked too much at the stats, Gurney seemed incredibly free money but I will just look to the quarters and the prices:

Suljovic/Anderson - Can't see Anderson not being able to pull this off given he's got 31 legs to work with, that's a big haul for Suljovic and I can't think of too many spots where he's played that long a game, he's not played that many seven set matches in the worlds. Ando's about a 70% favourite, this seems to be fine given the distance, he's lit it up very well and is not giving away much at all in terms of duff legs, Suljovic will likely give him a break or two and that should be enough.

Durrant/Wright - I'm not sure what to make of this line. Durrant's a shorter price to beat the PDC number 2/3 (depending on what day of the week it is) in a race to 16 than he is a race to 5. Not that much can surely have changed in the course of less than a week, sure Durrant's won, and sure he's been playing well in this tournament, but for it to be a 2-1 game now?

Taylor/Gurney - Daryl rightly shrugged off Wade while Taylor did the same to Webster, it's the first proper test for both players and it will be interesting to see if Gurney can hang over a very long game against Taylor - you can compare to the Matchplay, where they had a common opponent in Peter Wright - Gurney lost 17-15, Taylor won 18-8. With Taylor only being an 8/13 favourite this may be a favourable line, but he's not really been setting the place on fire, and even tonight it's been mostly 15's rather than slamming in elite legs (even managing to lose the leg where he had seven perfect).

van Gerwen/Cross - Cross is only a point longer against van Gerwen than he was in a race that's less than a third of the length, he looked great value then but now I can't see how he is able to maintain that sort of level over this kind of distance with enough confidence or frequency to warrant a bet. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if he's able to get to 10-10 or 11-9, and he's shown tonight the ability to deal with some adversity, but it's a big ask to break what's becoming a bit of a streak in what I think is easily the longest match he's ever played.

So no bets, which is probably for the best on limited analysis. Away until Sunday afternoon, may get back in time for the final, we'll see.

Edit - corrected obvious typo in the Gurney - Wright score

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