Saturday 2 December 2017

World Championship previews update schedule

Long time no speak - the draw is out, and here's what I intend to do prior to the event starting:

- Fantasy league player costs and scoring will be up some time early next week, will post on Twitter, 2+2 etc once they're finalised, you can enter for free either by posting/PMing on 2+2, reply/DM on Twitter or in the comments here. If anyone has any random tat that they want to ship as prizes then you might be able to win something, but I doubt it, would offer to ship something from ad revenue if I have a big influx of readers from the previews, but as Google haven't approved an adsense account that'd amount to zero.
- Will get one eighth of the draw up per day, likely starting from Tuesday and running through to the next Tuesday, this is conditional on being able to get Google Sheets to do what I want it to do, I've nearly done inputting the relevant data, I just need to format it. If that takes longer than expected then I may do a couple a day to begin with.
- Bets will be up the Wednesday before the event.
- Once we're under way, I'll preview second round matches and onwards as and when they become available to comment on. It may be a bit of a tight turnaround for the third round as I actually have to work on the 27th, but I at least have a bunch of time to get that day ready before looking at the games on the 28th. Bets for the second round onwards will go up as and when the previews do assuming I'm not doing them straight after and there's lines available.

As for the draw itself, which since the last time I talked saw Ted Evetts go straight into round 1 to give himself a chance of retaining his tour card (in relation to that, that's one hell of a price hike by the PDC to enter Q-School), while Brendan Dolan and Jamie Lewis fill up the preliminary rounds, a bit of a change from last year where you got some complete randoms making it through.

The most interesting section by far is the Gurney quarter in that there's no clear favourite - any one of Gurney, Cross or Suljovic has got to fancy it, with Suljovic possibly having the best chance in that Gurney and Cross are in the same half of that quarter, while Klaasen and Smith are big hitters that can match any of these on their day, and there's plenty of wildcards that could play a spoiler role such as Thornton, Ronny Huybrechts, Dekker, Bunting or van den Bergh.

The van Gerwen quarter I think plays itself, I can't see Price or White putting up resistance over a four set match, who van Gerwen would play in a quarter final is somewhat open, with Chisnall and van Barneveld probably being fairly even and Kyle Anderson poking around for good mention, Chisnall not having an easy draw to get up to that stage with Vincent van der Voort being one of the toughest outs in round one and Beaton or O'Connor to follow.

The Wright quarter, assuming the worrying news that came out yesterday isn't of a serious enough nature to prevent him from playing (his odds for the title haven't shifted much, but there's a hell of a lot of variation with some places offering 12's compared to 7's elsewhere), should be there for the taking, there's lots of players who on their day could run him close, but over a longer format probably won't - Lewis is the biggest seed but is under pressure given the enormous amount of money, and his pod features a lot of players such as Reyes, Darren Webster, Whitlock and even the likes of Alcinas or Oreshkin, that might cause him issues. Wright's potential second round opponent is Jonny Clayton which won't be a pushover in the slightest, while a third round against Norris or Huybrechts, assuming Viljanen or Richardson don't upset them which seems perfectly possible, isn't trivial either if they play their best, which is something they don't do anywhere near often enough.

The Anderson quarter seems like a two horse race between him and Taylor. Anderson's first round match isn't the easiest, both Jeff Smith and Luke Humphries have the potential to be dangerous, but Mark Webster in round two seems comfortable enough, and then you'd face whoever comes out of a wide open section involving Cullen, van de Pas, West and Wattimena, all of who seem not unreasonable names to reach the last sixteen but shouldn't have enough to trouble Gary over best of seven sets. Taylor's got Dobey round one, which if Dobey finds his form again, of which there have been some signs, might not be that easy, but should beat Pipe easily enough despite Pipe also getting back towards his best, and then he'd face one of Wade, Brown, King or Lerchbacher, none of which seem like they'd cause him any trouble at all.

Back to dartsdatabase and the spreadsheets we go!

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