Austria last 16

Steve, Steve, Steve, why do you go and miss seven match darts? That could have made a good day into a great day (see also Nicholson, Paul, this time last week). No real complaints as everything else either came in or we were on the right side of it (apart from Lennon not really showing up), Dimitri was a bit closer than it needed to be, with Beaton we were lucky that Humphries ran out of steam a bit (nice to see that Luke posted a good assessment on Twitter of where his game is at, seems like his head's screwed on right for someone still very new in the pro game), but even Burnett managed to get a match dart, albeit at the bull.

I already posted some match projections on Twitter, so I'm just going to look straight at the odds and reference them:

Smith v van den Bergh - honestly think we're at the stage where we can auto-bet on Dimitri every game until the market adjusts, he's priced as an underdog but he is nowhere near as much of an underdog as the market suggests, Smith's a tough ask and van den Bergh can't play as badly today as he did yesterday, it'll also probably need Smith to not play quite as well as he did when steamrolling Barnard and not losing a leg, but the price is there - 0.25u van den Bergh 9/4.

Cullen v King - tough one to call, on form this year they're extremely evenly matched, Cullen being a slight favourite and the market being priced as such. There's absolutely no value here either way, can't really draw any conclusions from round 2 as neither were really tested and just did what they needed to do with minimum fuss. Next...

Jones v Price - Wayne got a controversial bye and will come into this one a bit cold against Price, who's probably priced as a bit too short of a favourite, but then again he averaged a ton yesterday and seems to be playing a little bit better recently than he has been, and Jones is possibly the other way, an 81 average (albeit with no help from the Austrian qualifier) isn't going to scare anyone.

Cross v Beaton - Both players can probably think themselves lucky to be here, Cross as mentioned surviving a bunch of match darts against Steve West, while Beaton needed to come back from a 4-2 deficit. The market seems to have Cross priced as too short of a favourite, but I'm really not thinking that Beaton can actually produce enough of a game to pip Cross to the line, Rob will surely step it up in a tournament where, with Wright now out, he can get a first European title.

Gurney v Webster - Darren finished pretty quickly yesterday but didn't score too well when he wasn't winning the legs and nearly managed to lose to Burnett, Daryl on the other hand had a bad start against Meulenkamp, losing the first two legs before having little trouble winning six of the next seven to get home, should really have been six straight legs but he missed a ton of doubles in the one Meulenkamp won (a 24 dart hold of throw, yikes). This looks to be 70/30 on the projections and the odds are around there so nothing on this one.

Suljovic v Reyes - Mensur, backed by a passionate crowd who he was playing up to hugely, only lost the one leg against Labanauskas in the performance of the round, winning every leg in fifteen darts or better with two in four visits. The only other player to manage two twelve dart legs in this tournament, other than West's ridiculous four in the first round was, you've guessed where this is going, Cristo Reyes in the first round, who saw off Jelle Klaasen 6-2 yesterday in what was an OK game on the scoring but really bad on the doubles, which dragged the averages down a lot. Suljovic is priced at 1/3, while he shouldn't be that short, I think that the stats are still underestimating him and he does have homefield advantage, and I don't think Reyes is consistent enough at this time to be able to keep it close enough. Probably end up regretting it when he throws like he does against MvG in the worlds a couple of years back.

White v Whitlock - White's also at a stage where we should probably be auto-betting him until the market adjusts. I don't think there's quite as much of an edge as there is in Dimitri games, but I've got this as White winning around 5 in every 8 trials and he's only priced a little bit shorter than evens, so with White being the form player and Whitlock not really doing anything convincing (from 4-4 he could easily have lost the last two legs he won against Adam Hunt), we'll go again - 0.25u White 4/5.

Wade v Clayton - James dumped out Peter Wright in a game where he didn't finish his winning legs that well, but it was Wright that had everything to do with that - in the four legs Wright won Wade was averaging over 120 and so was a huge favourite to finish all of them in a fifth visit, which Peter didn't allow. Clayton got through Max Hopp, it was a decent enough display, getting out to a 5-1 lead and then grabbing a fourth five visit kill to hold and prevent a comeback effort, he needed that with Hopp waiting on 46 to make it 5-4 with the darts in the tenth. Clayton seems to be closer to Wade than the market suggests, looked good yesterday and has got to have gained confidence from that win, let's go 0.25u Clayton 23/10.