Tuesday 30 October 2018

Various news

Cadby's withdrawn from the Grand Slam, so chuck the previous post down the pan outside of who's averaging well of late.

BDO have confirmed TV for their majors for 2019 (well, Eurosport and Quest, how that's actually split I have no idea). They've also confirmed Lakeside - I had a look at the ticket prices, have a guess what percentage of a PDC final table ticket you'd need to pay for a BDO final ticket in the premium seating. Go on. I dare you.

We've had a few more international qualifiers lock up their spots - Koltsov was rumoured to have had it a couple of weeks ago, but has now actually got over the line for a third appearance, oddly being in-out-in-out-in from 2015 to 2019. James Bailey won the Oceanic Masters to claim his spot - he finished top five in the DPA rankings, having won two of their events as well as punting Q-School and trying the first weekend of the Challenge Tour - he did get into one of the World Series exbos and took a couple of legs off Gary Anderson. Finally, Nitin Kumar won the Prakash Jiwa qualifier - no idea if good old Prakash actually played it, but if he did, he wasn't close to qualifying. He's seemingly played the World Cup once, twice if dartsdatabase has, as I think, different spellings of his first name, and him and his partner(s) won a grand total of zero legs whichever way you look at it. This doesn't leave many spots now - we've got the two ladies' qualifiers, the end of the German superleague, the Chinese and Devon Petersen qualifiers, then the world youth and PDPA qualifier. That's it outside of the last weekends of the Development and Challenge Tours that could shake things up a touch.

150%. £99 for the BDO compared to £66. You couldn't make it up.

Monday 29 October 2018

Grand Slam qualification

This has suddenly become a lot messier. If I'm reading things correctly, this is a Tour Card only qualifier, which is even worse news for Ratajski following Max Hopp's three missed match darts which would have seen him still have the last place in the qualification list. Oh well, at least he'll be at Minehead - but surely to be at Minehead he'd need to be a full member. Oh, PDC, your tour card system is so silly at times.

Still, we have 14 out of 16 players confirmed. Let's look at the form guide of who's scoring the most points per turn since we returned from the break, and see if it can give us some sort of guide as to who might make it through the qualifier. I'm just going to list Tour Card holders, so let's go:

1 Michael van Gerwen 98.63
2 Gary Anderson 96.76
3 Ian White 94.13 - Q1*
4 Mensur Suljovic 93.46
5 Jeffrey de Zwaan 93.43 - Q2
6 Michael Smith 92.84
7 Daryl Gurney 92.79 - Q3
8 Kyle Anderson 92.66 - Q4
9 Brendan Dolan 92.66 - Q5
10 Rob Cross 92.63
11 Stephen Burton 92.14 - Q6
12 Stephen Bunting 91.96 - Q7
13 Benito van de Pas 91.39 - Q8
14 Gerwyn Price 91.38
15 Simon Whitlock 91.36
16 Steve Beaton 91.34 - Q9
17 Dave Chisnall 91.30 - Q10

Now White is the fifteenth man in based on his European Tour win, hence the asterisk, so he's only going to be relevant if we get two random players grab the last two spots from the World Series. Both would need to be from the unseeded players, and you have Price, van den Bergh and Wade already in from the first round, so realistically you're looking at one of Gurney, Chisnall, White, Anderson or Beaton from the top half, whereas from the bottom it's much slimmer pickings, with only Jamie Lewis and Keegan Brown maybe doing something - this in a half with the world number one and the world champion. So you've got to think that White is safe. Which leaves you with numbers 2-9 from there.

Now alarm bells should be ringing when you read Benito's name, so if we filter it down to over 100 legs played since the break, he gets punted and Chisnall gets the last spot. But the qualifier is seeded - so who will the top eight seeds be? You're looking at, assuming White and Hopp hold on, Adrian Lewis, Daryl Gurney, Joe Cullen, Darren Webster, Dave Chisnall, Mervyn King, James Wilson and Danny Noppert. It's very, very possible that you have an absolutely brutal draw and get several of these players in the same section - dependent on how far down the seedings go.

I'm going to update the Second Division Darts table now, with not long left in the season we should be getting close to a final winner.

Sunday 28 October 2018

Instantly forgettable final

Real shame how the standards seemed to fall through the floor when it got to the business end of things. That might have been the lowest quality final since that exbo Suljovic won, as far as ranking major finals go I'm not sure when we've had a worse one, although I believe the Grand Prix wasn't the greatest. Still, congrats to Wade for getting the first win since forever, and Whitlock for making another major final - Wade's basically got to be in the Premier League now based off of his floor form as well, and with nobody making great cases, Whitlock returning isn't out of the question.

Got to feel for Hopp and Cullen really, I'd have thought if Cullen had have got over the line he'd have beaten whoever he drew in the final. Also feel for King and Ratajski, the runout being such that they've got sixteen qualifiers from the big events and the European Tour for the Grand Slam - so unless they make it through what could be a stacked qualifier, they're not going to be there. It'd be somewhat funny if Hopp, having had match darts to make the final, lost out because Gurney or someone else otherwise not qualified, made it all the way to the final of the World Series, which has the last two spots. A couple of interesting draws there - White/Kyle Anderson could be good, we've got all of last year's worlds specials in Lewis/DVDB/Cross in the same section, van Gerwen's got a really easy draw.

New FRH rankings:

1 Michael van Gerwen
2 Rob Cross
3 Peter Wright
4 Gary Anderson
5 Daryl Gurney
6 Mensur Suljovic
7 James Wade (UP 7)
8 Simon Whitlock (UP 2)
9 Ian White (DOWN 1)
10 Phil Taylor (DOWN 3)
11 Michael Smith (DOWN 2)
12 Gerwyn Price (DOWN 1)
13 Darren Webster (DOWN 1)
14 Dave Chisnall (DOWN 1)
15 Joe Cullen (UP 2)
16 Adrian Lewis (DOWN 1)
17 Jonny Clayton (DOWN 1)
18 Mervyn King
19 Steve West (NEW)
20 Stephen Bunting (DOWN 1)

Hopp is up to 25, in case you were wondering.

Dortmund semi final/final lines

Semi finals:

West - 27% vs Cross, 50% vs Cullen
Whitlock - 32% vs Cross, 56% vs Cullen
Webster - 40% vs Price, 47% vs Wade
Hopp - 24% vs Price, 30% vs Wade

Final:

West - 48% vs Webster, 64% vs Hopp, 38% vs Price, 45% vs Wade
Whitlock - 54% vs Webster, 70% vs Hopp, 44% vs Price, 52% vs Wade
Cross - 72% vs Webster, 85% vs Hopp, 63% vs Price, 70% vs Wade
Cullen - 48% vs Webster, 65% vs Hopp, 38% vs Price, 45% vs Wade

As I've got a few minutes before it kicks off, a few words on the FRH rankings and where players can rise to. Cross is locked into number 2 but can close the gap to van Gerwen to under 200,000 points with a win. Whitlock and Price are very close for numbers 10 and 11 right now, a win will see them both rise over White, Taylor and Smith, while a win would see either get into the top 5. Webster's a place behind but would need to make the final or go further than either of those two. Wade would also need a final to go any higher, that would see him pass Chisnall and Webster for number 12. Cullen's one spot behind Wade but would need a final to pass Wade, which'd also see him go over Chisnall, as well as Webster if he lost in the quarters. West is up into the top 20 again, a win in the quarters will get him over King, while reaching the final would see him get above Clayton and Lewis - binking would see him rise as high as number 7 potentially. That leaves Hopp - he's already passed Barney and reached the top 30, in at #28 - a win in the quarters would get him into the top 25, while reaching the final would see him just outside the top 20.

European Championship - from bad to worse

Yeah, that wasn't pretty at all. Let's start with the Hopp game - 156 checkout and the ten darter aside, Hopp didn't play all that great again - only four of the ten legs he won were in fifteen darts or less, three of those four being the legs to move from 7-6 down to 9-7 up - this was just Wilson not threatening the Hopp throw in the slightest outside of the breakback he got in leg ten. Hopp's first leg won was solid, but the next five he won, including one break, were all six visit legs - and what did Wilson have left after five visits? 66, 80, 7, 56 (in the break) and 142. So it was just the leg where he missed the 122 where he'd actually left a double, let alone had a dart at it. If he picks up just one of those to lead 8-5 rather than 7-6 when Hopp hit the ten darter to spark his run, does Hopp do that at all? It's questionable.

Elsewhere, Price looked good again against Chisnall, never really giving up much at all on his own throw, taking a couple of breaks when he was offered them and forcing a break in the eleventh with a four visit kill to make it 8-3 and effectively kill the game. Reyes/Webster sounded like a cracker to watch, maybe not the highest standard, but towards the end where they had that clownshow leg where nobody could hit a double, Reyes naturally follows up next leg with a ten darter, Webster holds then breaks to throw for the game at 9-8, misses match darts but thinks he'll be back unless Reyes hits a 145 out, which he does, then Reyes, waiting to return on 97 for the match, sees Webster go out 156 to break in the decider. Wade/Evans didn't see Ricky step up as we thought he'd have to - it's a tale of missed doubles, five to break in leg three, one to hold in leg four, two to hold in leg six, three to break in leg seven, at which stage the damage was done, Wade showing a bit of class at the end to go out 130 and 121 for the match and back to back twelve dart legs, fair play.

Wide open now - following on from where I mentioned Burton looking at the Slam permutations, I think Hopp making the final doesn't automatically knock King out, it just moves Hopp up from the fourteenth man in (from his Euro Tour title) to having a spot locked up, on top of the Price and Cross permutations. Anyone other than Cross (West, Whitlock, Cullen) in the top half would definitely knock King out, while Wade or Webster would see someone out in the bottom half. Price has clinched anyway as he's moved ahead of White on the Order of Merit, so Cross or Price making the final would see White clinch a spot as well.

Looking at the percentages to win this, Cross still leads the way with 36%, but Price is now second favourite on 17% - Whitlock, Webster and Wade all have 10% with West, Cullen and Hopp having 6%, 5% and 2%. I know that doesn't add up, that's rounding. For today's quarters, West/Whitlock is priced pretty closely with Whitlock around 55/45 ahead on the market. This is very close to how I'm reading it as well - Whitlock having 56% on the year long stats. It'd need a huge swing on the recent stats to even think about betting, and as it only moves 1% in favour of Whitlock, I'm not touching this one. Cullen/Cross is next with Cross being the 2-1 favourite. On the recent stats, that is bang on within a quarter of a percent to how the master computer is reading it. Season long I'm getting it a bit more in favour of Cross, up at 72%, so certainly worth thinking about, but if there is a differential in stage and floor form then this wouldn't show it and that's certainly a possibility for Cullen, Cross being pretty sluggish against North is enough to not bet. Third up is Webster/Hopp, which is a similar line to yesterday with Webster a slight favourite - a touch shorter than Wilson, but not much. Season long I'm seeing Webster as a 2-1 favourite. Since the Matchplay I'm seeing it as nearly 60/40 in favour of Webster. 0.25u Webster 10/13, I should probably go as strong as I did yesterday but the crowd could certainly help to pull things a little bit nearer, while Darren's got all the experience in the world, especially over the last couple of years in long leg play formats, you never know, it might give Hopp the extra couple of percent that warrants toning down the bet size. Let's not forget this is a huge pressure spot for Darren as well - win this and he's in the semis with a very winnable match to make his first major final. Last up is Price/Wade (at least according to oddschecker, dartsdata reckons this and the Hopp game are the other way around? If that's true, and it's true that the oddschecker order was there first and it was changed, that can only be to benefit Hopp, which is bent. The PDC website is still showing Hopp on third so we'll roll with that). Line has Wade at 8/11 to Price's 5/4 - which surprises me, I'd have thought it's either 10/11 pick your poison or Price would have the edge. Since the Matchplay, the model favours Price hugely. Enormously. It's over 70%, nearly 75%. Year long, it's a lot closer but still Price being favoured at 57%. We mention Wade and we have to talk consistency - Wade is, as you would expect, a lot tighter on that, averaging exactly 90 in losing legs compared to 92.65 when winning per turn - Price is 93.59 when winning, which explains why the model favours him, but only 88.08 when losing, giving Wade a quarter of a point overall lead. Still, I think I have to go 0.25u Price 5/4, it just feels as if the line is correct and he's certainly played better in the first two rounds.

Updated before the final session seem unlikely, so I'll make another post shortly putting the semis/final permutations through the master computer to guide you all.

Friday 26 October 2018

European Championship Day 3 - now featuring an enormous mess

So I was hoping today would be a bit better on the betting front, then I have Anderson do not a lot wrong, Gerwyn slams in a four visit kill to break and lead 5-4 and that's that, O'Connor loses his mind, Schindler forgets to score, and we're then reliant on Chisnall to take out 157 with Lewis waiting on double 18 for the match to salvage something from round one. A bit more was clawed back in the evening session, with Whitlock running up a lead against Wright and holding off a comeback attempt to offset Cullen blowing Smith away after Michael missed far, far too many chances, and the net result is we're down three quarters of a unit so far. It could be worse, we could be that guy on Reddit who posted a "betting analysis", was called out by myself for not actually offering any analysis and generally not understanding how betting works, and then the post oddly disappears before we can work out how much he lost bridgejumping on a Suljovic/Gurney/Hopp treble. Oh well, you'll be alright.

Elsewhere, Michael van Gerwen is out of the event after Steve West took what van Gerwen offered him, which was really quite a lot, and with Suljovic and Wright gone, that's three of the top four seeds out before the quarters, and Price has no gimmie against Chisnall. It's really completely wide open - Burton's worked out that unless it's a Cross/Price final, the last guy in the Slam is getting dropped (I think it's King as of right now but I could be mistaken), if neither of them make it then Ratajski goes as well. Clearly Cross is now a huge favourite to reach the final and win the event with all of the biggest threats in his half of the draw falling - the outright projecton I posted the other day I've updated with the results and, while I have nowhere near the time to make small alterations to everyone's chances per match, on the season long numbers before Dortmund that drove these figures, Cross is now odds on to reach the final and 35% to bink overall. Looks like Hills are the only ones with an outright line up and it's 2/1, so that seems about right. Chizzy's now the favourite to make it out of the bottom half, but it's barely one in four - Webster, Wilson, Price and Wade are all above 13% to do the same.

So, tomorrow evening's matches, and we've got the bottom half's second round. Price/Chisnall is first up and the market's 60/40 in favour of Dave despite what the seedings say. That looks to be pretty close. Season long I've got Price between 41% and 42%, he's probably actually playing a little bit better of recent but I can't justify a bet.

Reyes/Webster is next, with Darren being a bit more of a favourite in the market up at 65% or so with a best price just better than 1/2. If this was Reyes playing peak Reyes quality to beat Suljovic, I might be concerned, but it really wasn't, there was only one fifteen dart kill - Mensur just couldn't score. Webster played a very good match to edge Bunting, and he's a prohibitive favourite on the shorter sample after the summer break at better than 80%, although season long it's just 63%, which isn't enough to bet. I'll pass this one as well, while Reyes hasn't been involved in a long leg play match since seemingly forever and Webster's been good at the format, there's always the nagging doubt that the result, if not the performance, could spark peak Reyes, and if so, watch out.

Third is Wade/Evans, with comparable odds to the previous two, Wade being the favoured party. Wade was just professional against a misfiring Schindler, while Evans really did nothing special against Gurney, just taking advantage of two poor legs to get the break back and then winning break he needed. Season long I think this is 60/40 Wade, since the summer where Ricky's had the run that got him here I think it's a flip. 0.25u Evans 2/1, looks like we have a solid enough edge but we're definitely reliant on Ricky picking his game up a touch.

Last is Hopp/Wilson in a match that the bookies can't really split, Wilson being on the right side of a weighted coinflip. Wilson's been playing far too well all season and is far too experienced to get into any shenanigans with the crowd or let it affect him in the slightest, so with me seeing him having better than a two in three shot season long and still over 60% since the break, 0.5u Wilson 10/11 looks a plum spot, Hopp's at home but this will be a longer game than he's used to - Wilson did take five from six legs against Clayton in under fifteen and averaged 107 in the two legs he lost, so it's not like he crept home. Hopp had two good legs to start and it was a bit of a mutual trainwreck from there.

Thursday 25 October 2018

European Championship Friday round 2 updates

Seems a pretty silly bit of scheduling thinking about this tournament - afternoon session on the Friday, but no afternoon session on the Saturday? Then again, the event is literally a stone's throw away from the Westfalen and Dortmund do have a home game on the Saturday afternoon, so not programming against that seems somewhat sensible. That'd be an amazing day of sport though - BVB/Hertha immediately followed by van Gerwen, Cross, Wright, Smith et al? Knew I should have booked tickets for this on spec and just seen what the fixture computer threw up.

0/2 on bets today - Lennon at least ran Smith close until Smith hit one great leg to break, hold for 5-3, then for the second time in the match Lennon couldn't go out in 21 darts on his own throw. Wattimena did nothing, well within the range of outcomes. Elsewhere, what the heck was wrong with Ian White's game - I thought he had genuine chances to go deep and he loses 6-1 to Richard North? Otherwise, it was mostly chalk and mostly one-sided forgettable games - West/King was as tight as we thought it would be, going to a decider and needing West to kill 106 after King wired bull for a 126 out, Noppert hung around against Cross for quite a while until a combination of his scoring falling off and Rob putting on the afterburners saw a 4-2 lead quickly turn into a 6-4 defeat. Nicholson was fun for two legs I guess.

There's preliminary lines out for Saturday evening. Oddschecker just has Smith/Cullen, but at least one bookie has lines for everything already and nowhere's going to be that far off.

Smith/Cullen's got Smith nearly at 1/2, is that fair? Maybe, I think it's overrating Cullen a bit. Cullen, first leg aside, really didn't play that great, Klaasen missing a stack of doubles and only getting the legs he did because Joe did the same, Smith averaged a ton and would have averaged a lot more if Lennon didn't throw junk in the first and last legs (although, if that happened, Smith is likely going home), I'm seeing this at nearly a 3-1 game in favour of Smith, so 0.5u Smith 4/7, this looks a fairly safe edge. Whitlock/Wright is next, Wright just held in six visits and broke in five every single time, pretty pedestrian stuff but not easy to really punish heavily, while Whitlock won the first leg in sixteen darts but needed no more than fifteen in any other in a 6-3 thrashing of Steve Beaton, the last two legs he won being twelve darters. The model's giving Whitlock a 35% shot - and a lot more on recent form, although on recent form the model hated Wright in the last round as well. But hey, we have the odds to go with it over the full sample quite comfortably - 0.25u Whitlock 3/1. North/Cross is third up, we talked a bit about how their games went earlier, it's a tough ask and the line looks good. We can just about get 4/1 on North, but a full sample is giving him only 21%, so there's not much there. A smaller sample is thinking he's got better chances, but betting North against the world champion in a race to 10 just seems wrong. Last is van Gerwen/West, as you'd expect the odds are pretty comical, West was OK but van Gerwen was superb, continuing his incredible form of late. For once odds of double digits odds on seem justified - especially in the more recent samples, which are putting West below 10% on the chances to come through.

That's it, today we had the longer punts, tomorrow we've got the better shots I think.

Tuesday 23 October 2018

European Championship round one bets

Projections are done and the lines have been up for a while now, so let's have a look at the Thursday evening and Friday afternoon sessions to see what we like, I'll also have a bit of a play with reducing the sample to look at form a bit more, generally after the summer break:

West/King - I'm seeing this one as the closest game of the round, with West not even having a cigarette paper's advantage, that's how marginal it is. The bookies also have it close but are leaving King 6/5 out there on offer, which season long is just about tempting, but when I close it down to a more recent sample, the model loves West, and by loves, I mean it's infatuated with West and has made a marriage proposal, it's almost that one sided that I want to bet West at 8/11... smaller samples are more prone to variance though, so I'll just pass the opener.

White/North - Line looks good on first inspection, 4/9 White when I'm pegging him at 70% is round about where I'd expect it to be. Ian is a little bit better than that on the more recent sample at around a three in four shot, not quite enough to punt though.

Whitlock/Beaton - 4/6 Whitlock with Simon being around 53% season long isn't of interest, there's a fair bit of vig so I'm not inclined to bet Beaton either, although he did have a good weekend... the model barely moved however when I shortened the sample, not even 1%, it'd be in our favour but this looks tight enough to go down to who wins the bull - and Whitlock likes a bull.

Smith/Lennon - Michael's rightly well favoured, but Lennon's no mug over this distance, and the numbers seem to back this up. If anything, Steve's playing better now than he has been all year despite his big breakthrough coming in May - over 40% to win this on the recent sample, coupled with one in three season long, points to 0.25u Lennon 13/5.

Cullen/Klaasen - Jelle's been putting up god awful numbers all year, but Cullen's been pretty average on the Pro Tour so the year long figures settle at round about what the odds suggest. Cullen's numbers since the break though are a bit better, but a 68% win chance on that sample at 4/7 isn't really tasty.

van Gerwen/Nicholson - Can we bet Paul? We can't bet Michael at 1/14. I don't think we can - 16% season long might be worth it at 10/1, but more recently van Gerwen's been on fire, giving Nicholson less than a 7% chance.

Cross/Noppert - Cross is close to value here, better than 1/3 with a 75% shot indicates you should at least consider him for an accumulator/banker, but does Noppert's recent win and general play warrant any bet recommendations? Not really, it just brings Cross's chances in to more or less where the line is, Danny having 27% at 5/2 is close enough for me to ignore it.

Wright/Wattimena - Jermaine's been playing a lot of darts, but has he been playing at a good enough level to upset Snakebite? 30% year long at 10/3 would normally be tempting in itself, but from September onwards? Where Wright has won a Pro Tour event, made the Champions League final (although that doesn't count in the stats) and finalled the Grand Prix (which also doesn't)? Jermaine actually projects to win the game. Weird, I know. 0.25u Wattimena 10/3.

Clayton/Wilson - Another really, really tight game on the projections to kick off the second session, this time it's Clayton they're offering 6/5 on. It's a similar story however to the West/King game, in that the more recent stats favour Wilson enough that the line looks right. It's not the stupid swing in the West game, but it's just enough that it corrects from very tiny marginal value to nothing whatsoever.

Webster/Bunting - These guys met at the Grand Prix, and Webster won comfortably, the bookies however can barely separate them, and neither can I, giving Darren the slightest edge which with him being 5/6 looks like another no bet. It's another weird one like the West game whereby if we severely reduce the sample, one guy springs out to be a huge favourite - and that's Stephen Bunting. I'll generally only go for using the smaller sample if the larger sample was already hinting at a bet, and it wasn't.

Price/Anderson - Gerwyn has the 60/40 line edge in a game I'm projecting Anderson to win. Price has been playing better of late, getting that Euro Tour title hints at that, but the more recent games favour Kyle even more. You wouldn't have thought it, but as I said in the last write up, if it was hinting towards a bet and it swings even more in our favour, we'll go with it - 0.25u Anderson 29/20.

Suljovic/Reyes - Hard to work out how Cristo's got here, it's a name that's dropped from the radar a little bit, just steady qualifying getting him there. Mensur we know more about and he's nearly as short at 1/4, which on the season long stats looks too short, but we can't consider it - Reyes, based on games in the last two months, has less than a 10% chance at pulling the upset.

Gurney/Evans - Market has this at 2-1 in Daryl's favour, roughly where I thought it would be but Evans might be small value. It would only be small value however, and the form guide makes it even smaller - 37% season long, 35% from the September/October games... at 2/1 there's really not enough there.

Hopp/O'Connor - Max is the favourite in the books, O'Connor is the favourite in the projections. 55% offered 13/10 looks nice unless the form guide gives us any reason not to do it... form guide likes Hopp a bit more, but only so much that it becomes almost an exact coin flip. 0.25u O'Connor 13/10 to take out the home nation player.

Wade/Schindler - German number two coming in now against the Machine, if you read the previous post you'll know that Martin's figures in the Players Championship have been great, and in everything all year they're good enough to make this close, over the last couple of months however he's really rocking into form, enough that it's making him around a 55/45 favourite. Odds against and with homefield advantage? Yes please, 0.25u Schindler 7/4.

Lewis/Chisnall - Oddschecker's somehow throwing up a line involving Jamie Lewis on Sportingbet, lol, the market says this is a flip, I'm favouring Dave over the course of the season, and the form guide tends to think the same thing - upping his chances by a couple of points or there abouts to make it exactly 60/40. That's good enough for a bet, 0.25u Chisnall 20/21.

Six bets, only one of them odds against, let's see what happens.

Some Players Championship statistics

Thought I'd share a few things with you - DartConnect has a fair bit of info in the "tour leaderboard" section, but I don't find a lot of it particularly useful, and for the love of god they need to add some tooltips to the headers as I have no idea what a bunch of them mean. So I will - I'm filtering on the Players Championship dates, and for the rate stats I'm imposing a 200 leg minimum. That's basically nine legs per tournament, not that huge a number, which brings it down to 120 players. It cuts out the likes of Cadby and Ratajski who only played a small number, and it also cuts out the likes of Groen - while he's played sixteen events, it's hard to get up to 200 with the results he's had, so, without further ado, some stats and commentary:

Most legs won:

1 Adrian Lewis 455
1 Ian White 455
3 Gary Anderson 381
4 James Wilson 378
5 Rob Cross 376
6 Michael Smith 373
7 Dave Chisnall 364
8 James Wade 359
9 Jermaine Wattimena 353
10 Steve Beaton 348

You'd expect White up there, but Lewis is an interesting name to tie with him - he has made quite an effort this year, he's not missed an event and while he's not won one, three finals, two semis and three quarters are a fair few legs and he's been pretty consistent in not going out too early. Shout out to James Wilson - the win will come someday.

Most legs lost:

1 Adrian Lewis 301
2 Ian White 293
3 James Wilson 286
4 Dave Chisnall 280
5 James Wade 278
6 John Henderson 277
7 Michael Smith 261
8 Jermaine Wattimena 260
8 Stephen Bunting 260
10 Rob Cross 258

Who knew that playing a lot of darts at this level will see you lose a lot of legs as well as win them. It takes until you get down to Rowby John Rodriguez at 211 legs lost that you find someone with more legs lost than won - to accumulate a lot of lost legs, you've got to play a lot of legs, and to play a lot of legs you've got to win a lot of matches.

Highest overall points per turn:

1 Michael van Gerwen 96.98
2 Gary Anderson 95.22
3 Rob Cross 93.86
4 Mensur Suljovic 93.84
5 Ian White 93.46
6 Michael Smith 93.18
7 Peter Wright 92.78
8 Dave Chisnall 92.54
9 Adrian Lewis 92.18
10 Jeffrey de Zwaan 91.97

For any Germans reading, erstlich willkommen, and Schindler and Clemens are both just outside the top 10, Schindler 11th and Clemens 15th. That's the list of names you'd expect to see really, but let me throw up a few other names that are up in the top 40 - Ross Smith's just outside the top 10. Brendan Dolan's only one spot behind Daryl Gurney, both in the top 20. Paul Nicholson's in the top 30. Jamie Lewis, who we've seemingly not heard much from at all this year, is up there. Stephen Burton has had a solid season to end up over 90 on this stat.

Lowest overall points per turn:

1 Ross Twell 79.29
2 Eddie Dootson 81.09
3 Jamie Bain 82.22
4 Aden Kirk 82.89
5 Mark Dudbridge 83.34
6 Jarred Cole 83.63
7 Robbie Green 83.72
8 Chris Quantock 83.74
9 Gary Eastwood 83.98
10 Devon Petersen 84.11

For those that are wondering where Benito is, he's below 85 on this as well at 17th, but there's a few interesting names here - Scott Taylor's in the lowest 20, and he's made a final this year. Ronny Huybrechts is just in the bottom 20 as well. Jamie Caven, Jelle Klaasen and Justin Pipe are all down in the bottom 30.

Highest percentage of legs won:

1 Michael van Gerwen 68.52%
2 Gary Anderson 62.77%
3 Ian White 60.83%
4 Adrian Lewis 60.19%
5 Peter Wright 59.58%
6 Rob Cross 59.31%
7 Michael Smith 58.83%
8 Darren Webster 58.49%
9 Steve Beaton 58.10%
10 Jermaine Wattimena 57.59%

Just how much better is van Gerwen than everyone else? This should be a pretty good indication.

Lowest percentage of legs won:

1 Eddie Dootson 32.20%
2 Terry Temple 32.23%
3 Ross Twell 32.59%
4 Jamie Bain 36.58%
5 Mark Dudbridge 37.87%
6 Robbie Green 38.54%
7 Kevin Burness 39.22%
8 George Killington 39.56%
9 Steve Hine 39.78%
10 Gary Eastwood 39.85%

Burness is in the World Championship, and Killington might be as well through the Development Tour. That might not be too pretty.

Highest percentage of won legs done so in fifteen darts or less:

1 Michael van Gerwen 72.76%
2 Michael Smith 67.83%
3 Gary Anderson 66.14%
4 Gerwyn Price 64.38%
5 Ian White 63.96%
6 Rob Cross 62.77%
7 Jeffrey de Zwaan 62.28%
8 Dave Chisnall 61.54%
9 Steve Lennon 61.32%
10 Martin Schindler 60.81%

Look, look, Schindler's on a list!

Monday 22 October 2018

European Championship outrights preview

So earlier this evening I shoved 400+ permutations of matches into the master computer, and this is what it spat out:


Isn't it beautiful? Why yes, it is, but what can it tell us?

It shouldn't surprise anyone to think that we shouldn't bet on Michael van Gerwen - the way the draw has come out is an absolute bastard, and we already looked at this previously. But can we find value elsewhere? If you're looking each way you might want to have a look at the percentages to make the final - the model is loving Chisnall and, oddly, Kyle Anderson - these are season long stats, so if you want to discount options based on form, be my guest, but if you filter on just since September instead, while his consistency plummets, Kyle's scoring on winning legs, at a similar percentage to Suljovic for comparison with a greater sample, is a top six game, and looking overall in that time span, he has a top ten points per turn sandwiched between Michael Smith and Daryl Gurney. That bottom quarter has a lot of players of fairly similar standards, and he's a big price - if he can click, as he did when he beat Suljovic in their most recent game, then there is nobody in that bottom quarter, maybe even the whole bottom half, that he can't beat. This is the major event where he's had the deepest run and probably should have won it, so who knows.

Chizzy's another alternative - like Kyle he's got a tough opening game, that eighth of the draw that they're all in is incredibly tough to call, but let's look at the top bit. Ian White and Michael Smith might be worth a look. White we've eulogised about for months now, but Smith's numbers throughout the year are really good, and he's a decent price. It could be the better punt - White's going to have to go through Cross in round two, which isn't easy, whereas Smith would get there a round earlier, but think about this - if Smith does beat Cross, then it'd be at the same stage as a probable van Gerwen/Wright matchup. There's a big chance that you can realise a hell of a lot of your equity in the bet if van Gerwen does lose to Wright, as has happened a few times this season - the odds would plummet in that event and then it's just a case of risk tolerance, and if not, Smith's never going to be drawing dead against anyone.

We won't be touching Suljovic, who while he's a decent shot to make the final and actually the most likely to do so, he doesn't do it enough to really warrant an each way bet. We won't be touching Lewis or Wade, who seem way too short on name value in a packed area of the draw that our projections like a hell of a lot more. 10/1 for Wright seems comical given he'd probably be around 3/1 if not worse in the quarter final and then still have to advance through two really tough games in the semis and final. We'll look at things a bit more on the first round matches probably on Wednesday, including the bets, but the first round projections aren't going to change in the interim period so you can look at the odds and draw your own conclusions as to what you think we'll be suggesting.

Two quick things - the breakeven percentage should be fairly obvious, it's the percentage based on the odds that someone would need to win in order for a bet to be profitable (indicating that, taking the best prices of all bookies earlier this evening, it's a nice 12% overround for them, and you wonder why I just bet single matches). Also, I don't think I mentioned who had the worst points per turn for qualifiers (over 50 legs played) on the European Tour this year. It's none other than Robert Thornton.

edit - I have no idea why there's no conditional formatting on the win% column, don't drink and spreadsheet kids

Sunday 21 October 2018

Ratajski hype

He's only gone and done it again, hasn't he? In a final where whoever won, de Zwaan got done over for the last Grand Slam spot, Krzysztof managed to defeat Adrian Lewis to do the double and immediately secure a bunch of things - the tour card looked safe, but getting into the Slam (whereby apparently the first tiebreaker amongst players winning Players Championship events is actually the number that they've won, who knew) and getting a much better seed at Minehead. It's all a bit of a mess in terms of permutations for Minehead and the worlds, by the looks of things Tabern, Edgar, Taylor, Hunt and Alcinas were among the last few people to make Minehead with van de Pas, Woodhouse and O'Connor being the last few players out, Jimmy Hendriks also being close despite hitting a nine today, while Luke Humphries making it all the way to the semi finals was just one round short of making it.

As far as the worlds goes, it's looking like Humphries just did enough, just eliminating Edgar, Gilding and Razma, Justin Pipe also being a player that also missed out - while there's still things that can still change, in that Pipe just being outside the seeds but making a ridiculous run in the Grand Slam qualifier would allow him to get in, a lot has been cleaned up.

A word on the game between Suljovic and Kyle Anderson - that might be one of the highest level games that's ever been seen on the Pro Tour. It finished 6-4 to Anderson, but between them they won all ten legs within fifteen darts, half of those within twelve darts, and they were scoring heavily enough that both were scoring over 100 per turn on the legs they didn't win. Really sick stuff.

New FRH rankings:

1 Michael van Gerwen
2 Rob Cross
3 Peter Wright
4 Gary Anderson
5 Daryl Gurney
6 Mensur Suljovic
7 Phil Taylor
8 Ian White
9 Michael Smith
10 Simon Whitlock
11 Gerwyn Price
12 Darren Webster
13 Dave Chisnall
14 James Wade
15 Adrian Lewis (UP 2)
16 Jonny Clayton (DOWN 1)
17 Joe Cullen (DOWN 1)
18 Mervyn King
19 Stephen Bunting
20 Steve Beaton (NEW)

Kyle Anderson is up into the top 25 following his semi final today, while Barney is down to number 28, below both Klaasen and Wattimena in terms of the Dutch rankings, with de Zwaan probably coming close real soon. Ratajski cracks the top 40 for I think the first time, up to number 38.

Over the next week I'll preview the European Championship and do some more looks at how things stand in the tour card race as well as some season long Players Championship stats.

Asian Tour 2 - Electric Boogaloo

While I wait for the final Players Championship of the year - congrats to Ratajski on binking it and probably securing a tour card as a result, pity for Dobey to lose in another final, and today's huge as the last event before a bunch of cutoffs, can Gilding get into the worlds? He's playing as good as he ever has but he needs to get results right now. But while I wait, Scothead180 made an interesting point on Reddit re: the Asian Tour, querying whether the stats would look better if we filtered down on just the quarter finals onwards, as in the earlier rounds, players may not play their best stuff. TheMaximum180 didn't make a good point, referencing irrelevancies like averages and one player having three good visits to the board once, but let's ignore that...

This is understandable reasoning given the general quality of the Asian Tour, or at least the spread of quality. That said, are players really going to take it that much easier dependent on the opponent? There's a few things in play here - first the nature of darts, this isn't a game like snooker where, if you're playing a worse player, you can try to keep it safe and wait for your opponent to make the first mistake, as he'd be more likely to do - outside of a few small spots where your opponent's score is going to potentially affect your choice of route on a checkout, the two players are in discrete games, and there's no real advantage to be gained by slowing things down. It's a six round, very occasionally seven round tournament - that isn't that long and it's only a race to five, it's not like the Challenge Tour where you're doing two events in a day and you might think about pacing yourself, if indeed you can - how easy is it to turn your A-game on and off anyway?

But let's think about one thing that might happen - if you're playing against a weaker player, and maybe you play things a bit safer or just having a bad leg, that bad leg is more likely to count than if you're playing in the worlds - against a 70 average player you'll get a seven visit kill count most of the time, against a top 10 player he's gone out and you just need to look into the losing averages at the same time and see if there's a huge difference in consistency. So let's do what Scothead suggested - I'm going to filter from the last sixteen onwards - firstly to give more sample, but secondly, that's around about the type of level where all the real crap is filtered out - while these five seem to be above the rest at least in terms of money won, if you chuck in the likes of Muramatsu, Perez, Harith Lim, Ono, Park etc, you'll have a competent enough opponent.

So what do the stats look like now? Let's see:


Player by player, Ilagan actually has worse stats than in the whole sample, although it's only ever so slightly, Malicdem's a bit better, getting his 15 or less above 40% and becoming one of two players in the sample to over 80%, albeit only just. Lim's got a huge jump in twelve darters, is up at 56% of legs in fifteen darts and over 88% of legs in eighteen darts - which is pretty damned solid really - it's similar numbers to Steve West and Keegan Brown, without the same level of four visit kill explosiveness (Brown has an 11.6/55.7/88.4 stat line, West 12.3/55.6/88.1). Lam is a little better in that he's got above 30% of legs won in fifteen darts and is now up to 75% of legs won in eighteen darts, but that's still nothing to threaten anybody, while Asada actually has an even larger sample of legs won very slowly, but at least has got up to 45% of legs won "in par" compared to just under 40% in the whole sample.

So do the numbers look better? Generally yes. Do they make the players look like they might compete? Apart from Lim, who looked the best before, no - but Paul Lim being a competitive darts player isn't exactly new and exciting news.

Thursday 18 October 2018

Outright betting for the European Championship

This is something I've briefly touched on before I think, it may even have been the exact same sort of post. Michael van Gerwen is a current best price of 10/11 to win the European Championship. The question is whether this is value or not. My initial assumption would be no, if only because his half of the draw is absolutely brutal - let's look at a best and worst case scenario for each round, and then see what chances the master computer thinks he has of binking the whole thing. Bear in mind that, in order to make a profit, van Gerwen needs to win the whole tournament 53% of the time.

Round 1 - Paul Nicholson

This is clearly a best or worst case. While Nicholson certainly isn't the hardest opponent he could hope to face, the first round is just best of eleven. Anything can happen in a best of eleven format. It was only two years ago where van Gerwen himself was a dart away from elimination against Simon Whitlock. The computer thinks that van Gerwen wins this match 83.93% of the time. That's already eating over 14% of the 47% that we can afford to give up - mostly this is the format, if these two met in round two, van Gerwen would be over 90%. In this format he's lost this year to Schindler, Razma, Dolan, Clayton, White, O'Connor... would Nicholson really be that odd?

Round 2 - Steve West/Mervyn King

Now we come onto games where we have a choice. These two, if they faced, would project to see King win 51% of the time, so let's say King is the worst case scenario. Here, in a longer format, van Gerwen wins 87.94% of the time - but 87.22% against West? That's a strange one, but we'll roll with it - that now makes van Gerwen 73.2% or 73.81% to make the quarters depending on his opponent. That's already more than half our wiggle room gone and we've not even hit a top ten player yet!

Quarter final - Simon Whitlock/Peter Wright/Jermaine Wattimena/Steve Beaton

Pretty obvious worst case scenario here, and that's running into Snakebite, who having not won one of these where they got shared about quite a bit, finds himself as the number 9 seed. While Wright's managed to get some key wins, he still is a big dog, with van Gerwen winning 74.41% of the time. What of the best case? That'd be Jermaine, who van Gerwen projects to defeat a whopping 91.64% of the time. It's the first one where we have a bit of deviation, in the worst case, van Gerwen's now down to 54.47% in a worst case - considering that rounds one and two don't have much deviation and Wright is surely a huge, huge favourite to make this stage, this is also the most likely case if you ask me. In a perfect world for MvG he advances 67.64% of the time, just more than two in three - a fair bit better, but still with plenty of early exits.

Semi final - Ian White/Joe Cullen/Michael Smith/Rob Cross/Danny Noppert/Steve Lennon/Jelle Klaasen/Richard North

Boy, that's a fun section. If all those top four advance to round two, the remainder of this quarter will be must see TV. The big danger here ought to be Cross, who van Gerwen in a now longer best of 21 format, defeats 72.97% of the time, but oddly enough Smith actually beats van Gerwen a bit more often, van Gerwen winning that one 71.37% of the time. Smith's actually averaging more on the winning legs than Cross is, oh boy. White would also have better than a one in five shot at him. Best case? Klaasen and it's not really that close - van Gerwen should beat Klaasen 95.61% of the time. This leaves him in the final 64.67% of the time given the easiest run, but 38.88% of the time given the worst run out.

Final - Anyone else that's left

We've already mentioned the vast majority of the FRH top 10 that are actually playing this - it's only Gurney and Suljovic that aren't there, with Price, Webster, Chizzy etc just outside, Lewis is there as well. It might surprise you to learn that Dave Chisnall has the best chance of beating MvG, with van Gerwen only winning 76.27% of matches, it might also surprise you (or not, depending on how much you read here) to see that Max Hopp would be the best opponent, who van Gerwen ought to beat 95.02% of the time.

So what's our worst case scenario? van Gerwen lifts the title 29.65% of the time - which makes a fair line somewhere between 9/4 and 5/2. In the best run, he takes the crown 61.45% of the time - around 8/13 being the right price. His actual chances are obviously somewhere in the middle, but they're going to be weighted fairly strongly towards the better run - he'd have to do well to avoid Wright, avoid all of White/Smith/Cross, then avoid all of the decent players listed in the final. Let's just say I won't be lumping on van Gerwen to lift the title. Nicholson at 10/1 to win the first round though? That's a tempter...

Monday 15 October 2018

So, about that Asian tour...

Now that's done, what do we know about the qualifiers? It turns out, thanks to DartConnect, a hell of a lot more than what we have done in previous years, because they're giving us lots of juicy statistics to look at. So, of the five that have made it out, how quickly have they finished legs? Let's see:


I'm only listing events 3-12, firstly because events one and two appear somewhat broken on DartConnect, and secondly it always seems better to use more recent data, and ten events (even if they didn't play them all - Asada missed the last couple and Ilagan/Lam missed some of 5/6) is a nice round number that should give a good sample - they've all won over 150 legs, with Ilagan having the largest count at 213.

What does this tell us? It tells us a lot more than averages - as we know from way back when I took my postings onto this blog, averages mean nothing and rise when playing against good players - and there's certainly plenty of players on the Asian Tour which, to put it nicely, wouldn't generally be described as good. There's a heck of a lot of 5-0's, 5-1's etc where these guys are going to have to do all the doubling legwork with the reduction in averages that brings about.

What it does tell us is how quickly they'll score the requisite 501 points to win a leg. Now having a 5% chance of winning a leg in twelve darts isn't terminal - there's plenty of players in my database with numbers in that region - Wayne Warren is under 5%, Cody Harris is even lower than him, heck, Paul Hogan (for it is he) only managed two legs from 35 in that speed in the UK Open (although, in fairness, it was a bit chilly). Challenge Tour king Michael Barnard is only just over 4% (on the main tour). That's more a rating about explosive scoring and the ability to get a break from nowhere.

What is more concerning is that none of them finish half their legs in fifteen darts or better, and none of them (apart from Lim) finish 80% of their legs in eighteen darts or better. Over my whole database of over 45,000 legs (of which only a fairly small percentage is the BDO), the percentage of legs finished in five visits is 50.8%. Only Lim comes remotely close to that. Sure, there's plenty of players that have less than that (Hopp and Mansell are less this season and they've won on tour this season, Klaasen is and he's a former world champion who's qualified for multiple majors this year), Barnard again is, Norris, Labanauskas, McGeeney... van de Pas is down at 37%! But van de Pas is at least getting 80% of legs in eighteen darts or better (exactly, in case you were asking). There's really very few players below 80% that Porter or Hearn could give a WC wildcard to without you thinking they've both been on a week long spice bender. Maybe a Baxter or a Caven that are "name" players but haven't been relevant for years. Lerchbacher possibly, he's at least over 10% for twelve dart legs. Robbie Green or Devon Petersen? Mark Walsh (sorry Burton)? John Part? Ted Evetts?

Just looking at the fifteen and eighteen dart percentages, Lim's very comparable to Ryan Harrington, Davy van Baelen and Diogo Portela, Ilagan to Barry Lynn, Asada to Jim Brown and Lee Harris, Malicdem to Keith Geraghty, and finally Lam to Aden Kirk. If you're asking who half of those players are, then think before looking at the world championship draw and betting on any of these guys.

European Championship field decided - what looks interesting?

Firstly, hold mother of god was MvG playing well in this tournament. That final display with five out of eight legs won in twelve darts or better, and every single other round also looking excellent? That's got to be one of the best tournament displays of the season, and incredibly ominous as we rapidly approach the business end of the season.

Let's get the new FRH rankings out of the way first:

1 Michael van Gerwen
2 Rob Cross
3 Peter Wright
4 Gary Anderson
5 Daryl Gurney
6 Mensur Suljovic
7 Phil Taylor
8 Ian White
9 Michael Smith (UP 1)
10 Simon Whitlock (DOWN 1)
11 Gerwyn Price
12 Darren Webster
13 Dave Chisnall
14 James Wade (UP 2)
15 Jonny Clayton (DOWN 1)
16 Joe Cullen (DOWN 1)
17 Adrian Lewis
18 Mervyn King
19 Stephen Bunting
20 John Henderson (NEW)

Hendo's last sixteen appearance puts him ahead of Steve West by a few hundred points, and he's almost exactly a thousand points ahead of Steve Beaton as well. The big beneficiaries in the top 20 are obviously Wade and Smith, Klaasen's quarter now puts him ahead of Barney for a surprising #2 spot in the Dutch rankings, although while Jelle's #25, Wattimena and de Zwaan are also in the top 30. North as a result of the semi final climbs into the top 40 at the expense of Dimitri van den Bergh, while Matt Edgar hits the top 80.

The European Championship is done in ranking order. You'd think that, over the course of a season, the best players will end up towards the top of the rankings, right? Well let's see - if we have a minimum rule of 50 legs played on the European Tour, let's run down the top players in terms of points per turn on the European Tour, and see how it compares to the seedings they got for Dortmund - a special prize for you if you can guess who has the lowest points per turn on the European Tour that has played more than 50 legs:


Grey indicates the player didn't qualify (and while this includes players without much sample, it'll also include players that did have a decent sample but still didn't get there), red indicates a player who got a worse seeding than their points per turn would suggest, green indicates the opposite, and yellow indicated you're the best player that's ever lived.

From what I like in the first round, Price/Anderson has the potential to be good if Kyle can bring his game, Hopp/O'Connor could be entertaining, Clayton/Wilson seems hard to call initially while Lewis/Chisnall and a lot of the other games in general between the middling seeds appear to have potential. I'll do more in depth once the last two Players Championships are done, which are going to be huge - we've already seen the likes of Matt Edgar, who's right on the borderline, withdraw from the World Series qualifier to concentrate on it - seems an odd decision, surely the best way to prepare for competitive darts is competitive darts, and one would think that he'd be in or around Barnsley the night before anyway, but there you go. We've also had the last of the Asian Tour, Lim and Maclidem confirmed what looked to be surefire places anyway after Asada won the Japanese qualifier, but the i's are now dotted and the t's crossed, so we're now getting much closer to knowing the field with half of the non-Pro Tour qualifiers in the books, with the Pro Tour finishing next weekend that should also give us a close to confirmed list barring anything really weird happening that pushes Benito out of a seed and letting an extra player in through the Pro Tour rankings (everyone below him in the seeds that's in a spot looks safe through the Pro Tour right now). Will be a very interesting weekend.

Sunday 14 October 2018

Göttingen round 3

Saturday turned out to be really quite bad, and it all started so well with Matt Edgar getting over the line against Joe Cullen, a big enough swing that despite going 0/3 in the rest of the afternoon we were only a tenth of a unit down, going 0/4 in the evening session though isn't pretty and leaves us down half a unit for the tournament. Seemed to be a combination of the opponents playing out of their skin and missed doubles - looking through game by game, Bunting's four leg run to close the game was incredible, Gurney didn't leave any real chances for Humphries to break and then an eleven darter in leg 8 iced the game, Clemens had a couple of legs with darts at double but most of the other legs from Clayton were fifteen darters so he wasn't giving away anything easy, Evans was a case of throw one bad leg to let Webster lead 2-0 with the throw and then Darren offered little in return, Wade had his best performance in some time, Ratajski missed darts at double in three of the legs Hopp won and then was allowed eighteen darts to win the decider but couldn't even get down to less than 100 in that time, while de Zwaan was on the wrong end of two terrible legs from both players in legs 5-6 which decided the game against Cross.

It's cleared up a lot of the Dortmund scenarios - Beaton, Klaasen, Schindler, Reyes and Kyle Anderson have clinched spots, Nicholson is all but safe while it's a case of Dekker or North for the last spot, North being in with a win against Clayton. Today:

van Gerwen/Bunting - Nothing here, Bunting's less than 20% and it'd need the sort of finish he had yesterday again today, MvG wasn't exactly bad yesterday.

Edgar/Gurney - Think this may still be significant for Edgar, someone mentioned on Twitter that a win here would put him in a provisional worlds spot but I don't know how accurate that is, there might be a tiny bit of value at 10/3 but I'm seeing Edgar at south of 30% to win this one so let's move on.

Smith/Beaton - Smith unsurpisingly had no problems with Kantele, while Beaton needed every leg to beat Price, the line looks pretty solid at 2/5 Smith as I have him just shy of 70% to advance to the quarters.

Henderson/Chisnall - Hendo beating White was a decent shock, while Dave needed a decider against Joyce to move through, line seems close enough yet again, I'm seeing Henderson at 35% but with the best line not even giving 2/1 it's another avoid I'm afraid.

Klaasen/Schindler - Jelle had a nice upset win over Wright, while Schindler got a whitewash over King despite not playing that great, will it be a case of job done for Jelle now? Maybe, and the line looks good to say that it is - 0.25u Schindler 4/5, I'm seeing this as over 65% for the home nation player.

Clayton/North - Enormous game for Richard, who beat Whitlock yesterday, I've got him at 40%, he's around 6/4 so line looks solid once more. Maybe the pressure of the situation gets to him?

Wade/Webster - Should be a good one this, both played pretty solidly yesterday, Wade especially, the line's Wade 8/11 which looks close enough, I'm getting the Machine at 53%, which with the vig isn't giving enough of a chance on Webster to bet the Demolition Man.

Cross/Hopp - Tempted to bet Cross with Hopp being unconvincing in victory yet again, but 1/3 with Cross at 78% isn't really enough with potential boisterous home crowd backing in the last game of a session.

Back tomorrow with a round up.

Friday 12 October 2018

Göttingen round two - we continue

Solid day today on the betting front, can never complain about 4/6 when everything you're betting on is odds against, although honestly Gilding, that might be the most important game you've had since the UK Open semi final and you produce that? Oh well, let's carry on, quick projections and bet suggestions and that's it, as mentioned previously this weekend will be limited, anything you see after this before Monday afternoon you can consider a bonus:

Cullen/Edgar - Edgar played decent yesterday against de Graaf, and has been playing a bit better than his result suggests all year. It's Cullen in Europe, but on the numbers throughout Edgar's better than a one in three shot so 0.25u Edgar 13/5

Smith/Kantele - Nothing here. The numbers suggest it's a Smith bet, even at 1/7, then again these are season long and Marko's already made one projection look a bit silly and one match isn't going to suddenly make the sample not limited, so next...

Chisnall/Joyce - This line actually looks alright - I'm getting Joyce in the low 30's to win this and he's just the right side of 2/1 if you want to bet on him. Close enough to not bet, he didn't rip up any trees when beating Wattimena.

Bunting/Mansell - Think this is another underdog punt, 0.25u Mansell 2/1, when was the last time Bunting was able to put more than one really good game together? Anyone? Mickey didn't do anything spectacular, but he's been doing his usual give nothing away game for quite a while now, and that game rates to win four out of ten against Bunting, which is good enough for me.

Gurney/Humphries - Odd one in that I'm currently playing Lose Yourself on the randomiser, and this may be the only opportunity Luke's got. Do I want to bet it? Yeah, sure, 0.25u Humphries 12/5, I'm seeing this at about 36%, he'd better capture it, not let it slip.

Whitlock/North - Richard was not impressive in getting through Bunse, not at all, which is an irritant given the model's getting him up near 40% against Whitlock and the odds look nice. The model's never really liked Whitlock, so I'm wondering what the deal is here. It just doesn't seem like one to trust the model on.

White/Henderson - Wow, didn't Hendo make that first round game look difficult. Line looks close to good, projecting at around 2-1 in favour of White, so while it looks like there's potential value on John, given today's performance I'm going to pass the spot.

Clayton/Clemens - Big shot for Gabriel to push through to a Sunday here with Jonny being all over the place since winning one of these, Clayton is probably overall the better player but he's not shown it for a while, and I've just got a sense that now's the time that Clemens, who the model projects as the right weighted side of a flip, does something on a stage - 0.25u Clemens 11/8.

King/Schindler - This is really tight in both my projections and in the market. Nothing to see here, but should be a fun one to kick off the evening session.

Price/Beaton - Steve nearly fucked it up but got over the line against Huybrechts, Price will likely not allow himself to get into such a huge hole in this one. Line looks good in this one again - I'm seeing Price as not quite 60%, so if there was no vig you might have the tiniest of Beaton value. Next.

Webster/Evans - Now that the Gilding hype train has crashed and burned, we can now remount the Baby Shark hype train, 0.25u Evans 11/8, model has him up at 46%, it's not a huge edge, but in the context of Ricky slamming down a 104 average with absolutely no assistance whatsoever, I'm running with it.

van Gerwen/van der Voort - Yawn.

Wright/Klaasen - Jelle's the sort of player at this stage where he needs to show something decent in two or three games in a row to even think about betting on him, he was alright today, but as the model thinks the line is spot on I don't even need to ask that question right now.

Wade/Alcinas - Alcinas seems like one of those players that the model likes that we'll keep on betting until the end of time. There's a bit of inconsistency in his game, whereby when he hits he's good, and when he's not he'll lose the leg and hence the model, working on legs won, will like him more, but it's seeing north of 40% and we're getting better than 2-1, so 0.25u Alcinas 9/4, with the consistency comment it seems hugely dangerous against Wade of all players, but I'm taking that chance.

Hopp/Ratajski - 0.5u Ratajski 11/10, lol at this being a flip, the numbers give this a 2-1 edge to Ratajski. Punt of the week.

Cross/de Zwaan - Intriguing set of last three matches of the night really. Cross is coming off of a comedy performance in Dublin and this really isn't the qualifier he'd want to face in a race to six, 0.25u de Zwaan 5/2, he's good enough that even against the world champ he's over 40% to win, this is a short race and he was pretty clinical this evening.

Sixteen games, eight bets, got to be something for everyone here, although it's another day where we're going hard on the underdogs. It worked today, didn't it?

Göttingen round 1 bets

These are fast, and as oddschecker doesn't yet have the matches included featuring the German qualifiers I'm just looking at a couple of books which do:

0.25u Brown 6/5, should be the other way around so there's a little value here

Edgar/de Graaf, Mansell/Killington, Henderson/Wilson lines look fine

0.25u Clemens evs, stated I think he'd be 60/40 against Dolan, he's not done great on the European Tour but he has home field and seems the better player right now

Nothing on Marijanovic/Kantele, my sample on Marko isn't really that bit and while it hints at a bet on Robert, I won't and will probably just regret not taking 8/15.

0.25u Joyce 6/5, sure Wattimena's been doing more recently but I'm not even convinced Jermaine's the better player

0.25u Ratajski 6/4, I'm projecting Ratajski to be the favourite so this is probably the best bet so far

North/Bunse I'm passing as I don't have that much on Christian and betting North at 2/5 doesn't seem like it could be value.

0.25u Gilding 13/10, as stated previously he's got the better stats season long and is rounding into form so this seems automatic.

Woodhouse/Schindler seems accurate. Might be small value on Stevenson but I'm passing that one as van der Voort needs it more and it's not that much to write home about. Similar with Klaasen/Langendorf, it's probably worth a bet on Maik but Klaasen needs it more, probably end up annoyed at not laying Jelle given Jelle's not done much at all for a while now. Beaton's probably near a bet for the same reason as the Keegan Brown bet, but with the odds being the wrong way at 11/10 there's much less margin for error. de Zwaan's too short to consider, he should win but nobody except MvG should be 1/9 in a race this short.

0.25u Alcinas 7/4, another decent one to finish, Noppert's got the recent form but the class is permanent and that's giving this as close to evens.

Thursday 11 October 2018

European Darts Trophy preview

All good things must come to an end, and that's what's happening to this year's European Tour in Göttingen, with the final event going to finalise the Dortmund field, and eliminate one of the three events left before the worlds cutoff (and, as an extension, the race to save tour cards). 19 of the active FRH top 22 are here (Anderson we obviously knew about, but Suljovic and Lewis withdrew) so it's a tough field for anyone to come through if they're needing a cash, let's look into tomorrow's running order - numbers in brackets indicate current FRH rankings with mincashes for this weekend included, but before I start, should I credit my overall betting record with an extra quarter of a unit because I was on the wrong side of the rigged Ulang/Simm worlds game from a couple of years back? Maybe?

Luke Humphries (82) v Keegan Brown (37) - Interesting game to start between two young players, one in Humphries who has an outside chance of making Dortmund, while Brown's had a bit of a mare to date in Europe and isn't really in the picture, he'll just be looking to improve his Pro Tour ranking that's seen him just the wrong side of a recent cutoff for Dublin. Should be quite close at around 55/45 for Brown, Luke's got the greater motivation but will probably need to beat Gurney in round two to avoid a countback clusterfuck.

Matt Edgar (88) v Jeffrey de Graaf (65) - Neither's really close to Dortmund, and with the winner facing European specialist Joe Cullen in round two, this could be close to an effective final, although both players have the A-game to trouble the Rockstar. de Graaf has a comparable edge as what Brown has in the first game, should be two close games to start off - assuming in this one we don't have one show up and one not, which is always a risk.

Mickey Mansell (61) v George Killington (147) - Tough ask for George here against a Pro Tour winner from this year, Killington not having done a great deal on the senior circuit, but he's won one Development Tour event as well as a final and two semis to put himself right up those rankings. Neither really has any chance of Dortmund, but Bunting in the second round isn't out of the question, especially for Mansell who rates to be approaching a 2-1 favourite here.

Mark Wilson (135) v John Henderson (21) - Wilson's here for a third attempt at the European Tour this season, but he's only won three legs in two games and a matchup against the big Scot isn't really the draw he would have been looking for. Henderson's surprisingly not that close to making Dortmund, a couple of exits when seeded and getting no ranking money as a result being potentially very costly - he's likely going to need at least a semi final, if not a final, and Ian White is a formidable second round opponent. That's a matchup that should happen, John's got a 75/25 chance according to projections.

Brendan Dolan (51) v HNQ6 - This is the Clemens section, and there's really nobody in this section that should trouble him (not that it's stopped him being troubled before), Blum's gone already leaving no notable names - Dolan's got an outside chance of making the European Championship if he can reach the final session, a hit or miss Jonny Clayton in round two is winnable, and the other seed in the section is Whitlock, so who knows? That said, if Clemens does get through Dolan's a 60/40 dog to make Saturday.

Marko Kantele (108) v HNQ5 - Kantele just missed out on making the worlds as mentioned previously, but he's going to have to put that behind him and concentrate on this game, which will see him up against a probable opponent of Marijanovic, with only Tautfest being a name I recognise in the draw. If it was Marijanovic, Robert would be strongly (greater than 70%) favoured to get through to face Michael Smith, but data on Kantele is limited. Could look at the SDC stats I guess?

Ryan Joyce (67) v Jermaine Wattimena (28) - This should be a good one - Jermaine had a very tidy weekend in Dublin both on the floor and stage, and has got to be feeling confident as he tries to edge up the top 32 in the world. Joyce has had some great floor form, but hasn't yet managed to crack a seed as yet, although he's been close on a couple of occasions. He could make Dortmund if he's able to do that and push into the Sunday evening session, and he's slightly better than 50/50 to get over the first hurdle, but Chizzy in round two is one where anything could happen, and likely needing to beat Ian White makes things look unlikely.

Krzysztof Ratajski (50) v Steve West (20) - Game of the round for me, forget your Huybrechts/Beaton face off. Ratajski got jobbed over for the Grand Slam spot, what can you do, and after last year it's surprising that he's got work to do to make Dortmund, not having everything his own way in the qualifiers like last year being a problem. West would likely be more of a problem on the Friday than Hopp would be on the Saturday, with Ratajski needing to reach Sunday as a minimum. West's safe, but despite West's very good play he's not even 45% to win this one. The Polish Eagle could still get what he needs, it's a tough first game but it's on.

Richard North (41) v HNQ4 - North will need a similar run to Ratajski to qualify for Dortmund, with them both having the same money, but his first round game is substantially easier - Horvat was the biggest name in this section of the qualifier but he's gone, leaving maybe Bunse or Berndt, who'd meet in the section semi - one of Simeon Heinz, Jens Kniest or Lukas Sekinger will make the final. Winner of the main game plays Whitlock.

Ricky Evans (46) v Andrew Gilding (70) - Two players hitting form - Evans is obviously safe for Dortmund after his final, but Gilding is showing sparks, perhaps a bit too late to save his card, but peak Gilding is a phenomenal force, and Darren Webster in round two isn't the worst potential draw. Even looking season long as I do, I can't separate them, so there could be a bit of a chance for Goldfinger to make Saturday and us to potentially profit as I'd imagine Evans will be installed as favourite.

Luke Woodhouse (98) v HNQ1 - This is probably going to be Schindler, unless Herz, Junghans, Hurtz or Sprudzs (too many z's) can take him down. Schindler would be better than a 2-1 favourite against Woodhouse if it is him, he is currently just on the inside of the Dortmund cutoff and just qualifying ought to make him safe. Woodhouse has made two of these before this year, with just the one win over Ryan Meikle, and assuming Martin gets through the quali I can't see Luke making it a second win, especially on German soil.

Simon Stevenson (71) v Vincent van der Voort (39) - VVDV's another player who's just on the cusp of qualification, one of the group on £10k needing to get two wins to move into a tie for the last spots, assuming nobody improves. Stevenson isn't an easy out, while he's had trouble qualifying for these he did win a board in Dublin so isn't playing too badly, and has enough chance in this one that while the Dutchman's the favourite, it's not even 55%. Which he wouldn't be against van Gerwen in round two.

Jelle Klaasen (26) v HNQ2 - Jelle's one of the players who have just enough cash to qualify for Dortmund, currently in on countback, so winning this game would be enormous for him. Wright would be the second round opponent so he may not add more than that, but one win should be all he needs. The home nation qualifier has Langendorf in this section, Münch is also there but Maik's a round further already, if it was Maik who advanced then Jelle would be a bit better than 60/40 to get the win he needs.

Kim Huybrechts (23) v Steve Beaton (22) - A lot of the time one or both of these are seeded, so to see them facing off in round one is unusual. Neither's mathematically safe, but it'd need a weird situation for Beaton to not make it, while Huybrechts, after multiple first game losses as a seed, is part of the group on just £10k looking in - despite having reached a semi final this year. A European Championship without Kim seems wrong, but with Beaton being a tiny projected favourite, it's going to happen way more than half the time. The winner faces Price which isn't going to be an easy win for either player on current form.

Jeffrey de Zwaan (30) v HNQ3 - Jeffrey, despite all his stage form, has a shocking record of qualification for these, and actually playing well in them in the rare occasions he has qualified hasn't happened either - he'd need to reach the final to stand any chance of making the finals weekend, while he certainly has the quality, and a not bad opening game against one of Eidams, Siepmann, Roith or Rosenauer, he'd have to beat the World Champion on the Saturday and then go from there. Not an easy task, but one he'd be up for.

Danny Noppert (46) v Antonio Alcinas (52) - An all European faceoff to close us out, with the rapidly getting used to the PDC Noppert coming up against the Spaniard who's having a second run after a few years on the edges of the scene. Noppie's already safely in and Alcinas seems too far back needing to reach a semi final, so this doesn't have a great deal riding on it, but I'm projecting a coinflip, maybe even Alcinas being a tiny favourite, and with Wade in round two not being the hardest draw you can get, maybe one of these can get something going here?

Not seen any big exits in the qualifier (which is running right now) since I started writing, other than that Münch has gone from the Langendorf section that'd face Klaasen, so all the HNQ reports still seem current. Bets later once lines are up and the qualifiers are done.

Monday 8 October 2018

More on Durrant

A brief one - rather than speculate looking at things like points per turn, why not shove Durrant into the master computer against the PDC top 16? Why not indeed, so here's the winning chances over a race to 10, coincidentally the length of a first knockout round game in the Slam, so in increasing order of ranking, here's everyone:

Lewis - 69.89%
Cullen - 75.94%
van Barneveld - 75.68%
Webster - 74.73%
Wade - 72.63%
Price - 66.33%
White - 55.54%
Smith - 51.31%
Chisnall - 57.33%
Whitlock - 71.67%
Suljovic - 64.77%
Gurney - 64.34%
Anderson - 48.18%
Cross - 51.77%
Wright - 55.24%
van Gerwen - 29.90%

I think those figures should speak for themselves. But lest anyone say "but FRH, these just look at winning legs, it's not fair", Durrant is scoring just 2.48 points per turn less on losing legs than winning legs. In comparison, Cross is at 2.51, Anderson 2.32, van Gerwen 5.04 (although that one's just because he's really ****ing good and wins all the time), Smith 4.92, Wright 4.43, Suljovic 0.38, Gurney 5.91. So bear those figures in mind when looking at the percentages, and please don't be afraid when we get to the Slam and I go HAM on Duzza.

Wes Newton now available for exhibitions in early January

So that scenario where someone who wasn't already qualified for Lakeside taking the last Lakeside spot by winning the World Masters came up, Adam Smith-Neale coming from a couple of sets down in the final against Glen Durrant to win 6-4 and claim his first major title. Quite an achievement, it's a name that's been around for a while but I didn't realise quite how young he was, dartsdatabase reckoning he doesn't turn 25 until later this month, which equates to him having his tour card in his teenage years. It'll be interesting to see where he goes from here, you've got to think he tries the Q-School route, but I guess it's going to depend on what he does in the worlds, and whether he fancies stopping around for another year - this sets him up real nicely in terms of BDO ranking points for next year, unless they change their qualifying criteria he'll be in the 2019 Slam (although Wiki thinks that Smith-Neale is in this year's Slam instead, which conveniently avoids the Ratajski question). Will be an interesting decision - if he is in this year's Slam that may well point towards a Q-School punt.

If you haven't watched it already, go back and watch both the final and the Williams/Waites quarter final - both cracking games that have got to be at least mentioned in dispatches for game of the year. The Williams one in particular, with him pinning 167 to save the match and breaking Waites in a last leg decider is well worth checking out. It's all on the BDO's Youtube channel for the grand cost of nothing, so why not.

Looking at what the BDO 32 did as a whole over the weekend, an 8.5% clip of legs in twelve darts or less isn't too bad, and nearly 52% of legs in fifteen or less is fine - that averages out to around the season long averages of Vincent van der Voort, Simon Stevenson, Jeffrey de Graaf, Stephen Burton, Jermaine Wattimena we can maybe throw in but he's a bit better on the twelves. It's not an awful standard at all, although it's obviously going to be tilted as the better players will be throwing more darts. Durrant and Waites managed over 96 and 95 points per turn respectively, with the winner also ending up over 90 - if we filter just on the quarter finalists, the percentage of legs finished in twelve is about the same, but they're killing 60% of legs in fifteen darts and are over 91 in points per turn. The closest approximations I can see to that season long in the PDC are Jamie Hughes and James Wade - and nobody would be saying Wade's a mug or having an awful season. The Wade comparison seems apt - he's not the sort of player that's going to blow you away with a spurt of twelve dart legs, but he's not going to give much up at all and is going to keep things really tidy. There were 121 legs on the final day, and only four out of them went more than eighteen darts for someone to win. There were 119 legs in the semi finals and final of the PDC worlds last year, and they had two of them go over eighteen darts.

As this is the last BDO event we're going to have before the Slam, let's take a quick look at what the BDO's runners and riders are doing in terms of season long points per turn - this is from Lakeside, the World Trophy and the "televised" stages of the World Masters. I don't think any of them played the UK Open, but if they did (Smith-Neale played the qualifiers if I remember rightly), that'd count as well:

Glen Durrant - 95.00 (286 legs)
Scott Mitchell - 92.48 (118)
Adam Smith-Neale - 89.22 (137)
Jim Williams - 88.86 (191)
Michael Unterbuchner - 87.89 (227)
Mark McGeeney - 87.11 (219)
Wesley Harms - 86.82 (49)
Gary Robson - 86.25 (67)

Now the last two have no sample size whatsoever, but let's give the names of the PDC players immediately above and below each of these (minimum of 150 legs played):

Durrant - Gary Anderson, Rob Cross
Mitchell - Dave Chisnall, Jeffrey de Zwaan
Smith-Neale - Ron Meulenkamp, Ritchie Edhouse
Williams - Ritchie Edhouse, Max Hopp
Unterbuchner - Dave Pallett, Darren Johnson
McGeeney - Robert Owen, Vincent Kamphuis
Harms - David Evans, Richie Burnett
Robson - Jason Cullen, Paul Rowley

Let me reiterate that top one. Durrant is scoring more points per turn than Rob Cross is. Now you can argue all you like that Cross is having a mediocre season, but he's the world champion. Only van Gerwen and Anderson are scoring more points per turn this season in the PDC than he is. This is kind of why I put that poll up on Reddit - the most common pick is that he would be a top 16 player getting a third of the votes, with top 32 just edging out top 10 for the next most popular pick. Got to be anti-BDO trolls (or just general trolls) in there somewhere, but seven people thinking he'd lose his card? Come on now. Only one vote for top five, and no, that wasn't me. Imagine also what would happen if someone cleaned up some of those sixteen-eighteen darters that he occasionally leaves (he's killing over 70% of the legs he wins in under fifteen darts, which is higher than anyone not called Michael van Gerwen in my database), and instead of 501 in six visits, he scores 469 in five visits or something like that, as can happen. The average would probably go up in the PDC, not down.

Players scoring less than all of the BDO contingent? Jamie Caven, Christian Kist, Ronny Huybrechts, Robbie Green, Scott Taylor, Benito van de Pas, Devon Petersen to name a few - all top 64 players or ranked finalists.

There's been a few people clean up some of the PDC worlds qualifying spots - Rowby won the south/east Europe qualifier, don't know what would happen if he finalled one of the last Pro Tour events - does it go to Rusty? Kevin Burness won the Tom Kirby, he won his tour card earlier in the year but hasn't put up anything of note or any great numbers, Yordi Meeuwisse won through what's for all intents and purposes the Dutch qualifier, we've seen him around for a couple of years, he doesn't finish too quickly from what we've seen this year but is tidy enough I guess. Labanauskas and Larsson finished up getting the Nordic spots, Larsson at the last second as Kantele couldn't get over the line in the final event - we've seen enough of Darius to know he's legitimate, Larsson's not looked awful in a very limited sample and coming through what's a decent tour has got to stand him well. Apparently Asada won the Japan qualifier, which opens up an additional Asian Tour spot, which close to locks Maclidem in for a debut and Paul Lim for a 6945th appearance, while I'm sure I've read somewhere that Koltsov won the Russian qualifier, given his Challenge Tour form he won't be a bad addition.

Sunday 7 October 2018

van Gerwen wins major tournament shocker

Didn't sound like the greatest of finals, but he got it in the bag, which after missing out on the first two big events of the year he'll be quite happy about doing. New FRH rankings:

1 Michael van Gerwen
2 Rob Cross
3 Peter Wright
4 Gary Anderson
5 Daryl Gurney
6 Mensur Suljovic
7 Phil Taylor
8 Ian White
9 Simon Whitlock
10 Michael Smith
11 Gerwyn Price
12 Darren Webster
13 Dave Chisnall
14 Jonny Clayton
15 Joe Cullen (UP 1)
16 James Wade (DOWN 1)
17 Adrian Lewis
18 Mervyn King
19 Stephen Bunting
20 Steve West

So only the one change, and that's between two players who went out in the first round, odd how that can happen, then again with the tournament not having any large prize money differential round by round until the quarter finals, and five of the quarter finalists being in the top 6 in the rankings, nobody's done much to shake it up. Wilson's risen to #24, Meulenkamp's into the top 45 and de Zwaan is now in the top 30 (above Alan Norris).

The World Masters goes on, and we've got a Durrant/Mitchell semi final, while right now Jim Williams is hanging around but with work to do against Scott Waites, while Wayne Warren faces surprise package Adam Smith-Neale for the last spot. I've put all the stats from the last 32 and 16 into the master computer, and it's interesting reading. Bear in mind that you've got the top 16 in the BDO, and then sixteen players which, while you're going to have some wildcards you've never heard of, they've all come through multiple rounds of qualifying, so there shouldn't be any complete eggs - so it's disappointing to see that more than one in five legs took more than six visits to complete, and only 42% of legs are completed in "par" of fifteen darts or better.

As far as individual players go, I'm yet to be convinced that McGeeney is legitimately decent, he's gone out early here and didn't put up great numbers. Unterbuchner might have a claim to be the best German on the planet right now, and was unfortunate to run into Warren in decent form. Durrant and Waites put up the best numbers of those who won through to the quarters with overall 94 points per turn, while Warren was also in the nineties. On the other hand, Copley and Robson got there despite points per turn of 81 and 82! Luck of the draw I guess.

Briefly back to the PDC, the finalists already being in the Slam looks to have locked up Clayton and the highest ranked finisher from the European Tour - which at the moment is White, but Gurney could always win the last one next weekend (advance warning that there'll be limited coverage here as I'm at the NFL game at Wembley, but I should be able to crank out round 1 and 2 previews) and nick it. It's just the European Championship and World Series finals to go, so unless there's a right wildcard winning it, White, Hopp and Price should all be safe as houses, while King and de Zwaan are the last men in right now.

A bit more on the World Masters later probably, as Jim Williams completes the come from behind victory to make the semis. A repeat of him against Durrant in the final, if it's half as good as their Lakeside game last year, would be very welcome.

Saturday 6 October 2018

World Masters - Good news!

1) They've streamed it, and as they have no geoblocking, it's available in the UK in all of its nine hour glory! So I can go back and watch it and compile the stats if needed, despite a scary moment last night where Youtube was only showing the last four hours (which I think is a standard thing while it's processing the whole video).

2) They've posted the good stats this morning, so I don't need to watch nine hours of BDO darts!

I'll see how they've all done, I may also pay a bit of attention to the women's as well, which is set up in an incredibly stupid way with four seeds straight through to the quarters, mainly due to the women's spots in the PDC worlds. Shout out to Burton for pointing out that Suzuki being longer than 100/1 to bink the BDO worlds was ridiculous and then getting the market suspended, Suzuki now being 5/1 third favourite, half the price of Hedman who she plays today in the quarters of the World Masters. Beau Greaves won the girls' event, it's a real shame she didn't get into the senior worlds, that would have been interesting.

On the PDC side we've got installment number 94 of the van Gerwen/Wright matchup, huge train disruption and it being a Friday prevented me getting back home to run any numbers, but I wouldn't have had any bets on it anyway, the lines looked good enough, useful to note that Anderson making a bit of an early exit and Wright making the final keeps Wright safe at number 3 in the FRH rankings for a while, excluding this event Anderson was less than 18,000 points behind him such has been his great form of late. Wright can't catch Cross even if he wins tonight, the line for which is probably a bit too favoured the way of MvG, so while I'm not going to suggest a bet officially, 4/1 looks kind of tempting - I'm getting Wright at over 30% to win a set on van Gerwen's throw and 45% to hold his own, so it doesn't take that much for him to creep up to five sets - while it's only a 25-1 shot that he holds all four of his sets on throw and van Gerwen is therefore extremely likely to force Wright to break at some point, 30% happens quite a lot of the time.

To the BDO site I go...

Thursday 4 October 2018

Really quick quarter final bets

Damn traffic...

Suljovic/Price - Probably an easier opponent this round for Suljovic than in the previous, this is another one where the model's thinking that Suljovic has less chance than the market suggests, but I'm going to pass on it. If Mensur's handled White as easily as he did, then there's probably not as much value on Gerwyn as I'd think.

Wright/Wilson - Another step up in opponent for Wilson, while Wright gets a third straight player ranked in the twenties in the FRH rankings. Market has Wright as almost a prohibitive favourite, there could be a bit of underdog value but, like Suljovic, Peter's been playing great stuff and I'm doubting he realises the equity he has.

Gurney/Anderson - Joint closest line on the market at 2/5 Anderson, which shows how one sided this evening could be, I think for this one the line looks good based on the raw data, Gurney's not going to give the title up without a fight, but it's likely going to need Gary to struggle on doubles for anything to open up for Superchin here.

van Gerwen/Chisnall - Around 6/1 Chisnall here, similar line to Webster over the same distance - what does that say more about, Dave or Darren? There might be tiny value in Chisnall, but he's not really been tested to date which may stop him coming flying out of the blocks as he'd need to do.

So, no bets, what a misleading post title.

Wednesday 3 October 2018

Lakeside*

A brief interlude, given that the BDO have had their worlds qualifiers today. Hilariously, Andy Hamilton managed to win one of the spots, funny given that he was the first reserve who'd be in assuming someone already qualified won the World Masters (which starts tomorrow), so that first reserve, given that Roger Janssen is in through a regional list, goes to none other than Wes Newton. We also saw Nigel Heydon qualify, who's a somewhat familiar name from PDC darts who had a bit of a spell at the start of the decade but seemingly hadn't played a thing in over a year according to dartsdatabase, he has zero BDO ranking points anyway, Krzysztof Kciuk made it as well, who you might recall was the guy that knocked Ratajski out of the Ratajski qualifier for the PDC worlds last year, and the last guy in is Ryan Hogarth, someone I don't know much about but he's in their top 50 and played in the World Trophy, so likely isn't completely awful. It was a big qualifier to come through at least.

A few other names got deep - van Tergouw was one game away (lost to Kciuk in a deciding set), other last game losers were Matt Clark and Adam Smith-Neale who we know from the PDC (Clark recently enough to still be in the top 150 of the FRH rankings, Smith-Neale is there as well but will drop off when the 2017 UK Open qualifier points do), and the last final round loser was Chris Gilliland, who nearly made it through the qualifiers for a second year in a row, which would have been some feat. Others in the last 32 included Alan Soutar, Larry Butler, Gary Stone and Nick Kenny, there's quite a few fairly well known players that won't be there.

Of those that we knew before, other than the top 8 which I'll probably go into a bit further nearer the Slam, I'm mostly interested to see what Parletti will do having come from nowhere to be the ten seed, Hogan obviously, O'Shea for local funk power (no Fitton sadly), McKinstry to see if he can make a bit of a run, while we'll see if McGrath, after getting a win in the Auckland PDC exbo, has upped his game enough to get a win in the BDO worlds. Obviously the new names will be of interest - Janssen as mentioned above has had some results so who knows, there's two or three in the 17-24 list that I really don't know as well.

Quickly on the Grand Prix, was pleased to see Chisnall get the win and Gurney to hold off a bit of a come back from Meulenkamp, those results take us to a new high in terms of profit, and up enough that if we miss both the White and Wilson bets we're still break even for the tournament. A Gurney/Anderson quarter could be interesting, can't really say the same about a van Gerwen/Chisnall quarter, which we've seen so many times before. Would almost have been worth losing the bet to see van Gerwen/van Barneveld again. Looking back, that's the first time in ten years that all the four seeds have made it to the quarters in a half of the draw here. The player with the Chisnall death seed that time? Andy Hamilton. Funny how things come full circle.

* - assuming the event is held at Lakeside. Has that even been announced?

Tuesday 2 October 2018

Quickfire round 2 bets

Numbers indicate the chances the master computer thinks the player will have to win 3-1 or better. That should give you an idea of overall win chances and potential volatility based on who wins the bull.

Chisnall (47%) v van Barneveld (18%) - Barney was really close to being out already, Chisnall had no trouble beating Hopp and was one dart away from 50% on doubles, which is a good sign. That's good enough for me, even if Barney wins every deciding set our bet is profitable if we've handicapped it right - 0.25u Chisnall 6/5

Anderson (41%) v de Zwaan (22%) - Should be an exciting rematch, de Zwaan's an underdog and possible a bit too big of an underdog, but I'm not feeling the concept of betting against Anderson at this moment in time only getting a fairly small edge, de Zwaan is 5/2, i.e. he needs to win over 30% of the time to profitably back him. With the model thinking that he's getting more than 20% before a decider and over 35% of trials are going to a decider, it's tempting. Especially given that de Zwaan outplayed Anderson in round one. What the hell, let's go small for some funking power, 0.1u de Zwaan 5/2.

Gurney (52%) v Meulenkamp (15%) - Gurney was pretty damned solid on doubling both in and out, and we know he can score well, Ron was a surprise package in round one, taking out Cullen in a game where he was getting away well but not hitting doubles too well - Cullen was just worse. Gurney could be the play here, 5/11 would only need him to win half the deciding sets if it goes that far (again, if we've capped it right), that doesn't seem that unreasonable - 0.5u Gurney 5/11.

van Gerwen (69%) v Webster (7%) - We've seen this one a few times over recent years and it's usually a good one, it's interesting to note that Webster's the same price as Lennon - that seems almost entirely down to the length of the match, best of five sets gives you a hell of a lot more breathing room than best of three. 1/6 doesn't seem too appealing, what about 6/1? There's about one in four games projected to go to a decider, Webster would need to win a third of those for it to be break even, and he only rates to win a third of sets on his own throw. He's not going to have the throw every time. No thanks.

Suljovic (25%) v White (38%) - For me this is the most interesting match of the round, the bookies have Mensur as a real big favourite at 1/2, the only real concern is that White was really bad at getting off, at least early in the game, and 35% finishing isn't that great either. Still, I can't see any realistic model that gives White less than a one in three shot, Ian as I keep banging on about is really, really good so 0.25u White 15/8 and move on.

Beaton (23%) v Price (40%) - Steve did it again, what the heck? Cross just missed a bunch of doubles, both to start and finish. Price saw off Noppert in a game that the numbers say was one to forget, Gerwyn's 4/7 which seems to be in the right neighbourhood.

Wright (57%) v Wattimena (12%) - Wright just blitzed Steve West who didn't even get a dart at double in the match, which seems remarkable given that, apart from in a couple of legs, West was always getting away first visit. Jermaine was also getting away well, but Mervyn missed nine out of ten darts to finish legs and had a spectacular nine missed darts to start the last leg of the first set. The line's looking like 80-20, there may even be tiny Wright value at 1/4. I'd say it's safe to put him in an acca, but it doesn't need too much weird stuff to happen so I'm not going to recommend a single bet.

Wilson (29%) v Lewis (33%) - The last game is the one that projects to be the closest, which isn't reflected in the market, which is thinking Adie's a 2-1 favourite. You can see that I'd have him as a favourite, and I'm mindful of the previous round giving Wilson to win and Adie to lose, something that I've seen in quite a few games throughout many tournaments over the past couple of months. It's a big price though, 0.25u Wilson 15/8, Wilson's doubling apart from the last leg of the first two sets was outstanding both in and out, and his scoring looks on point. He also came from behind against Whitlock that has to help psychologically.

That's your lot, three underdogs at around 2/1 or better, so we only really need one of those to get home (ideally White or Wilson given bet sizing), then it's just lay Barney and back the champ. Let us gogogo.