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

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