Saturday 24 November 2018

BDO worlds, PCF round 1 roundup and round 2 preview

Quite a few things to get through this morning, and not a whole lot of time to get through them, so let's kick things off with the BDO worlds draw which came out recently. Not a great deal to say other than that rigging the prelim so that the players from the international lists don't face each other seems silly, why not give everyone a fair crack? Hogan could have done without getting Newton, then again if Newton can't even qualify for Lakeside directly, how good is he nowadays anyway? Should be safe for Paul to get up to at least the quarters and Unterbuchner. Durrant possibly facing Smith-Neale again is interesting but other than that he looks a class apart, at least in his quarter, Mitchell and Williams in the bottom quarter could be fun with Parletti being a wildcard and a group of potentially dangerous international players. McGeeney ought to get to at least his quarter final, but a possible opponent of Waites may not be trivial. Whilst in the ladies, Ashton getting Suzuki is about as bad a draw as you can ever get.

Yesterday we dropped half a unit, we didn't see a huge number of upsets, at least ones that we were on, outside of Stephen Burton nicking it against Wattimena, only four other seeds in the top twenty going out and we were just betting against Mansell (and against Razma you can hardly call it an upset). At least we got the two bigger punts on de Zwaan and Brown correct. We had some chances - Gilding never got going, Hunt had no chance against Lewis in that form, Anderson just needed to hold throw better, letting Whitlock break you in six visits three times is comical. Stevenson had the break several times but neither player was playing well, Thornton was outplayed, Smith wasn't too far away, Hendo was a last leg decider which needed a big out from Cullen to save it, Rowby was hanging around but really couldn't put in the killer leg, while de Graaf never really showed up despite getting a 2-0 lead. We'll have these days where you get a few losses if you're betting on quite a lot of underdogs.

Today we've got the last 32 in the afternoon and then the last 16 in the evening - I should be back with a preview for that, but for this round, what do we have?

Gurney/Searle - 0.25u Searle 23/10, Searle looked pretty solid in defeating Payne, a 121 out to break with a twelve darter being the key shot, and Gurney got into a bit of a battle where a conventional 85 average was enough. Projections have Searle over 40% which is enough at longer than 2/1.

Bunting/Razma - 0.25u Razma 23/10, same line, similar analysis - Razma clocked four legs in fifteen darts against Mansell while Bunting could only manage three in edging Richard North, and the projections give Razma more than 40% (it's actually more than 45%), so I'm liking this potential upset.

Wade/Aspinall - 0.25u Aspinall 11/4, see exactly the same analysis for the previous two games. Nathan played just fine in rolling Schindler who perhaps has the world youth final on his mind, while Wade didn't really finish quickly enough against Smith and will need to do better today or he'll lose.

Wilson/Clemens - 0.25u Clemens 9/5, it was a statement win from James yesterday in beating Dimitri quite comfortably, while Clemens is the complete opposite in terms of stage/floor form, who did enough to defeat a misfiring Gilding. The game projects as almost a coinflip so 9/5 looks quite nice here.

Chisnall/Dobey - 0.25u Dobey 23/10, Dobey looked good in seeing off Ron Meulenkamp in the first round with five five visit kills, Chizzy didn't look bad at all really in defeating Jamie Lewis who was chucking alright himself. This doesn't seem quite as clear cut as the others in that I'm only seeing Dobey at 36%, but if he wins 30% of the time it's break even so it seems just enough to go with yet another underdog punt.

de Zwaan/Evans - no bet, it's close to a bet on de Zwaan at 8/13, I nearly have him winning two out of every three so if they'd chucked out a slightly better line I'd jump on it. Seems with de Zwaan that if he gets a start in a tournament he'll run with it, he was OK against Klaasen but it's all that he needed to be, if anything Evans played slightly better in seeing off Jan Dekker.

Reyes/Lennon - 0.25u Lennon evs, Cristo pulled off the shock of the tournament in taking out Rob Cross yesterday, which will no doubt create a whole bunch of narratives in conventional media, and naturally the market seems to have overadjusted in one game to make Lennon, who's been playing better all year and I'm seeing at 60% to win, the slight underdog. It's not like Reyes was sensational - Lennon actually played better yesterday.

Burton/Webster - 0.25u Burton 9/4, shouldn't come as any surprise to those who saw the tournament projections that this bet was coming, the model is giving this close to a 50/50 split, so north of 2/1? Let's go with that, Webster was fine but Burton was really good in defeating Wattimena, all but one leg won in five visits, Darren will be a tougher test but does Webster really win this seven times out of ten? I think not.

Anderson/Whitlock - no bet, there might be really tiny value on Simon if it wasn't for the fact that Anderson had the performance of the round (only Ratajski and White really pushing him close) in a demolition job of Alan Tabern, while Whitlock just did what he had to in taking the legs Kyle Anderson gifted him. Whitlock at 11/4 when I'm seeing him win less than one in three isn't a tempter.

White/Dolan - no bet. Finally White does on TV what he's been doing all year on the floor, he looked glorious in a defeat of Scott Taylor, every leg in less than fifteen darts including two in twelve for a conventional 111 average. Dolan wasn't bad playing early doors against Barnard but 4/11 White looks a pretty fair reflection with the model seeing White at 73% to take it down.

Noppert/King - 0.25u King 5/4, I bet against both of these yesterday and both won, King's quite frankly shockingly bad play makes this a potential red flag, but I'm seeing him at 57% season long and he's odds against, so I think we have to do it. It's not as if Noppert did anything sensational, and you don't think King will have two games that bad in a row. Probably won't be a great game regardless but the value looks to be there.

van Gerwen/Brown - no bet, let's just be thankful that van de Pas didn't get the upset as that could have got really ugly. At 7's there ought to be tiny value on Brown, I'm getting him at around 18% in the last round that's the real banana skin stage before we go longer in the evening, but Brown really didn't show up yesterday and was probably fortunate to be playing someone so out of form. van Gerwen wasn't his explosive best, but didn't need to be, and shouldn't need to be here either.

Smith/Clayton - no bet, perhaps ought to consider Jonny who has been playing better stuff of late, but a 35% season long at 9/4 isn't really something to consider against Smith, who bagelled van der Voort in a game where the adverts after leg five probably lasted longer than the match itself. Clayton was professional yesterday but will likely need to step up his game here to compete, he can but I'm not putting money on it.

Wright/Hopp - no bet, both players had to come from a break down early to beat Alcinas and West respectively, the question here is whether to punt on Wright, 4/9's a decent price but given that his recent form isn't the greatest and Hopp tends to be underrated in the model a touch and probably has confidence, a model projection of 73% doesn't quite cut it. They had the same distribution of leg winning speed yesterday so maybe this is tighter than the model thinks and the market's right.

Lewis/Ratajski - no bet, it's a rerun of the second Players Championship final which got Ratajski into a whole heap of spots (and kept Lewis out as a result), and while Lewis played extremely well in not really giving Hunt a sniff, one mutual comedy leg aside, Ratajski took out the in form player in Gerwyn Price and the form over a short course is such that the model can't split them, the market's similar so let's just enjoy a competitive high quality game.

Beaton/Cullen - 0.25u Beaton 13/8, Steve wasn't brilliant against Huybrechts and if he wasn't gifted a couple of easy holds, especially in the decider, he could have been out, but Cullen was fairly average in defeating Henderson, and his floor form all year actually sees this game be called a coinflip, so I'll take this price.

A lot of underdog punts here, let's hope some of them come in.

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