Chumbawamba status

RIP the world championship career of Raymond van Barneveld, 1991-2018. Because unless Barry starts throwing out unprecedented wildcards that he's never done in the past, or unless Barney decides he's actually 35 again and plays the tour with a vengeance, he's done. He's just far, far too far behind on any sort of ranking system to qualify for next year. It's sad that it's going to end like this, but it is what it is. And as we bet on it after that debacle of the Jones/Petersen match, I actually feel somewhat upbeat. It's 0.3 units in the black rather than 2 units in the black if Wayne had have hit any of those match darts, oh well, we're somehow still actually up for the event.

Tomorrow the new games are Webster against van der Voort, and Gurney against Ross Smith. Vincent against Ilagan was a really good game, credit to Lourence, he did an awful lot better than I thought he would have done, and also credit to Vincent for riding the storm and getting through when it really didn't look like he would have done, but for doubles this could easily have been a reverse result. The market's saying 8/13 Webster and 8/5 van der Voort, which is understandable given their relative positions in the world rankings and performances in major tournaments (Webster been good, Vinny been at home). This seems a bit harsh on Vincent, on the year long stats it's closer, and there's not an inconsistency issue there either, if anything it's Webster that's been more inconsistent. The year long says 55/45. The truncated post summer break sample says that van der Voort is a favourite, and better than a 2-1 favourite. Given that everything is in his favour and he looked really good under what was pressure from Ilagan, I'm going to take the stab at this one - 0.25u van der Voort 8/5. Love Darren, he's one of my favourite players, but if you see value you grab it.

On Gurney versus Smith, before this event I was seeing the game as 65/35 in favour of Gurney, which you might think it too close, but Ross has been having a fantastic season and, if anything, my projections overrate him. The metrics I go off just look at won legs, and if you look at the points per turn in won legs over the course of the season, Gurney's at 93.82 to Smith's 91.94. That's a great figure for Smith, but if you look at the scoring when they lose a leg, Gurney is at 88.89 to Smith's 89.35. Smith's actually scoring better in the legs he is losing compared to Gurney. There is no consistency issue here that should put us off betting Ross. After his professional job against Lim his win chances have actually increased by a percentage point. Since the Matchplay, which you would think would favour Gurney, given that's when he won his second major title and all that, the projections don't change in the slightest. Last year we bet on Gurney and Wright to go out early. They both worked. This year, we bet on Wright already to go out early. That worked. 0.25u Smith 9/2, that's just huge.

Be back tomorrow evening, with there being an afternoon session and me sadly having a whole week at work, I doubt there's any rushed updates but every game tomorrow's already covered.