Euro Q-Schööl and Barney

Some interesting names and some interesting omissions on the list which kicks off tomorrow - it seems a bit off that not only are they playing it during the first two days of Lakeside (although, to the best of my knowledge, there isn't anybody that's on the Euro entry list that's entered in Lakeside, at least not on the days that overlap), but that they're finishing it off a whole week before entries even close for the UK event. How exactly is someone supposed to know what they've got to do in the final event until they know how many cards are available on countback?

Some interesting names in though, mostly from people who I'd assumed were long retired - Artut, Stompe, Greebe, Seyler, then some people like de Vos that I wasn't sure if they would. Looks like all the decent players that we saw at the worlds are back in, it's going to be a tight one.

Was hoping that Burton would do a 2020 Ally Pally race tweet, but he's done a season to date ranking money one which I can use (I can't use my spreadsheet as it counts Euro Tour mincashes), so let's use it and then tack on the 2018 worlds cash:

From Burton's list I've removed Nicholson, Labanauskas, Barnard and Rodriguez as I assume that Nicholson losing his card, Labanauskas never having one in the first place and Barnard and Rodriguez picking one up through the secondary tours resets them all to zero. And then realised that dartsdatabase are super on the ball and already have a qualification page for 2020 up already. So let's look at Barney. He's currently £9k outside the seedings. So, even if Barney reached the final of the UK Open (the only major he's in line to qualify for), it'd only take everybody above him to make £31k across all tournaments all year (and everyone on this list has done a lot more than that, although that does count the worlds, which wouldn't count for these purposes) to dump him back out again. So how on earth is he going to make 2020, unless he does win the UK Open? He is going to have to hit the floor, and hit the floor hard.

The key one is going to be the Euro Tour qualifiers. That's because these effectively count twice - not only will they count for the main Pro Tour, they'll also help him to get in the European Championship (unless they've changed the rules again), and if he's able to get a run in some of them early, he may put himself into the equation for the Grand Prix as well, even if he doesn't hit every single ordinary floor event. If he's able to accumulate enough to do that, he'd have got around 30k or so from floor events - if he's able to do alright in the UK Open and make a quarter, and then win a first game at the Grand Prix and European Championship, that's another 25k roughly. Add that on to what's in the bank and he's up to £140k - roughly what Hopp needed to get the last seed.

Of course, if he was able to get 30k from floor events, he'd be pretty safe to get in through the Pro Tour rankings anyway, but I'm sure he doesn't want to go into the worlds in the first round.

We'll see what happens. But it is amusing right now that Wright's down as low as number 8 and Adrian's barely the highest seeded Lewis in the event.