So van Gerwen got the first one, and Chizzy got the second - the first was notable for Jermaine Wattimena making a first final, Scott Baker reaching the semi while Harry Ward made the quarters. This may seem surprising to some, but not really - Jermaine's been knocking on the door for a while now, while Ward and Baker were two of the top four players in terms of their averages at Q-School (combining both) that I looked at a while back. In the second, Duzza nearly got the win but lost a deciding leg (I wasn't watching, but scanning through Dart Connect it looks like he must have had a championship dart), while Cullen and Clayton (who beat MvG again) made the semis. A bit of a turn around for Cullen, whose averages in event 1 were terrible, despite him winning his board.
Barney won just 500 quid and isn't entered next weekend, Whitlock busted twice in the first round, on top of that comical result in the Masters he's really not started well, while Dimitri continued to struggle, losing first round both times (although Labanauskas and McGeeney aren't gimmies by any stretch).
New FRH rankings:
1 Michael van Gerwen
2 Rob Cross
3 Gary Anderson
4 Michael Smith
5 Daryl Gurney
6 Peter Wright
7 Gerwyn Price
8 James Wade
9 Mensur Suljovic
10 Simon Whitlock
11 Dave Chisnall (UP 1)
12 Ian White (DOWN 1)
13 Jonny Clayton (UP 1)
14 Darren Webster (DOWN 1)
15 Adrian Lewis
16 Joe Cullen
17 Phil Taylor
18 Stephen Bunting
19 Nathan Aspinall (NEW)
20 Steve West
Aspinall didn't do much at all, but that semi final money makes up so much of his ranking points and it isn't degrading. Wattimena's reached number 23 and it's got to be an interesting race for who's going to partner MvG in the World Cup (assuming they don't say "invitational ergo Barney). Duzza is already #86, having some Grand Slam money in his account already, while Baker's semi final on its own is good enough to get him into the top 200.
Now to shove all the stats into the master computer - we don't have anything to look at in terms of betting before the UK Open, but with such a huge chunk of that field being from tour card holders, it's important to keep up and get it ready, what with three straight weekends of Players Championship events leading into it.
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