ET4 preview/bets

Qualifiers are in the book, draw is out, let's look at how things might go quarter by quarter:

Gerwyn Price (3) v Kirk Shepherd/Steve Beaton
Simon Whitlock (14) v Jamie Hughes/Brendan Dolan
Rob Cross (6) v Lukas Wenig/Chris Dobey
Joe Cullen (11) v Jerry Hendriks/James Wilson

Interesting section, as far as the seeds go it's not the strongest I don't think, sure you have Price and Cross, but Whitlock's done as a seed after this event, and Cullen's shown little outside of Europe since the Matchplay. Can any of the qualifiers take advantage? It's a great draw for Hughes, Dolan will be a tough out but from there anything goes, Dobey's got a solid draw against young domestic qualifier Wenig, whose numbers only crept past 85 once tonight but will gain a bunch of experience, Wilson's been pretty quiet although apparently has had some sighting issue or something like that, Jerry Hendriks got through the associate qualifier averaging 82 at best so ought not to be a threat, then we've got Steve Beaton against Kirk Shepherd - Kirk's not been horrible but Beaton looks too strong.

Adrian Lewis (7) v James Richardson/Wayne Jones
Max Hopp (10) v Stephen Bunting/John Henderson
Ian White (2) v Kyle Anderson/Jeffrey De Zwaan
Darren Webster (15) v Karsten Koch/Vincent Van der Meer

Hopp's trying to defend here, and hasn't got the greatest of draws, Lewis as the opposing seed isn't the best you could hope for, White's still top 10 in terms of numbers and Webster can be dangerous. All of the first round games are of interest - Richardson against Jones is a potentially tight one between two players looking to retain their tour cards, Bunting/Hendo appears close on paper, Anderson/de Zwaan could be explosive, while Koch against van der Meer will likely be awful quality but one of those games that's fascinating to watch as a result. Koch did beat a guy in the final who averaged 108 in the previous round, so there is that.

Peter Wright (4) v Kevin Munch/Steve Lennon
Dave Chisnall (13) v Ted Evetts/Vincent Kamphuis
Mensur Suljovic (5) v Mickey Mansell/Steve West
Daryl Gurney (12) v Mike de Decker/David Pallett

Tough set of seeds here, and the highest one is probably the guy that's playing the worst right now, although it's hard to call games between any of these, they're all extremely closely matched. In the first round, we've got Lennon who's probably one of the forgotten contenders, having a real quiet 2019 so far, up against Munch, who looked weak last week and didn't look much better in the qualifier. Evetts will be looking to back up his form from last weekend against Kamphuis, the huge Dutchman who's been around the tour for a while now without making any real notable progress. Mansell against West is the sort of game that West should win but may have trouble doing so, while de Decker was a bit unlucky in his previous Euro Tour event this year, and Dave Pallett's making his first appearance of the season, having made a slow start to the year since regaining his card a few months ago.

James Wade (8) v Pavel Jirkal/Luke Humphries
Jonny Clayton (9) v Nathan Aspinall/Dennis Nilsson
Michael van Gerwen (1) v Dimitri Van den Bergh/Thomas Kohnlein
Jermaine Wattimena (16) v Gabriel Clemens/Raymond van Barneveld

Some big potential clashes here. Let's look at the qualifiers first - van den Bergh and Aspinall should have it all their own way, Humphries ought to be too good for Jirkal, while the remaining game between Clemens and Barney is too close to call with the bookies. Of the seeds, van Gerwen won't really want to be playing van den Bergh, Wattimena won't love that draw, Wade should be fine while Clayton can't be wanting Aspinall. If everything goes to seedings, we could get a repeat of tonight's epic Wade/van Gerwen matchup, there's a possibility of a MvG/Barney last sixteen, day one of this section might not be great but the rest of the games have a lot of potential storylines to pay attention to.

Bets:

0.25u Jones 6/5, he's a little more inconsistent but his losing average is basically the same as Richardson's while his winning scores give him a nice 60%+ edge.

0.5u West 8/15, Mickey's in such mediocre form that this looks like an 80/20 sort of game.

0.5u Hughes 1/2, I can only assume this is so close because Jamie's not put up the results that his play has warranted. If anything this is more one sided than the previous punt.

0.25u Anderson 5/4, sure my data doesn't include de Zwaan's ridiculous stuff that he was doing on the Development Tour that's been discussed to death, but Kyle's simply playing the better darts and should take this well more than half the time.

That is your lot, I'd be tempted to go for Sportingbet apparently offering a huge price on Koch but I guess that gets palped, there's a lot of games where there's limited or no data and the favourite's too short for it to be worth betting, I was expecting it to spit out a Clemens bet but a pick'em line looks good, oddly enough, so it's just the four for round one.