Let's kick off with the Challenge Tour, just for something different - Stephen Burton claimed event 8 with a last leg win in the final over recent Euro Tour candidate Patrick van den Boogaard, which moves him well clear at the top of the Challenge Tour rankings, which look like this:
Stephen Burton 4850
Ritchie Edhouse 3050
Boris Koltsov 2850
Jesus Noguera 2550
Cameron Menzies 2450
Shaun Carroll 2150
Darren Beveridge 2100
Andrew Gilding 2000
Dave Prins 1850
Callan Rydz 1800
That's the top 10 at least, assuming I've not botched any data entry, given how Dart Connect has been playing up this weekend, it's entirely possible. Burton, Edhouse and Koltsov were up there anyway and have basically consolidated their positions, while Noguera and Menzies with their results have pushed their way high enough up on the waiting list for the Pro Tour if there's withdrawals. For Menzies it's been a wait, he's been in the conversation for a long time now as to who's the best player who doesn't have a tour card, so if he's able to get into some events we might have a decent idea of where he really stands. Noguera would be interesting to see, if only because I don't think many of us know really what he can do.
To the European Tour, and Ian White's binked a second title in a deciding leg against Peter Wright - not a classic final by any stretch of the imagination, but I don't think either player will really care. White overcame a dogged Steve Beaton with a key break at 5-5, while Wright, after taking down Michael van Gerwen (it works sometimes!) was able to breeze past Jamie Hughes, who looked like he'd completely run out of steam in the semi finals.
On the betting stage, this was a classic, well over two units in the book which has close to eliminated the slide we had in the previous three events. Always got to play the long game - we don't expect every event to go quite as well as this one did, but we can't just look at the last two or three events and assume we don't know what we're doing.
Updated FRH rankings:
1 Michael van Gerwen
2 Rob Cross
3 Michael Smith (UP 1)
4 Gary Anderson (DOWN 1)
5 Daryl Gurney
6 Gerwyn Price
7 James Wade
8 Peter Wright
9 Nathan Aspinall
10 Mensur Suljovic
11 Ian White (UP 1)
12 Dave Chisnall (DOWN 1)
13 Simon Whitlock
14 Jonny Clayton
15 Adrian Lewis
16 Darren Webster
17 Joe Cullen
18 Stephen Bunting
19 Max Hopp
20 Steve Beaton (NEW)
On the movements - Smith's still keeping the huge chunk of the worlds money intact, whereas Ando's big money is degrading more, that and Ando isn't playing the Euro Tour has allowed Smith to chip away. White's win bumps him well above Chizzy, he was ahead by the semi final stage and is only about 3,000 points off Suljovic for the top 10. Beaton's semi final and continual solid form gets him (back?) up into the top 20 over the absent Wattimena.
Lower down, de Zwaan climbs another place up to 24 over John Henderson, Jamie Hughes is now into the top 70, and Mark McGeeney is now solidly into the top 100.
We're now calming down a touch - we've got another pair of Players Championship events next weekend, then a Dutch Euro Tour event the weekend after, but after that it's a weekend off, then the World Cup, so we can finally relax a touch.
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