Midway point review

A couple of quick things I want to go over. First, an update on the Second and Third Division Darts - for those that missed the initial posting at the start of the season (and the season before), I'm tracking players that didn't get into the Premier League on a head to head basis and assigning them points based on how they're doing against each other - the second division is the best of the rest (based on how they did last season, how they rank in the FRH rankings, then wildcards to fill the other spots up), and the third division is just wildcards, but also only looking at players under the age of 30 at the start of the year. The current standings are as follows:

Division 2:

Ian White 11.29
Adrian Lewis 10.82
Steve West 10.00
Krzysztof Ratajski 9.25
Jonny Clayton 9.04
Dave Chisnall 8.93
Simon Whitlock 8.69
Joe Cullen 8.05
Jeffrey de Zwaan 7.27
Darren Webster 6.67

Division 3:

Nathan Aspinall 10.99
Danny Noppert 10.30
Max Hopp 9.97
Keegan Brown 9.83
Dimitri van den Bergh 9.22
Josh Payne 9.00
Luke Humphries 8.15
Martin Schindler 7.93

Steve Lennon 7.79
Chris Dobey 6.81

The players at the top may not really surprise you, although there's a few oddities - Lewis seems to have been quiet, but stuck in big wins over Clayton and Cullen back in March and hasn't really played anyone else since then apart from a close loss to White. Steve West's only played one game and that was a big enough win against Webster to give the full two points in their matchup. de Zwaan being so low looks odd, but he's lost to all of Clayton, Cullen, White (twice) and Ratajski, and only picked up wins over Webster and Chisnall. In the third, Payne has yet to play anyone, but Dobey being bottom looks an outlier. You don't think of him having a bad season, but against this group of opponents he's 0-5, with tight losses to the top two, then Hopp and van den Bergh (twice) have beaten Chris fairly comfortably.

I'll also post up some tiers for the FRH rankings. I post these up after most weekends of events, and the methodology is in the FAQ, but for clarity's sake, we basically take all senior tour ranking money, add on the prize money someone would get if they lose the first Euro Tour game as a seed, do not remove anything due to lack of tour card status, but do not have everything count in its entirety for two years. It counts in full up until 600 days before it's two years old (so for a little over four months), then degrades at 1% every six days until, two years from when the cash was made, it's back at zero the same as the official rankings. This gives a higher priority to more recent results. So where's everyone at? Here's everyone with at least 20,000 points right now:

1m - 1.1m: van Gerwen
375k - 400k: Cross
350k - 375k: M Smith, G Anderson
300k - 325k: Price, Gurney
275k - 300k: Wade
250k - 275k: Wright, Aspinall
225k - 250k: White
200k - 225k: Suljovic, Chisnall
175k - 200k: Whitlock
150k - 175k: Clayton, A Lewis
140k - 150k: D Webster, Cullen
130k - 140k: Hopp, Bunting
120k - 130k: Beaton, Wattimena, King
110k - 120k: de Zwaan, West
100k - 110k: Henderson, Dobey
95k - 100k: J Wilson, Brown, Evans, Noppert, Ratajski, K Anderson
90k - 95k: K Huybrechts, van den Bergh, Lennon, Dolan
85k - 90k: J Lewis
80k - 85k: van der Voort, van Barneveld, Joyce, P Taylor
75k - 80k: Reyes, Payne, Klaasen, Searle
70k - 75k: Humphries, O'Connor
60k - 65k: Clemens, van de Pas, North, R Smith
55k - 60k: Durrant, Meulenkamp, Alcinas, Norris, Schindler, Dekker
50k - 55k: Thornton
45k - 50k: Labanauskas, Petersen
40k - 45k: Mansell, Pipe, Stevenson, Evetts
35k - 40k: Tabern, Rodriguez
30k - 35k: Richardson, Edgar, M Webster, Hughes, Barnard
25k - 30k: Razma, Cadby, Burton, Nicholson, Boulton, Hunt
20k - 25k: Ward, Jones, Lerchbacher, Owen, Monk, Marijanovic, de Graaf, Gilding, Edhouse, Woodhouse, Kist, R Huybrechts, Harris

As it may be of interest, there's curently 343 players listed in the rankings, although 85 of these have less than 1,000 points and a further 19 have exactly 1,000. The number of players in the rankings has stayed roughly around that area for quite a while, but in about 9 months or so I'd expect the numbers to fall, as historically you've had associates enter a UK Open qualifier and make just one cash or similar, which'll all disappear then. It won't stop lots of European associates and day members getting one European Tour cash and showing on the rankings, but it should trim things down somewhat.