PC24 - that went well

All that expert analysis turned out to be not worth a great deal after van Gerwen opted to withdraw, which messed with every single seeding and throwing the draw into complete chaos, Clayton and Noppert being thrown onto the same board, and simple general failures as nobody I was on won their board. Oh well, them's the breaks, nobody's going to nail a three figure underdog every tournament. Wade got his 4368th tournament win in the last year, with Chizzy getting the runners up spot. Jamie Hughes had a nice run, as did Scott Taylor, who was apparently the late replacement for MvG, which is surely the best example of taking advantage of a chance we've seen since, ooh, Denmark 92? I think he's up over 11k now, still a good 4k back of the worlds, but if he can force his way into the last few PC events, then who knows? Hendo hit a nine, which was nice, Justin Pipe had another solid event reaching the quarters, and surprise board wins for Devon Petersen (on White and de Sousa's board) and Benito van de Pas (who was on Smith's board, but didn't even have to do a thing as Zoran Lerchbacher did for him).

New FRH rankings:

1 Michael van Gerwen
2 Rob Cross
3 Michael Smith
4 Daryl Gurney
5 James Wade (UP 1)
6 Gary Anderson (DOWN 1)
7 Gerwyn Price
8 Peter Wright (UP 1)
9 Nathan Aspinall (DOWN 1)
10 Ian White
11 Mensur Suljovic
12 Dave Chisnall
13 Simon Whitlock
14 Joe Cullen
15 Jonny Clayton
16 Adrian Lewis
17 Stephen Bunting
18 Jermaine Wattimena (UP 1)
19 Max Hopp (DOWN 1)
20 Mervyn King

Wade knocks Ando out of the top five thanks to his win, and Price is less than 2k behind Gary as well. Wright's semi final yesterday helps him edge above Aspinall (for now), while a pair of quarters for Wattimena sees him above Hopp. Ratajski is within 1200 points of the top 20.

Lower down, Hendo is back above 100k points and edges over Noppert to 29th, Hughes' semi sees him climb a spot to 39, de Sousa is just a couple of hundred points out of the top 60, while Scott Taylor's back in the top 90, but still nearly 15k points from being the highest ranked Taylor in the rankings.

Check back tomorrow for early European Tour analysis as they head to Riesa, the Rotherham of Germany (seriously, they are twinned, although Rotherham comes out worse in that comparison).