Euro Championship bets

Before we move on to the main event, if you thought it was impossible for the BDO to sink to new levels, you'd be incredibly mistaken - go check out the full SP on social media if you like, but fucking up the draw, putting fake names in, needing to redraw, it's the omnishambles to end all clusterfucks.

Anyway, the PDC would never fuck a draw up, so let's look at the games in order of play:

Cullen/King - nothing here. Seems genuinely too close to call, and with the favourite being 10/11, I think we can avoid this one. Gun to my head I'd say King at 11/10 is the value, maybe look at going over on the legs or 6-5 whoever wins the bull if you want action on this one.

Chisnall/van den Bergh - nothing here either. I think if there's value, it's probably on Dimitri, who rates as a small dog on the projections, but he's only 7/4, which seems a little bit on the skinny side when Dave's just reached a major final, and the projections don't take into account that the Belgian has a higher percentage of losing legs than Dave, and is averaging over three points less in those legs.

Durrant/Evans - no bet once more. Evans at 5/2 seems kind of tempting over a short race, and over some samples he's up at around 35%, but he's had a few stinkers of late and in the last three months he's barely over a one in four shot, so I can pass this one. Bit of pressure on this one as well as a win would go a long way towards getting a first round bye at the worlds.

Lewis/Whitlock - no bet again. I'd have thought an auto-play on Adie at around 10/11, but he's actually only 56% season long against Whitlock, and that's about the peak, over shorter spells it's around a flip. There's not actually that much between them, seems surprising and one I want to bet on Adie just out of general principle, but we'll pass.

Cross/Webster - no bet. Getting boring now. Cross is 1/4, and that actually seems a fair reflection on the game, that's just how far Webster has regressed in the past 12 months.

Wade/Clayton - 0.25u Clayton 7/4, I'll keep saying it, Jonny's one of these players that's had a quietly impressive year - only down at 45% roughly season long, and trim off the first few months when Wade had a hot start and Clayton actually projects as favourite - say since the start of May, Clayton scores half a point more than James does.

van Gerwen/Smith - 0.1u Smith 6/1 - would it surprise you if I said that since the start of May, Smith's winning legs are so comparable to van Gerwen's that he actually rates as having a 40% shot on that basis? Sure, his losing legs are five points worse, but this feels more like a 7/2, 4/1 sort of game than 6/1. Take the small value, expect to lose, but occasionally we hit.

Gurney/O'Connor - no bet. Year long, it's close. Very close, and it looks a Willie bet. Filter from the day after he wins his event and the 2/1 looks spot on. Filter from the start of August and it should be 3/1 O'Connor. I don't really want to lump on Gurney given the price, but the trend in form seems fairly obvious and I can't take the season long stats as indicative of what's going to happen.

Hughes/Wattimena - no bet. Similar analysis to the previous one, except here the swings aren't as extreme (it goes from Hughes in the high 50's to Wattimena in the high 50's) and the line is set at a pick'em level. If you fancy form, go Dutch, if you fancy longer term class, go Black Country, if you fancy betting profitably, go to the pub and wait for the next game.

Brown/Bunting - no bet. Can't even fit a cigarette paper between the two season long, it's as close to 50/50 as I've seen all tournament so far. Formwise, Bunting trends a little better over shorter samples, but with him priced at 5/6 it's not a big enough margin to contemplate a bet.

Ratajski/Dobey - no bet. 8/13 Krzysztof and 6/4 Chris looks more or less spot on, no matter how far we look back. The Pole's in incredible form, but Dobey's a pretty good player as well and ought to keep this respectable.

Aspinall/Beaton - no bet. Steve's probably a slightly better player than the 15/8 he's listed at represents, but he did most of his good work early in the season, if we cut down to, say, May onwards or whatever shorter timescale you like, his projections float around the one in three level which is extremely close to where the line is at. I want to bet on more stuff, but they're giving us nothing!

Suljovic/van der Voort - OK, now we might have something. Year long - VVDV at 40%. From April onwards - VVDV at 38%. Last three months - VVDV at 36%. Since the start of September - 35%, bleh, it's trending the wrong way, 11/5 ought to be tempting but Mensur does have the small consistency advantage. Moving on...

White/Smith - 0.25u White 5/6. Finally we have something. Season long this looks about right, but it trends up to 60% by the time we get to May onwards, and over the last two months it's 75% White. Ian's scoring nearly five points more than Smith over that time period, heck, he's averaging more than *anybody* over that time period. He won easily enough in Dublin so should repeat here.

Wright/de Zwaan - no bet. It's another game where it's trending in the right direction for one player, namely Wright, but the difference here is that he starts slightly on the wrong side of the line for our purposes, whereas Ian was bang on the money, and he only moves to a slightly better position than the price we're offered, which is worse than 1/2.

Price/Evetts - 0.1u Evetts 11/4. Small, as we've yet to see Evetts do anything of real significance on TV, and it's a big hurdle against an elite player, but Ted's scoring over 90 a turn season long with not much consistency differential in compared to Price, which relates to a 30% shot. Against 11/4 that's not real value, but over more recent spots it's a lot closer. Last six months - 40% chance, scoring near 92 a turn. Samples get a bit small for Ted from there, but his winning legs are really good and not far off Gerwyn's at all. He's a confidence player, if he can fire a couple of big scores early and maybe be no worse than 2-2 after four legs, he could kick from there and get the breakout victory that feels like it's coming.

Not a lot there, but we don't do stupid stuff just for the sake of it here, with the really weird scheduling of this event (Friday afternoon session but no Saturday afternoon session? Really? ITV4 actually showing something else on Saturday other than Storage Wars?) I should be back tomorrow evening with round 2 picks, but it'll probably be very brief.