Long time no post

Just watching a bit of Barney's last stand in the Netherlands, it's pretty interesting in that we've got a van Gerwen/Suljovic semi in one half, and then a Noppert (despite his best efforts) against either Barney or Chisnall in the other. Now if Barney wins this, then that dumps Suljovic out of the Grand Slam - unless Suljovic then beats van Gerwen, which dumps White straight back out instead, permutations all over the place.

Elsewhere, Marko Kantele's clinched a worlds spot after getting home in the Nordic tour, Nentjes and Ciaran Teehan have clinched from the Development Tour which Evetts has won by an absolute mile, Gary Anderson's reportedly questionable for the Grand Slam due to back issues, which might explain him playing complete garbage against Noppert, we'll see. Qualifier is tomorrow so no doubt the PDC will make things up as they go along if he does withdraw from it.

One thing I want to analyse at some point is the sense (or otherwise) of going tops-tops from 80 with three darts in hand. Now here, I think there's a few variables you need to look at - first one, naturally, is how often you hit treble 20 and then tens and tops to get a baseline level.

Secondly, I think you need to recognise that the equation is hugely different depending on how you throw - if you go high or low, it's either a marker or a blocker, if you throw like Adie, going high is a marker but you still need two doubles, going low means you just need a single, but how much of the bed are you actually seeing after you've hit that single? On the other hand, if you throw like Justin Pipe, if you go low you've left a marker and still should have enough of big 20 to hit to leave the double, but if you go high it's probably a disaster, as you've blocked the bed which you need to hit two doubles on. At that point, do you bail out to the 16's route? It'd be an interesting one to look at, but you'd need some decent data - you'd need to know how often someone hits tops for sure, but you can't just assume that they'll miss equally high and low - you've got to think that someone can adapt their throw (at least at the highest level) to aim for a given wire. Would be incredibly interesting to get some decent data from a high level player - wonder if Price or Lewis would need an excuse to learn that what looks like a showboating/disrespectful route is actually mathematically sound?

Oh well, Barney blew a 7-5 lead, so the deal is that White is in the Slam unless we get precisely a Suljovic/Noppert final, whereas Suljovic is in with a win or a Chisnall win. Then it's down to the qualifiers. In a bold and aggressive strategy, Suljovic isn't entered, and neither is Durrant, which is odd as you'd have thought that there'd be more equity in getting the PDC qualifier spot than the BDO spot.