Aspinall v van den Bergh - We start off with what looks to me to be the most interesting quarter final, I don't really know why they couldn't have switched this to the evening session but it is what it is, Aspinall beat Anderson to reach here in an encounter which was pretty close throughout, whereas Dimitri needed to come from behind to knock out Adrian Lewis. The market favours Aspinall by more than 60/40 to repeat last year's semi final performance - I think these might be a bit more evenly matched than that, although Nathan's play in more recent months appears somewhat improved compared to the year long stats - there, Dimitri was winning quicker overall than Aspinall was, but losing much worse, now he's tightened up consistency but is just a little bit below on all categories. Tough one, 13/8 for the Belgian kind of feels right, but looking into more advanced stats just for this tournament we can see Dimitri's been gifted a very high proportion of slow legs, which is something I don't think Aspinall will do here. No bet, but it's close.
Humphries v Wright - Peter very nearly threw it all away against Jeffrey de Zwaan, going from a 3-0 in sets and 2-0 in legs lead to needing a tiebreaker to advance to the quarters, whereas Luke, after losing a first set in which he had three clear at tops to win, put away a fairly disappointing Huybrechts to win 4-1. Market has a lot of vig on it, but it's favouring Snakebite by around the 2-1 margin, and I think we need to go with class being permanent here - 0.25u Wright 5/11, this is a fairly small play given the odds we're getting, but while Wright's still scoring a couple of points better than Humphries in this tournament, Luke's peak level is close enough that I want to err on the side of caution. More or less any period up until extremely short form-based rates this as 4-1 in favour of Wright, but Peter hasn't been quite at his best in this event, Luke's winning leg speed has an extremely similar profile to Peter's - albeit his losing legs are over five points a turn worse.
van Gerwen v Labanauskas - Do I really need to look at this one? Year long, van Gerwen's over 90% to win easily. From the Matchplay inclusive onwards, it's 95%. That's more or less perfectly on the 1/20 he's priced at. Apart from possibly the Joyce match last year, when was the last time we had a less interesting quarter final? Taylor/Stompe in 2009 maybe?
Durrant v Price - This is probably the highest quality quarter final, Glen got past Chris Dobey in a deciding set, while Price was kept honest by Whitlock, but it never really felt like he was in any kind of danger. Price is going to have to go back to his on game that we saw against Hendo, not the off games that sandwiched them, while Glen's going to have to keep doing what Glen does, always staying in the position where he can threaten to take most legs in fifteen darts. The market is fairly similar to the Wright game, with the Welshman being about a 2-1 favourite, slightly more in fact, which I think is ever so slightly too short, with most larger samples floating around 64%, 62%, 65%, 67%, that sort of area, although over more recent months, where we'd think Price's form has increased, we see something quite odd - if I show what the master computer is spitting out for the last three months:
They can't be split. It really is too close to call. Price obviously has a much larger sample size, but there's really nothing to pick between the two, so with Price not having looked that great in a couple of games, and with this being probably the biggest game of his life (whereas Glen's played and won games of this length previously), I think we can stab at 0.25u Durrant 11/5, sure it's possible that Price just shows up, averages 108 and races into a huge lead, but that outcome is already factored in. With the longer samples showing that he is a bit too short, although not short enough that we'd ordinarily bet, I think this punt is fine.
Semi final bets tomorrow, unless Man City lose in which case I'll probably still be drunk.
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