Not a huge surprise to see MvG reach the quarters, but with Ratajski and de Zwaan suffering surprise first round defeats, Jason Lowe is able to capitalise and make a nice run.
Big seeds continue to fall early with Mensur going down to Luke Woodhouse, who's immediately toppled by surprise package Nathan Derry, Peter Wright looks to be on fire until Geert Nentjes takes his second seeded scalp of the day in a second last leg decider.
Huge scalps for Adam Hunt to be able to pip Gerwyn Price in a deciding leg, and then repeat the trick against Nathan Aspinall. Jermaine Wattimena also reaches the quarters, not being put off by having Ando land on his board, eliminating James Wade to reach that far.
To nobody's surprise, Ian White storms through the field, only being briefly troubled by Jamie Hughes, meanwhile the continually underrated Chris Dobey and Jonny Clayton go all eleven legs in the last sixteen. So who'll win?
We have a new champion! Geert was able to win a deciding leg against Peter Wright, easily dump out Nathan Derry to end a career run, then take advantage of Jason Lowe taking down the world number 1 to nick two more deciders, stopping Ian White from winning the opening event. Adam Hunt got through to the semis in an event that saw somewhat of a seedocalypse.
On to event 2:
van Gerwen won't win this one either, after being untroubled throughout the event, a possible matchup with Gary Anderson being denied by Ryan Murray, twice world champ Adrian Lewis took down the three times champ. Meanwhile Mensur had a real bad weekend with two first round defeats, which left Rob Cross to come through his section of the board, surviving a scare against Antonio Alcinas.
The top seed did make it through the second quarter, Peter Wright edging out Jan Dekker, who had a good weekend, while de Zwaan would join Suljovic with two quick defeats. Good run from Vincent so far to take out two Premier League players and reach the last eight.
Up and down games for Price, with marginal victories followed by one sided romps. Ratajski did get out of the first round, but would the guy that beat him, Niels Zonneveld, be able to make it back to back shock tournament wins for the developing Dutch players?
Ian White won't make it back to back finals, after an impressive whitewash of Gabriel Clemens, Simon Stevenson would upset the Diamond and make it through to the quarters, where he'll face James Wade, who had a relatively untroubled path to that stage. Yesterday's winner would have the old Crucible curse, going out to Dave Chisnall in round one. And the winner is?
We got a repeat of the world championship semi final, with Price coming out on top this time in a fairly close final. All the matches from the quarters onwards went the way you'd have expected them to, so after a bizarre first event, the second is pretty much the opposite, which leaves Price at the top of the TA order of merit after two events, White and Wright are tied just behind Nentjes, while James Wade completes the top five.
I'll probably post up draws for events 3-4 tomorrow lunchtime. I want to get through the first six as quickly as I can to get onto the interesting stuff when we start shuffling players around.
A couple of quick notes - the semis and final are best of 11, old school style, because I can't be arsed to recode to adapt to the actual length, and the way I've generated the scores will show a larger than usual number of 6-0 results, the scores are mostly just for show, the actual chance of a player winning a match is correctly calculated.
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