News!

And no, I'm not talking about the BDO cancelling everything, we'd been able to work that one out from the start, it's more that the PDC has actually started to add some clarity to the schedule, by saying the following:

- Half the Euro Tour (basically anything in Germany or the Netherlands before September) is cancelled

- The Austrian Euro Tour event is also binned off as they've moved the World Cup to that weekend. Refund for me at least

- They still, oddly, have the World Series finals not having been cancelled, despite them taking place in Austria where they could have held that Euro Tour. A few people saying TV contracts might be reason and that "we must have this unranked event on our screens" which seems as good a reason as any I suppose

This asks more questions than it answers to be honest. By saying this, they're throwing a world of confusion to players who had qualified for ET2-4 which are now off the schedule, as well as what happens to the ranking money that they had accrued, whether that counts for anything, if so when does it count (do they move those qualification spots to the events that are now scheduled, presumably after the Matchplay?), are they just going to have the European Championship run off five events, and so on and so on.

Frankly this isn't really acceptable, at least the public facing side of it is. They might have answered all these questions to the PDPA, who knows, hopefully we get some clarity by the end of the week.

Meanwhile the Home Tour rolls on, they must be so thankful that Ando got his wifi working, it'd be a hard sell if they kept getting the likes of Klaasen and de Decker reach the later stages, fine players that they are not withstanding.

Also, am I the only one that really doesn't get what Modus are doing in terms of their streams? I mean yes, darts is darts, but at least with the Home Tour, we (now) know where it's going, the same with the Remote Darts League. If there is some rhyme and reason to it I'm yet to work it out, appears mostly to be just self contained events, which when you do as many of them as they are doing loses any sort of interest almost immediately.

Where do we go from here?

We're still in somewhat of a holding pattern in terms of what the PDC is doing regarding their schedule, which is fairly frustrating for everyone. Who knows what's been discussed in private between the PDC, PDPA and other parties, but let's piece together what we do know at the moment:

- The Home Tour's scheduled through until June 5th
- The PDC have stated they'll announce something in relation to that event by that date, so the logical thing to do from a publicity point of view would be for Uncle Barry to do some sort of good news promo prior to the final Home Tour group for the ratings
- Apart from the Matchplay there are no main tour events scheduled prior to Hungary in September, there's Premier League but that's it
- Priti Vacant has nuked the UK economy from orbit with idiotic quarantine measures that achieve very little and do nothing much
- The German Superleague doesn't finish until June 14th

As a result, what I'm anticipating them doing is the following:

- The Matchplay is announced to be pushed back to the last week in August, giving as much chance as possible for the event to take place with some fans in attendance, at the present timings I don't think that's in any way realistic given current overly defensive government policies
- The Pro Tour will return starting on July 11th at Wigan, where they already have their venue booked for the Challenge Tour. I don't think it's in any way realistic that the numbers in a Challenge Tour event can be "safely" managed (and I use those quotes on account of the only risk to >99% of Challenge Tour participants is that they pass it to others in vulnerable groups), even if they cut to just one event in a day, whereas somewhere that's capable of running a 32 board event with Challenge Tour numbers is more likely to be able to do a Pro Tour
- This will allow a month's window for players from overseas to get into the UK, go to prison for two weeks (assuming Vacant doesn't do a 180) and then be good to go prior to the Pro Tour starting
- In the event that players are unable to travel back to the UK due to restrictions put in place by their home countries (I'm thinking this is mostly just Australia but there may be others), they will be permitted some sort of dispensation for major events, whereby if their earning rate in the events is such that they would have been able to qualify for a major they get a play in game against the last Pro Tour qualifier or something like that (in the event of the worlds, they can simply offer a wildcard)
- The schedule is then condensed to power through as many of the Pro Tour events as possible in order to catch up to where we would have been prior to the coronaplague restrictions, as well as possibly one or two of the Euro Tour events, behind closed doors but keeping the same format (some work around for what would have been the host nation qualifiers would be needed, but as it seems like the ones cancelled have mostly been in Germany, they would probably either be able to arrange a stack of qualifiers there and/or give wildcards using Superleague standings)

German Superleague 2 - Electric Boogaloo

Thrown the stats into the master computer:

Few simple things we can draw from that - Clemens was badly, badly pulled down to the level of everyone else and/or simply couldn't be bothered to get out of second gear as he didn't need to. Münch either ran hotter than the sun in some legs, or took a bunch of legs off. Probably somewhere in the middle, but it's hard to infer where his actual standard of play is at. Gotthardt looks to have been a bit unlucky, that's a pretty decent losing average, it's the first I've seen of him (I certainly don't recall the name from any Euro Tour qualifiers, looking at dartsdatabase he seems to have been absent last year) but having played the Dev Tour as recently as 2015, he could develop nicely. Disappointing showing from Bunse, and Stein seems fairly lucky to have grabbed three wins.

Next weekend we've got Kurz, Eidams, Horvat, Langendorf, Bilderl, Koch, Köhnlein and Klose - it's only really Daniel that's a new name but the remainder of the last four are players that I've not seen a great deal of, so I'll probably pick and choose to see what they can do. It's certainly an interesting mix with between young and old with plenty of players with big stage experience.

Remote Darts League is under way, watching a bit of it now primarily for Hogan and Herewini, as we kind of feared last night Osborne got smacked about a bit, and seems out of her depth, I worry this is going to continue like that for the rest of her games (and the other ladies player that I don't really know), but we'll see.

German Superleague

Evening,

Watched a bit of this on and off today in between the Bundesliga, mainly just to see what the sort of set up they have going on is, as clearly this is going to be used as some sort of trial for social distancing measures when they get back to the Pro Tour proper. It was an interesting enough setup, keeping each of the player's tables fairly separate, and having the hero we deserve effectively being a lollipop lady to keep the other player away from the oche until it's safe to do so. Seems a tad bit of overkill and they could simply mark out the standard exclusion zone they have at normal TV events but make it a bit bigger, but it is what it is, and if it's allowing us to get some darts on, I'll allow it.

As for the actual darts itself, as mentioned I didn't watch a massive amount of it (will probably watch more tomorrow), but Kai Gotthardt looked alright in places, nicking the win off Christian Bunse (who seemed a fair bit off the pace), god knows how Jens Kniest qualified, and it's not a bad start from Sascha Stein who picked up three wins. Looks like it's a double round robin with everyone playing everyone over the course of a weekend.

I think I'll add this to the tracking database. It seems like a high enough standard, it's effectively an affiliated tour so as we track the DPA, SDC etc it makes sense, and if it's going to shove a bunch of German players into the database it'll help a load when it comes to projecting Euro Tours, if and when they get under way.

The thing to note with this is that they are scheduling this through at least mid June, so with tour card players involved, I guess there's no way they're looking at scheduling any Pro Tours until after then?

Home Tour - more stuff

I now see that they've released the last four groups, and Ando's manage to upgrade his potato up to some sort of slightly better vegetable and is able to play. At this point, words fail me, and I feel incredibly sorry for anyone who had outright punts on Chizzy, Aspinall, or anyone half decent who had won an early group and looked value given that they knew there was no Anderson, van Gerwen, Price or Wright at that time. Then again, if you are putting any more than token money for comedy value on a friendly event, then I'm not really sure what to say.

The Remote Darts League 2 - Electric Boogaloo has been announced, and it's got a few interesting names - seeing Tricole should be interesting enough, I kind of guessed that Veenstra might be someone that got picked up, and getting some good antipodean and north American representation is a decent enough addition. The ladies' selections are pretty underwhelming though - obviously they're not going to have got any of the big three, but while Turner and Winstanley aren't bad players by any stretch of the imagination, the other two I've never heard of. Seems a bit like selecting ladies' players for the sake of it, if they'd have stuck with the first two then I think it'd be fine, but selecting two players I've never heard of, one of whom doesn't even have a dartsdatabase record, is a little bit overkill. I'm also not really sure what they're doing with the format, I've heard some sort of weird partial group system but I guess all will become clear in due course.

Also, we've got the German Superleague tomorrow. Apparently streamed - is this live? I'd guess so seeing how the Bundesliga's starting tomorrow as well, may need to catch a bit of that, it's more hope that we're getting a bit closer to normality, and that we might see other live action sooner rather than later and some part of the season might be saved.

Home Tour 26-28

Could probably rename this part of the event Michael Smith 2 - Electric Boogaloo, as the PDC's method of making things up as they go along seems to consist of having a bunch of retreads who failed the first time get a second pop at it. Pretty uninspiring, so while I've not watched anywhere near as much as I thought I would have done initially, I'll likely not be bothering with things for the remainder until they get up to the playoffs, whatever form they will take.

In good news however is the concept that elite sport behind closed doors is seemingly going to be allowed to take place from next month. This, of course, is dependent on more coronaplague developments, but should at least allow for the Pro Tour to resume at some point in the near future, and is also going to have the issues of completely pointless quarantining of inbound flights (if it's as prevalent as certain media would like you to believe here, having the odd person come in with it isn't going to make too much difference) and/or some overseas players maybe having issues leaving the country at their end. Still, at least it's a start and we can look towards some form of normality and getting some events played in the somewhat near future. Hopefully.

Home Tour 25

Hmm, last couple of nights didn't really go to plan with Jesus Noguera and Daniel Larsson coming from nowhere to deny our White/Noppert and DvD combinations (Larsson swept the group ffs, I didn't think he'd take a point), do we see anything interesting in group 25? Not really sure why Brown is getting a redo, but it is what it is, we've also got Jose de Sousa, Reece Robinson and Robert Thornton in there. My first thought is that Robinson/Thornton would be outsiders roughly equal valued, and that de Sousa should be favoured over Keegan, but he'll probably remain undervalued and not be a huge favourite over him, so maybe Jose at around 6/4, Brown 2/1 or so and the others in the 4/1-5/1 range, which, er, is exactly what 365 are pricing things at. As such I don't think there's any value, I'm not sure that de Sousa really takes this that much more often than 40% of the time that we can have a stab at it.

Should note that the notice of the BDO's "commercial arm", whatever that is, seems to be going busto, hopefully that should help to push things further towards what should be the natural order of PDC = professional game, WDF = worldwide amateur game, anything else = no pretence of anything beyond national level. Of course, the probability of anything concrete going forward in the current climate seems slim to none. Lancashire having apparently voted to leave the BICC today and the apparent discontent of all the Scottish counties will surely just accelerate the obvious demise of the BDO.

Thinking of who we've still got left to see play in the Home Tour, with 25 groups accounting for 98 players and two Keegan Browns we're down to 29 left:

Aaron Beeney (key working), Adrian Lewis, Barrie Bates, Benito van de Pas (said he's not playing), Boris Krcmar, Brendan Dolan, Cristo Reyes, Darren Penhall, Daryl Gurney (said he's not playing), Derk Telnekes (already pushed back once?), Gary Anderson (streaming on potato), Jason Lowe, Jeffrey de Zwaan (injured, but originally said he wasn't playing), Josh Payne, Madars Razma (starts too late), Mark McGeeney, Marko Kantele (said he's not playing), Mensur Suljovic, Mervyn King, Michael Barnard, Michael van Gerwen (said he's not playing), Steffen Siepmann (said he's not playing), Steve Lennon (said he's not playing), Steve West, Vincent van der Voort (said he's not playing), Wayne Jones, Wesley Harms (said he's not playing), Willie O'Connor, Yordi Meeuwisse.

Groups 26-28 apparently drop today, but there's not many left that haven't ruled themselves out, or at least have been rumoured to be out at least on Twitter when first announced (Noppert was apparently out but later played). Not sure what they do from here, but we should know soon enough.

Home Tour 21-24

Not sure exactly who's left at this stage, there can't be that many players that haven't already said they're out yet, but let's have a look at each group:

21 - Cross/DvdB/Borland/Sedlacek - This ought to be Rob's group. While Dimitri can do something here, playing in his kitchen is probably the exact opposite to where you'd think he'll do his best work. Karel could potentially do something and cause an upset, Borland isn't terrible, but seeing 8/11 for Cross to take the group seems about right. Can't see that anyone's recalibrated their odds to reflect Telnekes moving back, but I can't see Derk to Karel making a huge difference.

22 - White/Noppert/Wilson/Noguera - OK, now this one is interesting in that we've got two players who are always underrated, one guy who's out of form, and one wildcard - this is going to come down to White against Noppert you'd feel, and the odds I think favour going with Danny. 8/11 on White to claim the group doesn't seem nearly as nice as 5/2 on Noppert to do so, I think if you put 2 on White for every one on Noppie you've got a pretty safe arb here, but I might just set it up so that a White win is breakeven and we're freerolling on Danny.

23 - Anderson/van Duijvenbode/Schindler/Larsson - Wow, this one's super tough to call, we've got three players that I've always been distinctly higher than most on - Kyle we don't know where he's at, Schindler hasn't done it for a while, so DvD at 9/4 looks like a really good play. I can't see Larsson troubling the scorers, and the time difference could easily play a factor as well (although it didn't exactly harm Heta).

24 - Ratajski/Hughes/Labanauskas/Alcinas - Oh boy, this one's equally tough. The easy answer is Ratajski, but at odds on I'm not sure I can justify the play. Hughes at 5/2 seems like better value than Labanauskas at 7/2, and if he shows what he could do at his peak, rather than what he has done when he should have lost his card if others had kept theirs, then Alcinas at 9's would probably be worth a punt. I don't think I want to run any sort of sims, this should just be very high quality throughout.

TA Pro Tour Finals - the final session

Who will be the final winner? Let's see.

Danny Noppert		Leg	Michael van Gerwen
0	0	1	1	1
0	0	2	1	2
1	1	3	0	2
2	1	4	0	2
3	1	5	0	2
3	0	6	1	3
4	1	7	0	3
4	0	8	1	4
5	1	9	0	4
5	0	10	1	5
6	1	11	0	5
6	0	12	1	6
6	0	13	1	7
6	0	14	1	8
6	0	15	1	9
6	0	16	1	10

It won't be Danny Noppert, who played well enough to keep things level through twelve legs, but from there van Gerwen upped his game with a five leg winning spurt to move through to the semi finals.

Rob Cross		Leg	Daryl Gurney
0	0	1	1	1
0	0	2	1	2
0	0	3	1	3
0	0	4	1	4
1	1	5	0	4
2	1	6	0	4
3	1	7	0	4
4	1	8	0	4
5	1	9	0	4
5	0	10	1	5
5	0	11	1	6
5	0	12	1	7
5	0	13	1	8
5	0	14	1	9
6	1	15	0	9
7	1	16	0	9
8	1	17	0	9
9	1	18	0	9
10	1	19	0	9

It won't be Daryl Gurney either, as Cross came through a swingy game that had some hints of their Matchplay encounter about it, Gurney throwing away a 4-0 lead, then when on the brink of victory at 9-5 up, allowed Rob to come back with five straight legs to claim it in a decider, so after a repeat of one of the best Matchplay semis ever, we'll get a repeat of one of the best worlds semis ever.

Max Hopp		Leg	James Wade
0	0	1	1	1
1	1	2	0	1
1	0	3	1	2
1	0	4	1	3
1	0	5	1	4
2	1	6	0	4
3	1	7	0	4
3	0	8	1	5
3	0	9	1	6
3	0	10	1	7
3	0	11	1	8
3	0	12	1	9
4	1	13	0	9
4	0	14	1	10

It won't be an all-German semi final, as Wade was able to get a good lead early in the matchup, have the second session effectively go on throw to go into the final break with a four leg lead, then only drop one further leg from there as Max's run ends and he's unable to push forward into the semi finals.

Simon Whitlock		Leg	Gabriel Clemens
1	1	1	0	0
1	0	2	1	1
1	0	3	1	2
1	0	4	1	3
2	1	5	0	3
2	0	6	1	4
3	1	7	0	4
3	0	8	1	5
4	1	9	0	5
5	1	10	0	5
5	0	11	1	6
5	0	12	1	7
6	1	13	0	7
6	0	14	1	8
6	0	15	1	9
6	0	16	1	10

We will, however, have one German at that stage, as Gabriel Clemens was able to do just enough to see off a resurgent Simon Whitlock in the quarters. Both the first two sessions went 3-2 against the darts, but Gabriel came out of the break on fire, immediately stealing the darts off Simon, not giving up another leg on throw and getting a further break to seal the deal.

Michael van Gerwen		Leg	Rob Cross
0	0	1	1	1
1	1	2	0	1
1	0	3	1	2
2	1	4	0	2
3	1	5	0	2
3	0	6	1	3
4	1	7	0	3
4	0	8	1	4
5	1	9	0	4
6	1	10	0	4
7	1	11	0	4
8	1	12	0	4
9	1	13	0	4
10	1	14	0	4

It's the number one seed who's through to the final with a surprisingly easy victory over Rob Cross, in an odd game where the players traded two breaks each then two holds each, but 4-4 would be the closest Rob got to victory, as in a somewhat similar pattern to the quarter final, Michael didn't drop another leg and coasted through to the final.

Gabriel Clemens		Leg	James Wade
1	1	1	0	0
2	1	2	0	0
3	1	3	0	0
3	0	4	1	1
4	1	5	0	1
4	0	6	1	2
5	1	7	0	2
5	0	8	1	3
6	1	9	0	3
6	0	10	1	4
6	0	11	1	5
6	0	12	1	6
6	0	13	1	7
6	0	14	1	8
6	0	15	1	9
6	0	16	1	10

It won't be a first big final for Gabriel - in a similar pattern to the other semi final, James Wade was able to power away when it mattered to clinch a final spot. It was looking pretty good for Gabriel, breaking early and holding his throw through the first two sessions to go in with a 6-4 advantage, but that'd be it for the German as Wade put together a seven leg streak to go one match away from the title.

Michael van Gerwen		Leg	James Wade
0	0	1	1	1
0	0	2	1	2
1	1	3	0	2
2	1	4	0	2
2	0	5	1	3
2	0	6	1	4
3	1	7	0	4
3	0	8	1	5
4	1	9	0	5
4	0	10	1	6
5	1	11	0	6
5	0	12	1	7
6	1	13	0	7
7	1	14	0	7
8	1	15	0	7
8	0	16	1	8
9	1	17	0	8
9	0	18	1	9
9	0	19	1	10

And Wade was able to take it! Despite not having made a single final in the regular season, James was able to upset the number one seed and put another trophy in the cabinet. The first session was nice as he was able to get the break he needed, then we had the two players trading holds until leg 14, where Michael was able to get the match back on throw. With his record in deciding legs, you'd have thought that after two more holds the title would be in the bank, but Wade was able to break when it mattered the most - in a deciding leg.

A bit of a surprising one for me - if you're picking someone from outside the big three to be the next to win a major going forward, I'm guessing Wade probably isn't in most people's top five, or if he is, only just.