Matchplay quarters

What was already not a great Matchplay got a bit worse by Noppert being completely unable to score heavily against Lewis, it's somewhat of a miracle that he was able to keep it as close as he did for as long as he did, but that level of checking out was clearly unsustainable for the long haul. Elsewhere, Gurney went out as seemed a possibility, Dimitri got over the line in a tight one against Cullen, and Durrant beat Wright in a bit of an upset - seems like more or less a two horse race for the title between him and Ratajski, but it is incredibly wide open. The stats from the first two rounds for those who are left:

That's a bit small but it should be legible - and should indicate what I was saying, this looks like a straight fight between the top two here. Of the remaining games, tonight we've got a flip between Ratajski and Smith while Ando's around a 2-1 favourite against Whitlock, while Lewis and Dimitri looks like a flip as well, with Duzza being about a 5-2 favourite over Vincent. What do we like?

0.25u Ratajski 19/20, on pure natural talent this is the best chance Smith might ever get to bink a major, but he's going to know that, he was a bit fortunate against Suljovic, but he's got a very tough task here. On 2020 form he's not even at 40%. On twelve months form he's more like 35%. Taking the Pole as a flip looks to be a real solid play (then again, we said the same things last night about Noppert, so...)

Nothing on the Whitlock game. 9/5 just isn't quite fat enough. It looks flat out bad on a twelve month sample, and he's only at 40% on a 2020 sample, but if we had a bit more we'd go with it. Look at the distribution of their scores above - Whitlock and Anderson are scoring exactly the same per turn when winning legs, while Whitlock's scoring a lot more in losing legs. Ando hasn't hit a single twelve in the tournament. If Simon can keep plodding away and not give Gary many chances to break in fifteen darts, this could happen.

I'm almost tempted to stab at Dimitri here. We're getting 11/10 and on twelve months form, he's up around 60%, but this drops to 55%, but Adie's hitting enough good legs. In a weird change in consistency, Lewis is playing complete trash when he's losing legs, while Dimitri's scoring more or less the same throughout, but Adrian should be able to find enough good legs to get home half the time here.

0.5u Durrant 1/3, I think Vincent's gone as far as he can go here. Duzza looks so incredibly solid and I can't see Vincent keeping up the rate at which he's been hitting twelve darters, especially at key moments. On 2020 form this looks to be a near 90% chance for Glen, over the last twelve months it's just under 85%. This is also a fairly long match, which I think given Vincent's litany of injury issues might further play into Glen's hands more than any other matchup we have here.

Two punts, and they're on the two players I'm thinking reach the final, best of luck everyone.