Autumn Series - Done

Finally caught up with the stats. Price managed the double bink, especially annoying given I had both Petersen and Ratajski down to win (as I had them each way I at least wasn't down) - still not quite sure how Petersen didn't get the bink, but with the way he's playing it's surely just a matter of time. Over the course of the five events he ended up with the third highest (Price, Wright) points per turn of anyone, we were seeing him look really good prior to the break, and he's continuing it, so he's got to be top of the list of the next players to get a debut bink.

Also up there was Joe Cullen, he always seems to have spells where he looks pretty unplayable, so maybe he can do some damage in Salzburg coming up this weekend. We then had de Sousa and van Gerwen (the former finally beating the latter), Wade being his usual consistent self, Smith scored well despite some bad draws, then Andy Boulton remained in the top ten, just ahead of Glen Durrant.

One thing that was noticeable was that quite a lot of players from Eastern Europe were doing well - Suljovic has been there for a while now and Ratajski has joined him, but we had Razma make a final. We've had Krcmar cash every event, get two board wins and pick up some big scalps. Sedlacek also won his board twice. Labanauskas didn't have a great time, but we'll see what he does tomorrow in Austria. Rowby managed to put out Peter Wright yesterday. Good times for that part of the world.

At the other end, John Henderson was really having a bad time. He picked up a grand, but ended up below everybody apart from Hogarth and Derry in points per turn. That's worrying. Maybe it's just a bad week, who knows. Also down there were de Zwaan, Webster, Woodhouse, but mostly the players you'd expect to show up at that end of the stats. In terms of results, Adrian Lewis was really poor, as was Michael Smith.

New FRH Rankings:

1 Michael van Gerwen

2 Peter Wright

3 Gerwyn Price

4 Rob Cross

5 Dimitri van den Bergh (UP 2)

6 Michael Smith (DOWN 1)

7 Nathan Aspinall (DOWN 1)

8 Glen Durrant

9 Daryl Gurney

10 Dave Chisnall

11 Gary Anderson

12 James Wade

13 Ian White

14 Krzysztof Ratajski

15 Mensur Suljovic

16 Adrian Lewis

17 Simon Whitlock (UP 2)

18 Chris Dobey

19 Jonny Clayton (DOWN 2)

20 Joe Cullen (NEW)

Bunting drops out from the post-Matchplay rankings, Cullen hitting a final and a semi being enough to get him back into the top 20. Otherwise there's not a whole lot going on - Whitlock having a decent enough series and Dobey just edging ahead of Clayton by about 100 points sees them swap places. Lower down, Heta's into the top 64 following his bink, Petersen hits the top 50, Razma's in the top 60, while lower down the pecking order Sedlacek and Kleermaker have hit the top 100, Telnekes is a board win away from the same, and Krcmar has hit the top 128.

Now we move on to Austria for the "World Series Finals" - not a huge amount I'm interested in seeing other than how Harris and Sherrock are doing, whether Ward, following the news that he is hanging up his tour card at the end of the year, is really playing with nothing to lose, and seeing how the dynamic of fans in the arena works again. There's a few decent first round ties I guess, so why not.

Then it's the return of the Euro Tour - now the last event before the Grand Prix. Heta and Whitlock are the last two players out, looking at who's qualified for it, King and Clayton are best placed to push the last qualified player (currently Razma) out, while further back you have Jeff Smith and Jason Lowe within reasonable striking distance, although both would need to go on a big run. Whitlock not making it (it's basically Dimitri nicking his top 16 spot that's caused him to miss out) is a sign of things to come I feel, he's repaired the Pro Tour ranking somewhat, but could still do with getting more. Dobey and de Zwaan are the last two players in, they're in the Euro Tour and a win each should be enough and could put Kim Huybrechts in trouble. We'll see what happens.