Little bit delayed, but up in time - we'll have half the field already gone by this time tomorrow, I suppose the big news yesterday was that Danny Baggish was able to put us back into the black following his nervy win over Damon Heta, coupled along with Mervyn King looking pretty comfortable against Max Hopp. Didn't think I'd be saying that quite so quickly after the accident we had with Mike de Decker and the unfortunate reverse suffered by Luke Woodhouse, but we're there.
Outside of that yesterday, no real big shocks in terms of results but some shocks in terms of performances - Waites/Campbell was a great game where neither deserved to lose, Lennon was predictably comfortable against Larsson who had his moments, Huybrechts had probably the performance of the round against Zhuang who didn't win a leg, Kurz looked like he was struggling a bit, but so was Hamilton, gives us an interesting Superleague rematch in the second round, Hedman did well to win a set but Boulton was never in real trouble, and Ryan Murray looked extremely good - just unfortunate to run up against van Gerwen who also looked really good.
Another eight matches today which will close off round one, what do we like?
Telnekes/Kenny - Should probably root for Derk here given I've drawn him in the Weekly Dartscast sweepstakes, but can't possibly go with that. Bookies have it pretty much evens - I think that's not right, and I'm extremely close to going with a punt on Nick here. They're extremely close on points per turn, but Nick's claiming his winning legs a fair bit better, and based off those projections, Nick should take this 60% of the time, maybe slightly more, so I should grab the 10/11 that's out there. Just get the sense that Nick, with a worse won/lost leg percentage and greater inconsistency, might be overrated here and it's closer to evens as a result. Then again, Nick won through the PDPA qualifier so maybe has form? Who knows.
Lowe/Gorbunov - Not a great deal to talk about here. Dmitriy isn't the lowest tier qualifier, but I don't think he can really handle a professional of Jason's standard. 1/8 might be a little bit too short, but I'm not going to touch this one. Wouldn't be surprised if he takes some legs, maybe even nicks a set if Jason's a bit jittery, but winning the actual match seems too much of an ask.
Kuivenhoven/Edgar - The one that the Edgar Nation has been waiting for, and Matt actually comes in as a tiny favourite, albeit one of the 10/11 against evens type. This really is too close to call on current form, looking at the numbers after we restarted, Edgar is projecting as a 52/48 favourite - so more or less bang on what the bookies are saying. As such we're avoiding it, if we knew there were signs that Maik might be reclaiming a bit of his early 2020 form then maybe we could draw some inferences from that, but there are none, so we'll pass again.
van der Voort/Meulenkamp - Think this is another game where the bookies have this pretty much nailed on. Vincent seems to have had a fairly good 2020, but isn't really showing it as much as you'd think in the numbers, whereas Ron's a bit the other way around, and will surely draw confidence from a first round win against one of the toughest international opponents you could get in Krcmar. Projections show Vincent winning in the 60-65% bracket, which feels about right just thinking about it on an eyetest sort of level, so with Vinny at 8/13, we can ignore the whole afternoon session.
Kleermaker/Carolissen - The big question here is what Cameron will do when it comes to playing on a big stage. There's certainly enough signs that Cameron has something about him based on the limited research I was able to do, and with Kleermaker's points per turn since the restart only being 88, it doesn't need what we know Cameron is capable of to show up that often to make grabbing the 11/2 we can see a decent play. On the other hand, Martijn made his name by simply not fucking up on the BDO circuit week in week out, and has also shown some good stage games when in the PDC, so while statistically it's not the worst matchup, I think in terms of gameflow it might be. It wouldn't surprise me if Cameron makes this close, but I can't quite bet on it.
EDIT - Seems Martijn has fallen foul of pisspoor testing procedures and Cameron gets a bye as Payne also can't play, so ignore this post.
Brown/Meikle - Final first round match, and the bookies can't separate them. Two still fairly young players, with a combined age less than about half a dozen players in the field, it's a big game for both as Keegan looks to try to get back towards the top 32, while Ryan wants a first win and to put some serious money into his account to push towards keeping a tour card. 0.25u Meikle evs, his overall level of scoring, particularly in winning legs, is very good since we've got back under way, scoring 94 in winning legs and 91 overall, whereas Keegan is under 90 no matter which way you look at it. Seems like Keegan is priced this closely purely on name value, also got the added bonus that he messed up that game with Ando that might have damaged confidence. That the projections say 80% might be overstating things a tad, but this looks pretty good and I'm almost tempted to go half a unit.
de Zwaan/Searle - Bookies have this one close to even, that's the fourth game today they can't really separate the players in. Ryan's the tiny 55/45 favourite, but this is almost a similar level of mismatch in terms of the projections. 0.25u Searle 5/6, Ryan has been playing unbelievably strongly since we got back under way, discounting players with just a handful of legs he's actually in the top ten of points per turn. He's that good, and looked great in his first round game where he got a great test. Jeffrey's simply lacked results, match practice and quality, and is scoring nearly a full five points per turn lower than Ryan is. Again, it's only a question of whether we go half a unit.
Clayton/Henderson - Big John looked, well, not quite so big, didn't he? Looked well, and was able to get past a potential banana skin in Kantele, having some decent moments but looking a bit sluggish. Can't see anything other than a Clayton win here. Jonny's just too consistent and scores too well, it's going to need everything to go right for Henderson here for him to keep it close. 2/5 is a tempter, I've seen Clayton -1.5 tipped, that might not be a bad play if you just want decent odds, as while I think Henderson can nick a set, I can't see how he gets up to two. Should probably take this anyway, but there's something that sometimes prevents Jonny from really getting the results his scoring deserves.
So just the two plays. Both Ryans. If you want to go larger than you normally would, go right ahead.
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