Day 8 bets

Does it feel like half the field is gone already? Not really, but that's where we are, and another 8 of the remaining 48 will drop tomorrow. We had no bets today, nothing really surprising other than that Lewis was able to actually take two sets, Ratajski looked really good, White was similar but just couldn't finish against Huybrechts. On to tomorrow:

Dolan/Foulkes - This is a tricky one. Foulkes looked OK in the first one, but Brendan's so consistent, and Edward actually took six of his nine leg wins in six visits, so I wonder how much was just de Decker not showing up. As such, 4/9 is kind of tempting, given that you have to think a lot of the time that was Foulkes with a one or two sigma sort of game above average and regression to the mean will ensue. Will pass on it, it is Dolan rather than a truly elite seed so I doubt this is incredible value.

Cullen/Jones - Probably a game too far for Wayne this. Wasn't too convincing in the opening round and is against a player in form, there's no real value on Joe though, 3/10 is pretty short in what's still a moderately short race, it should probably be nearer 2/9, don't hate it for an acca but can leave it alone.

Whitlock/Labanauskas - This line looks pretty much spot on. Darius is doing enough against a resurgent Whitlock that he should take this more or less exactly one time out of three, and the bookies have it 4/9 Simon. Can't really read too much into Darius' first game given he had next to no challenge, will just move on to game four.

Lewis/Baggish - Interesting line this. We were on Danny at 4/1 against Heta, and he's not quite 3/1 against Adie, which I think doesn't really reflect any change in how Baggish is rated, as you'd think that Damon is a little bit better than Adie at this point in time. We've got a bit of data on Danny, and it's thinking the line is close enough to accurate to ignore, so I'm fine with agreeing with it.

Noppert/Carolissen - Annoying that we couldn't get any sort of read on how Cameron plays. 11/1 I think should be worth a stab just out of general principle, and if it wasn't Noppert I'd probably just go a tenth of a unit for what the hell principles, but Danny's been so good and so consistent, that I think Cameron can't really have the value that might be there actually materialise. Don't think Cameron's a mug, but this is just a bad stylistic matchup. Give me the same price against Wattimena, Hughes, Bunting or any similar sort of seed and I'd take it.

Petersen/Lennon - I thought this might have been worth the stab on Steve - he's been somewhat underrated for some time, looked pretty good in the opening game, and we can get around the 5/2 mark, which isn't bad in a two horse race. But Devon's done enough that the projections think he wins three times out of four. OK then. I guess we don't bet this either - it's an interesting dynamic though in that it might be the first time in maybe forever where Devon's actually under pressure to win the match as a favourite in the worlds.

Cross/van Duijvenbode - This is a pick'em? I mean I know Dirk's improved a lot of late and looked really, really good after getting into a huge hole in the first round, and I know Cross isn't exactly in the greatest of form, but this underrating of Cross is getting a little bit silly now, so 0.25u Cross evs, this is 60/40 so yeah, let's take even money with the title sponsors.

van den Bergh/Lim - Right, with this one we know a shitload more about Lim than we know about Carolissen, and we've seen Lim beat a very good player already this tournament, someone who for all intents and purposes is just a slightly more consistent version of Humphries who has a better track record of getting the job done in big comps. Was hoping that the oddschecker line was going to show lots of options at around the 15/2 mark, but it's just the one random book and everything else is around 6/1 at best, if not shorter. Name value probably working against us here. Think I'll just enjoy the game.

Generally there's a lot of stuff that's close and a few spots where we could go with the international qualifiers, but will be erring on the side of caution. Evening session looks pretty fun, so will just enjoy this and punt on Rob, be back with the final day of round two at some point on Tuesday, may try and whack it out on my lunch.