Saturday 19 June 2021

Matchplay race etc

So with a rush of Euro 2020 related stuff to look at, I didn't get chance to post up anything here to walk through what I'd do to find each way value. Which is a shame, as I picked out Cullen at 25/1 to bink the first event, which was a nice little pick up. That really wasn't too difficult just looking at the draw - the top quarter seemed much, much less stacked compared to the others - I took Wade as well at 33/1 (who made the quarters, so a profit was locked in at that stage) as well as micro punts on Rydz and Boulton as insurance. Betfair's each way terms are 1/4 top four, so you just need a bit of decent distribution of the elite players to find some good spots. Second quarter pulled together van Gerwen and Wright, third quarter had de Sousa, van Duijvenbode, Clayton and Ratajski, so the current top two in points per turn in 2021, as well as numbers 7 and 9, while the bottom quarter accounted for the remainder of the top ten in Smith, Wright and Humphries. With just Cullen from the top ten in the top quarter, that seemed easy enough. You just need to look after the draw to make sure that anyone you see doesn't hit a dangerous unseeded floater like a Gary Anderson, Raymond van Barneveld, or even someone like Chris Dobey, Martin Schindler or Alan Soutar (if you're not targeting these players yourself given the correct draw, although at least in the case of the Scottish guys you've not had good value on Anderson for years and the market overcorrected on Soutar hugely)

Plenty of other great value spots if you just ignore the big names and look for players who are undervalued. That you can still get Callan Rydz at 150/1 when he has course and distance this year is unreal. Naturally with the last day being an early start, I didn't actually get on during the final day, so some value was left on the board with him and Humphries, who you can typically get at at least 50/1 if not longer. Just looking through the ratings I have for points per turn - the top 3 (de Sousa, Clayton, Price) are all on 95, but there's a lot of players on 92+ that are worth investigating - Ratajski's been drifting enough that he's now available at 50/1, which is quite absurd. Dolan, Heta, King and Noppert are all on 93 and usually offer a decent price, then on 92 you've got the likes of Dobey, Rydz and Schindler who all seem capable. Schindler in particular you can get 250/1 on usually, which is quite absurd. He's playing so well and is incredibly under the radar.

Good to see that there's ranked WDF stuff going on - unfortunately getting any useful statistics out of New Zealand is impossible, so there's nothing to add to the database at the moment.

New FRH rankings:

1 Gerwyn Price
2 Michael van Gerwen
3 Peter Wright
4 James Wade
5 Gary Anderson
6 Jose de Sousa
7 Dimitri van den Bergh
8 Dave Chisnall
9 Michael Smith
10 Joe Cullen
11 Dirk van Duijvenbode (UP 3)
12 Jonny Clayton (UP 1)
13 Krzysztof Ratajski (DOWN 2)
14 Nathan Aspinall (DOWN 2)
15 Simon Whitlock (UP 2)
16 Stephen Bunting (UP 3)
17 Glen Durrant (DOWN 2)
18 Daryl Gurney
19 Devon Petersen (UP 1)
20 Rob Cross (DOWN 4)

No change in the top 10 despite JdS binking two titles - he's that far behind Anderson. Worlds money being so top heavy is a huge advantage, although Jose's now within 40k. Wright is within 10k of van Gerwen, although it's hard to tell who's deteriorating quickest. Durrant's out of the top 16 after bricking the first three events and withdrawing from the fourth, and Cross was momentarily out of the top 20 going into the last event, but held on from King for now.

Lower down, Humphries' final gets him into the top 25 above Suljovic, Searle (another player I should list in the value section at just under 92 for the season) holds a top 30 spot with his final. Heta is one spot outside of the top 30. Lewis having a decent run at a few events this week puts a few points on the board but he still remains outside the top 32. Also, right at the bottom, in less than two weeks we'll see Corey Cadby finally drop off the list. Shame.

So, what of the Matchplay race? We've got four events left, and looking at the race table for the seeds, I think everything pertinent has been decided from 11 up - Chisnall and DvdB are very close for 8/9 but that doesn't affect the draw at all. 13-15 are Ratajski/Gurney/Cullen and are all within 2k of each other, and Durrant's only about 10k above them, that's going to be a big one as getting Wade as opposed to getting Wright/van Gerwen is a big bonus. But who's going to get in on the Pro Tour?


I've taken this off dartsrankings.com, any errors here are mine for not double checking their work. Experience tells us that we should think that Searle upwards are going to be safe. Of course, it's not mathematical, but for Searle to drop out it'd need Wattimena to play solidly enough (which is questionable - he's not even got 10k in the 16 Pro Tours so far this season, and is scoring under 90 in 2021), and then two below him to put together either a deep run or multiple solid runs of a board final or better. And that's assuming Searle adds nothing, Ryan's added on 3k in every series as a bare minimum. Chasing 7k rather than 4k in a four-Pro Tour series is a hugely different equation.

So can anyone push in? Let's look at the average scoring of everyone in that 15-26 bracket. Nobody's above 92. Barney, Lennon and Darius are on 91. Bunting and Razma are just below them separated by just a hundredth of a point. Boulton, Meulenkamp and Hughes are all over 90, while Wattimena, O'Connor and Hunt are all on 89. Of those not mentioned, Kleermaker is deceptively low down at 87 - partially fuelled by quite a few legs off and a pretty bad losing average down under 85. Boulton, for example, is scoring higher overall than Martijn is doing when he's winning. Kleermaker making it would be a great redemption story from when he got screwed out of the worlds, but I really don't see it happening on form, and nobody just below, with the possible exception of Barney, is really doing anything that makes me think they can hit a final and force their way through. That Barney's actually done it this season is a bit of a factor, although given he's only actually reached his board final twice outside of his win, and he only won one of those, is it too early to say that title was a fluke?

Anyone else further down that could bink one? Whitlock's the next man down, and could, but he's not scoring well enough for me. Hopp's shown some signs and is scoring well enough, but probably put himself out of contention by not showing up this week. Adie would be the obvious choice for a long shot, he's only down 6k, had a good series this time and scoring of 91 isn't terrible. Huybrechts if anything is scoring better, but looks a touch down on where he was at the back end of 2020, and just isn't getting results. I think the last realistic name is Chris Dobey, he certainly has the scoring being in the top 20 in 2021, but down over 8k on Razma, you think he really has to bink - which is something he's never done.

I suppose the most exciting thing that I've seen is that they're adding another day onto the next Super Series to hold some Euro Tour qualifiers. We need to get some of these on, and I think there's enough places right now that it's viable to do so. It's my betting bread and butter, so sooner rather than later please? As mentioned earlier, front loading all the Pro Tours (20 before the Matchplay) should allow them plenty of opportunity to have free weekends to hold these.

Not sure when I'll be back - I may pop down some notes on the Euro Challenge Tour, which is something I'll definitely be paying attention to as it could give us very good reads for said Euro Tour events. Next Super Series is straight after, so I'll have to be quick I guess.