Monday 30 August 2021

So what's happened in August?

RIP Kyle Anderson is the main thing. Incredibly sad, made a great impression on the game but was unfortunately just on the wrong side of a couple of razor thin matches which could easily have seen him break into the big time. He'll be missed, had plenty of time to return later on after his returning his card but we'll never know.

Womens' Series was cancelled. Can't say I blame the PDC, the take-up on the continent was incredibly poor and they didn't really have too much of a choice in the matter. At least they are keeping the options open in terms of events by extending the two in the UK, but this has got to be disappointing for them.

Last Super Series was a bit chalky. Searle the only real surprise, and even then he already had course and distance and wasn't too far off the top players. Price and Wright will claim the other two and the plaudits, but van Gerwen actually had the highest scoring, by nearly two clear points. Probably getting close to the stage where we can freely back him for value. Schindler again put up some great performances, averaging in the top 10. We're backing him each way until further notice.

UK Challenge Tour was all about Jim Williams and Adam Smith-Neale. Jim's been fine for quite some time, but it's great to see Adam back throwing near his best after the injury issue god knows how long ago now. Outside of them, it was all Scotland, everyone binking doing fine, but generally the overall standard was a bit hit and miss. Quite a lot of players getting to the latter stages but not scoring brilliantly once there. Second weekend for both starts on Friday, which is going to be a huge weekend with the European Tour back as well.

It's also incredibly frustrating that they've not been able to find a time or venue to play a third European Tour event. That they only have half the events compared to last year is quite ridiculous, albeit 99% it's going to be outside of the PDC's hands. Maybe if they binned off the Nordic World Series event and the World Series finals, they could have found the time? The European Championship also, as a result, has the huge potential to be a joke - albeit one that could have betting opportunities.

Development Tour was super fun. Rusty-Jake was killing it. Almost certainly winning young player of the year here. Dom Taylor had a great weekend in the UK, although playing nowhere near the same standard. Zonneveld, Brooks, Doets, van Duivenbode, Kay, Colley and Springer amongst others all outperformed Dom over a decent sample size, but hey, it's a results business.

I'll be back Thursday evening for Euro Tour bets. It's been a while.

Saturday 21 August 2021

I'm still here, honest

I was going to post quickly after PC 21-23, but got distracted with a few real life things which put me off. I was then going to post after the Challenge Tour, but then thought "well they'll surely be posting something about the Euro Tour/Euro Championship soon", so I'll wait for that. Then it's close enough to the Development Tour, so I'll wait for that. So what I'll do early next week is do an uberpost collating a bunch of thoughts about what's happened in August and what's going on soon, before we get into the countdown of the European Tour. It's still incredibly disappointing that it looks in all likelihood we're only going to have two events on there - how that works with the European Championship, which I assume is happening given it's been listed as a qualifying event for the Grand Slam, who knows. Maybe they could take the top 16 from the two events and then invite the top player from each country not yet qualified to get a big range of players?

I will post up new FRH rankings as they're long overdue:

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

Only change is White dumping Durrant out of the top 20, but with Humphries now less than 2500 points behind him in 22nd, White is surely back out again son. Searle is up to 27 after his second bink. van Gerwen is nearly as close to Wade as he is Wright, which might surprise you, while Dimitri and Gary are fairly close.