Friday 7 January 2022

So we dropped some money to the Weekly Dartscast

Decided to sponsor one of the categories in the Weekly Dartscast year end awards. Was a simple equation - have I got more than 20 quid's worth of value out of their podcast over the years? Answer is a clear yes, so happy to give a bit back and get a bit of a plug for the site in return.

So, new readers may be asking, what do we do here? Lots of stuff, but let's summarise:

- We (I say we, but it's a one man thing for the most part) do have our own year end awards post coming up in a week or so. Would normally post after Lakeside (how costly is that move now going to be for the WDF by the way, especially if a lot of their top qualifiers end up winning a PDC tour card), but that's been kind of moot for the last couple of years. Previous years are all in the archives.

- We picked tip of the year to sponsor mainly because in a large part this site gives tips. We are only interested in single matches, so if you're wanting to know whether to put Price, de Sousa and Clayton into an acca, or whether Madars Razma winning the match, hitting four 180's and two ton plus checkouts at 20/1 is value (no), you're not going to find it, although if a favourite doesn't look bad value but we don't have the edge to make it a recommended play, we'll tell you. We know people like a punt, and there's nothing wrong with that in moderation.

We just concentrate on the easily calculable - and we've had four straight winning years since the godsend that is Dart Connect has allowed us to get a true picture into how everyone on the Pro Tour is playing with a much larger sample than previously, which could quite easily be in the single digits worth of matches for much of the tour back in the day. We had a shocking worlds which'll make five in a row tricky, but with (hopefully) close to a full European Tour schedule, which is our bread and butter, we'll have plenty of opportunities to make it back. The value's usually in knowing those players that aren't on TV every week, which is possibly why the worlds went hugely downhill after Christmas, having been in a decent spot after round two. Any tips are bolded 99% of the time (usually only not if I'm posting up super quickly on my phone) for ease of location, I'll usually post on Twitter (@jtuk) when I've put up an analysis post.

- I would like to clarify in terms of tips is that I just look at the best line available on oddschecker on the more mainstream bookies. I'm not affiliated with any of them, and don't have any financial interest to push you one way or another like many tipping blogs have a tendency to. If I can't bet it without going to badger88bet.cn and needing to use dogecoin to deposit, then I won't list it.

- We'll also give a bit of commentary into upcoming and concluding events, just to add a bit of personal opinion into what's going on in the world of darts. I say world - this is very much NOT just a PDC blog, although it may read that way a lot of the time of late, that's more due to things outside of the WDF etc's control. The UK Open is usually a big post or series of, and while I didn't have time this year, the worlds is even larger, usually done in a preview/year review kind of format for each qualified player.

- The FRH rankings are posted up periodically, which are basically the standard PDC order of merit with the tweak that older events get downgraded linearly dependent on just how old they are, to give a bit of context as to who is outperforming their standard order of merit position more recently. So before you look at the post immediately below and go "van Gerwen number five you're an idiot", think of where (and when) he's got most of his money from. I believe Matt Edgar's just put up a Youtube vid saying players he think will rise in the rankings this season - this kind of does the same thing.

- In the links bar to the right (at least on desktop, no idea how it appears on mobile), there's a link to something I call Second/Third Division Darts. This is a year long thing I do where, similar to the Challenge Tour and Development Tour for the tour as a whole, I set up secondary tiers just below the players qualified for the Premier League, then look at their year long matches against each other, just to see how things might have gone hypothetically. Is it a coincidence that Michael Smith won the second division this year and made the final of the worlds? You tell me. I could probably pick this year's already as it's glaringly obvious they're just going to pick the top ten in the world (but they're waiting for fallon to get a tour card and put her in lol), but I'll wait for the official announcement.

- I'll occasionally go into a deep dive on some strategy-based things. Usually triggered by something I've seen on TV, I'll take a look at what's happened and work out whether it's a good idea. Things like when to use the bull (earlier than you are doing), is it a good idea to go bull first on 132 (probably not), those types of things. If you've got a question that you want to see answering, let me know in the comments. Haven't done a huge amount of this sort of thing of late, probably something I'll get more back into this year. If I get a ticket to something I'll often do a trip report, but I can't see that happening any time soon to be honest.

That's generally what we do. Just one guy trying to make a few quid on the darts and understand the game better.

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