ET2 thoughts

Hmm, so this has immediately become a bit of a clusterfuck, with two seeds and one qualifier withdrawing, all the seedings being shuffled around. Do Price and Dolan get any ranking money? Does Evetts? Who knows. They surely aren't paying Price/Dolan out 2k each given they've shifted up two seeds to take their place and given byes. Not a pretty situation. Draw's been out, it's a bit late, but we've only got 13 games to look at now. There's no lines yet, so let's blast through thoughts in running order and go back to tips later.

Kantele/Waites - Think this a bit of a sad case of Marko making up the numbers. Scoring of 83 in the last twelve months, which is a good six points behind Waites, only averaging 80 on the Challenge Tour, 83 in the couple of Nordic/Baltic events we've had so far and only slightly better in the SDC Euro qualies, this should open at least 75/25 in favour of Waites, if not more.

Soutar/Peters - Fancy Luc to put up a bit more resistance than Kantele will, Soutar's a bit better than Waites is but Peters is considerably better than Kantele. Would expect a line of around 8/15 Soutar, no vig, but not be surprised to see him closer to 2/5 in reality.

Lukeman/Hendriks - Jimmy's got a good 60 legs won under his belt in my sample, most of which I would expect to be from 2022, and is scoring under 85, which against a player in Lukeman's form may be in trouble. Year long stats think 75/25 in favour of Martin, more recent stats will be stronger still. Might be value in this one.

Vandenboegaerde/Kleermaker - Here's an interesting one, Mario's had a few good spots this season, Kleermaker's been a bit under the radar, so this could go either way. Model says it's a flip, so we'll see if there's any super bets we can make.

Labanauskas/Springer - Darius flies in and will face the latest German sensation as Niko looks to bank more money to try to get a European Championship berth, it seems like around a 2-1 in favour of the Lithuanian game.

Rafferty/Evans - Nathan didn't do much of anything at the UK Open, while Ricky looked a lot better than he has done in some time. How they'll respond to a typically quiet Friday afternoon crowd will be interesting, seems like another 2-1 sort of game, this time in favour of Evans.

Justicia/Killington - Onto the evening, Jose and George have been scoring really quite similar in my data, Justicia coming through a bigger sample though. Think both will fancy it, my data's giving Jose a small edge (not even 55%), but George has been looking pretty solid in 2022, so this may be another flip.

Schindler/Wattimena - Another shot for Jermaine to try to regain form, this won't really be the draw he'll have wanted, Schindler actually only projects at 60/40, which does surprise me a little. Will be a very interesting line, maybe Martin is shorter than that, but it'd probably need to be a clear misprice before I'd consider betting Wattimena in this one.

Chisnall/Bellmont - Dave's got a good draw here and should be comfortable. Stefan's been in a few Euro Tours in the past, but didn't play the recent Challenge Tour weekend and only managed 83 averages at Q-School. He was a bit better in the quali, but will need to show that sort of scoring to stand a chance.

van der Voort/van Veen - Here's the other associate qualifier, and Gian played considerably better in it than Stefan did - 94, 97 and 92 were the averages, which might be enough to give Vincent some issues, and averaging of 86 at Q-School isn't that horrible. Maybe he's got a shot. Dependent on the line, I might take a poke.

Gurney/Wenig - Daryl comes in against Lukas Wenig, who we've got a fair bit of data from and who we did see at the UK Open. Gurney ought to be too solid here, 70/30 seems about the right sort of ballpark, I just don't see Lukas as having demonstrated the peak game to really capitalise unless Daryl makes mistakes.

Murnan/Huybrechts - Couple of card holders going up against each other in this one, this isn't the easiest draw Kim could have got, but it's certainly not the hardest. Ask this question twelve months ago and it might be a different story, but right now I'm thinking a line of Huybrechts having a little bit more than a two in three shot, call it 4/9 vig free, looks the correct number as the Belgian climbs back in the general direction of the top 32.

Sedlacek/Lewis - Final game of the day, Karel's walked all over the Eastern Europe qualifiers, the numbers there might be a bit misleading but you don't win all of them by playing badly. Strong Challenge Tour averages as well as being in the conversation of the best player not to have qualified for last year's worlds, Lewis won't have it all his own way. We saw bits of the best of Adie at Minehead, but that quickly regressed, and I think in reality he should only be about a 4/6 favourite. He won't be, so we'll be looking to punt on Evil Charlie to close the night out.