Wednesday 31 August 2022

Surprise early draw! Result!

Not a whole deal happening since the last post other than Rock crushing almost everyone on the Dev Tour and Beau crushing everyone in the Women's Series, with some minor WDF stuff with disappointingly patchy DartConnect coverage given it was actually there, but hey! The Euro Tour is back, and the draw is actually out already, which is a huge bonus, as I'm on holiday this weekend so I was expecting coverage to be real patchy. Oddschecker is not running yet (it often isn't when they're expecting fixtures, so right now I'm not expecting miracles), so I'll do a quick first round punts post from my phone tomorrow evening, but for now we can at least give some commentary and reads.

Roetzsch/Razma (Price) - Not seen a great deal of Franz since that one breakthrough season where he nearly made the European Championship from nowhere. Madars should be solid enough, no real data to use but this feels about 75% for Razma, then Price an overwhelming 80%+ favourite.

Claydon/Williams (Wright) - Brett's done his thing, which is playing alright but really just making up the numbers at the Pro Tour level, which isn't going to cut it against someone with Williams' talent, Jim ought to take this one really comfortably, 80% doesn't seem unreasonable, and he seems moderately live against Peter assuming he wins, maybe 30%?

Krcmar/Sarai (Humphries) - I know zero about this qualifier, and if anyone else claims they do, they're probably lying, so Boris at anything that isn't stupid odds on looks decent. Humphries is a different level again, but Krcmar plays well enough that he ought to take a second round match one time out of three - if he ever stops playing badly on stage.

Smith/Rodriguez (Noppert) - Jeff's been a bit of a forgotten name in 2022 I feel, after some decent runs last year, while Rusty hasn't really done as much as I thought he would have done after getting his card. Feels like Rusty a touch over 60%, but Danny should be solidly in control, although the projections would only give him just shy of two in three against Rodriguez.

Labanauskas/Rock (Heta) - Darius' data doesn't look brilliant in 2022, which is kind of unfortunate as he's running into someone whose data looks fucking incredible in Rock, who rates to claim this around 80-85% of the time. Jesus. Heta's better again, but only by a fairly small margin, I'd pay really good money to watch those two play all day against each other. And that'd be first on in the afternoon on Saturday. Idiots.

Tricole/Sedlacek (Searle) - This ought to be fun, two of the more notable non-card holder names in what looks like it should be a decent edge for Karel, projecting over 70% which did surprise me a touch. Searle's form has been a bit spotty, he would still be a favourite against the Czech but I'm only seeing just over 60/40 so could be underdog value in this one.

Borbely/de Zwaan (Cross) - Again, another player I know nothing about. de Zwaan needs to something here to push into the worlds spots and then pray if he's got any chance of saving his card, this is a great chance for him. Scoring's been fine but it's still some way off his peak and he's barely got more than a one in four chance against Rob, assuming the unthinkable doesn't happen and he shits the bed against the qualifier.

Gurney/Rafferty (Smith) - Spicy tie here, Daryl is doing fine this year while Nathan's much the same, fairly hard to pick a winner, I would still give Gurney the edge but only just over 55/45, there's not that much in it. Smith's about 70% against Gurney though.

White/Lukeman (Cullen) - These two seem fairly similar, I'm not quite sure why. Martin's getting the results but White's probably playing a bit better and not getting them, I say that but then shove it into the master computer and it says Lukeman 55/45. Go figure. Cullen's only about the same against Lukeman. Real tough segment to call.

Chisnall/Larsson (Clayton) - Daniel's shown some signs in spots that he's got a decent A-game, and his overall floor level game has improved, but Chizzy's a bastard draw and I'm only seeing 15%. Clayton's not actually performing that much better than Dave, see it as closer to 55% than 60%. Doubt the bookies have it that close if that happens.

Szekely/O'Connor (van den Bergh) - I've actually heard of Pal, which makes a change, although I have no data. Probably wouldn't go quite as mad on Willie dependent on the odds, but should still be comfortable. Dimitri seems bang on 70%, he's just solid enough that Willie's going to have to bring his best and even then it might not be enough.

Evetts/Dobey (van Duijvenbode) - Fun section, three players all on the right side of their careers and three who've probably not peaked yet, odd to say with a world youth champion, multiple Pro Tour winner and major finalist here. Ted's not really kicked on from that world youth and I think is closer to one in four than one in three, while Dobey's not really brought his best this season and Dirk should progress in that potential game two thirds of the time.

Whitlock/Vesgo (van Gerwen) - Janos is probably the most well known local player, I do have some limited data which I think is from a previous Euro Tour and it's not inspiring, Simon should be fine and will come up against MvG, who he's handled on TV a disproportionate amount of times given that my projections for that second round match come in at better than 70/30 for Michael.

van Barneveld/Rodriguez (de Sousa) - I keep forgetting Barney's still back on tour until he occasionally pops up in dispatches, kind of sad really. This ought to be a decent one though, looks like the tightest first rounder with Barney only having the slightest edge over the Austrian who's got a final at this level already this season, and while I think both will fancy the draw they've got against de Sousa, he seems to have recovered enough in the Matchplay that he's in the low 60% range against either potential opponent.

Bunting/Rydz (Aspinall) - This is a real interesting section between three players who were ranking fairly close until Nathan's hit a few results and pulled away a bit. Stephen's probably playing slightly better than Callan this season, call it 55/45, and chuck him into a game against Aspinall and it's a pure flip. Good luck calling a winner here.

Clemens/Meikle (Ratajski) - Gabriel's doing enough to get into majors still, but he's arguably not at his best and may well not be the best German right now. Meikle's shown he's got all the quality, he just needs to put it together for a big tourney run. Seems close in the projections, Gabriel has the edge but not even 55/45, while Ratajski could do with a good result and is a bit over 60% against Clemens.

Check in tomorrow evening for tips.

Wednesday 10 August 2022

Into the summer break

We're well into a near month long gap without any relevant PDC darts, there's the Development Tour in a couple of weeks, but it's just exbos outside of that, so let's look at the FRH rankings after a triple header from Barnsley where Cross, Aspinall and, from where I don't know, Keegan Brown got the cake:

1 Peter Wright
2 Gerwyn Price
3 Michael van Gerwen
4 Michael Smith
5 Danny Noppert
6 Rob Cross (UP 1)
7 Luke Humphries (UP 1)
8 James Wade (DOWN 2)
9 Jonny Clayton
10 Jose de Sousa
11 Nathan Aspinall (UP 3)
12 Dimitri van den Bergh
13 Ryan Searle (DOWN 2)
14 Dirk van Duijvenbode (DOWN 1)
15 Gary Anderson
16 Joe Cullen
17 Damon Heta
18 Krzysztof Ratajski
19 Dave Chisnall
20 Callan Rydz

Not a huge amount of changing - Nathan winning one and finalling another gives him a huge jump getting close to the top 10, while Wade either missing the events or doing nothing in them (I forget which) and Cross winning one with Humphries finalling one sees him drop down to eighth.

Lower down, Keegan's win sees him go up to 61st, it's been a fairly solid weekend for most of those outside the top 20 so not a whole lot of shifting there, Ted Evetts making a semi sees him back into the top 80, and that's pretty much it.

So what of the WDF? The big Aussie event was fairly disappointing in terms of quality - we at least got stats to work this out, which is better than what they could do in Antwerp, where Jamie Lewis and Wesley Plaisier got the cake. How they did it, who knows. No stream either for the Australian event, at least outside of domestic which was paywalled anyway. Later on, there's some small antipodean events for which is usually pretty terrible in terms of getting any sort of reliable data, one in Sweden I don't know, then we get to the British Open which I think ought to be covered on Dart Connect. We'll see.