He did it. He only fucking did it.

Congrats Michael, it's about fucking time. Both semis were kind of similar, was more or less close until a little bit after halfway through each of the games where the winner pulled through. Then in the final, seemingly Aspinall ran out of steam, which was unfortunate, but is always a factor with them cramming three bo31 matches into a little over a 24 hour period, which is somewhat of a workload. Switch to the dual tournament format as described a bit above and they can have the last sixteen on Tuesday/Wednesday, the quarters on Thursday/Friday, then the semis on Saturday and there's not the logjam. Still, can't complain, you know what the format is going in, and you can try to prepare accordingly. It's not like the PDC suddenly sprung a format change onto everyone at the last minute, they'd never do that if it'd make them a few quid, no. Not a chance. Anyway, new FRH rankings:

1 Peter Wright

2 Michael van Gerwen

3 Michael Smith (UP 1)

4 Gerwyn Price (DOWN 1)

5 Luke Humphries (UP 1)

6 Nathan Aspinall (UP 2)

7 Danny Noppert (DOWN 2)

8 Rob Cross (DOWN 1)

9 Jonny Clayton

10 Dirk van Duijvenbode (UP 1)

11 James Wade (DOWN 1)

12 Joe Cullen (UP 3)

13 Ross Smith (UP 1)

14 Dimitri van den Bergh  (DOWN 2)

15 Damon Heta (DOWN 2)

16 Dave Chisnall (UP 1)

17 Jose de Sousa (DOWN 1)

18 Ryan Searle

19 Krzysztof Ratajski

20 Chris Dobey

We've now got the slightly bizarre situation where the world number 1 is currently the number 4 on the FRH rankings, this is due to the half million pound bink only counting for 7% of its overall value. Aspinall's great season sees him up to sixth, Dirk gets into the top ten for what I assume to be the first time, Cullen's quarter sees him edge up a few spots in what's a pretty close battle from 11 to 15, with 16 to 18 also fairly tight and not too far behind. Lower down, Barney's run gets him back into the top 30, while Soutar and Rock solidify top 40 places.

Not sure quite when I'll be back with a Players Championship rundown. I don't think it will be tomorrow, so I'm going to take a guess at Wednesday. Will try to run through the field and give round one tips.