Slam day 3

Day 2 was a bit unfortunate. The proposed Barney bet would have won at a solid price, that would have allowed a bit of leeway to have more shots, which might have been up and down.

Onto the final group stage, and we get the yearly clusterfuck of meaningless games, leg difference comedy, and easy spot fixing opportunities. As such, I am not going to look at the Barney/Evetts or DvD/Gawlas games, as neither have anything to play for outside of small numbers of ranking points and/or trying to spot fix your way to manipulating the draw (although given the PDC still idiotically put both players from a group into the same fucking quarter, you're only delaying things by one game). Of course, if they switched to a dual tournament format, which works perfectly in other sports, where it plays the same up to now, except whoever is 2-0 is the group winner, whoever is 0-2 is 4th, then the last two (which, for great narratives, can be a rematch, as you'd see in the Suljovic/Whitlock group) play off for 2nd/3rd, every game counts, there's no dead rubbers, no leg difference, no nine dart playoffs - basically it eliminates the entirety of the bullshit that makes the Slam group stage terrible. Oh well. Maybe some day.

Noppert/Suljovic - Noppert continues to be solid, Mensur continues to be meh, Danny only needs three legs to qualify but should get all five around 65% of the time. Market is 2/1, so they think a touch more, understandable given how the first two games have gone.

Price/Chisnall - The two best players in the group play off for one spot. Both have looked alright, maybe Price a touch better, looks 55/45 Price on long data so 6/4 on Chizzy is half worth a look. If he wins the throw and the market doesn't adjust to that, then what the hell?

Cullen/Ashton - Both the ladies have looked way off the level needed, Cullen's not been brilliant but will be more than steady enough. 1/9 isn't worth a look though.

Smith/Edhouse - Smith needs two legs, but will probably get all of them two times out of three. Which makes Edhouse all the more tempting at 10/3, although maybe he's already checked out given he needs to both win, and if it's not 5-1 or better (to overtake Smith), needs to win by more than Cullen beats Ashton. Can avoid Ritchie, would guess he's on auto pilot and hasn't been looking brilliant in the first two games.

Cross/Schindler - Probably the best game on paper, and it's a straight playoff, probably Cross favoured by approaching 60%, Martin is only 13/10 so there's enough market knowledge to make this a no bet. Maybe they've picked up on Schindler but still continue to undersell Cross?

Whitlock/Perez - Ought to be routine for Simon here. The win should be automatic, and 1/6 isn't tempting despite the mediocre play from Christian, he's just got to be a bit careful and win by at least 5-3, as a 5-3 Suljovic win would mean that they're both on four points and +2, with Whitlock on 0 leg difference right now, he can't be lackadaisical here.

No bets. Wasn't expecting many, and probably not going to get many tomorrow either, if any at all.