Wednesday 28 December 2022

Q3 R4

I've got to assume the scheduling is as such in order to get these two games known for tomorrow night - that they haven't actually put a schedule up when the games are tomorrow is unreal, but the scheduling's been fucked up massively. That Dolan plays last day of round two then first session of round three is particularly bonkers, but lolpdc I guess.

Wright going out is a huge, huge shocker and blows open the third quarter massively. Which, for those of us with Josh Rock futures, is a very welcome development. Let's look at that all-Belgian clash first with Dimi against Kim. van den Bergh has still yet to be properly tested given Ratajski looked pretty poor yesterday outside of a five-ten minute spell when he got his set, while Kim's clearly been tested against Peter, although the averages aren't overly huge and I don't recall reading any legs where masses of doubles were missed. I think there's a fair differential in quality here - Dimitri is the better player by enough of a margin that I'd expect him to claim the win just over three times in four. The market has things ever so slightly closer, but we can't get better than 4/11 at this stage, which is nowhere near enough of an edge to consider a punt. Maybe if some money comes in on Kim thinking that if he's beaten Wright, then DvdB won't be an issue, we can start to look at it, but I'd probably be needing 4/9 to start to think about firing, and I can't realistically see the line moving that much.

Other game is going to be Rock against Clayton. Josh coming through Nathan was the one I was worried about, especially after he went 2-1 down and missed the chance to close things out earlier than a deciding set, but he's through and is up against Clayton, after he came through Dolan in a match which was a lot closer than the scoreline suggests. Jonny's a step up in quality for Josh, but it's still not to a quality where we can really call it a flip - I've got this as basically 60/40. The typical line I'm seeing is 8/11 - so not favouring Josh quite as much as we are, but it's near enough to easily say no bet. Betway's got 4/5, which is closer, but I would probably be wanting 10/11 before I could start to recommend a play here. Clayton's no mug, if he plays like he did against van Trijp, this is going to be a seriously good match.

A couple of other things I want to comment on. Firstly, how good was that Clemens and Williams match? Absolute blinder. Shame as I had Jim futures (needed a quarter, would have partially laid vs Noppert and let it ride vs Soutar), but a great game. Secondly, what on earth is that WDF announcement about their worlds? They're holding it in December? 2023? So you've had a qualification period that's run through an entire year, then you're not holding the actual tournament for another twelve months? Really? How many players there are going to have their form collapse in the interim period? At that stage how many players will have qualified for the PDC worlds and not play them both back to back? For this upcoming season, how many players are going to have a super tough time selling themselves to sponsors with "when will I be on TV? End of 2024. Maybe?" sort of issues? I do not understand this in the slightest. If they want to move to a two year ranking system, that is fine, but you really can't have this long a gap between qualification ending and the actual tournament. It sounded partially like Ashdown was blaming lack of TV scheduling windows (citing, I believe, a clash with the seniors of all things), but let's be blunt here - what sort of TV deal is the WDF actually going to get, and what sort of timing is not going to clash with some other event these days? I have no idea why they are even trying to get a TV deal - how many people actually watch something like Quest anyway compared to streaming? I read somewhere that Sky didn't even have six figures for the opening night of the worlds. A quarter of a million people watched chessboxing on Youtube. CHESSBOXING. Tell TV to fuck off and stream the event yourselves. You likely get more viewers with more control over the product and less cost. That said, the PDC couldn't get their streaming to work for most of Aspinall/Rock, so it's not without risk.

Should be back after Soutar/Noppert to look at the top quarter.

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