Price/van Barneveld - Obviously the entirety of the narrative is going to be about Barney's recent TV wins over Gerwyn, and as such I was expecting a fairly favourable line for which we could bet on the number one seed. That hasn't quite transpired, the best we can get is around 4/11, which is really surprising. I've got Price at 78%, so while it's not a bad bet, it's not really something I'm interested in given possible recent psychological things (i.e. losing a lot to him on TV) and very probable crowd things, although Price is pretty unlikely to care about that. No bet.
Searle/de Sousa - This ought to be decent, a 16/17 seed battle between two players who haven't had the greatest of seasons, and who have won their first game in wildly different fashions. Will Jose having had a much tougher test than Ryan make the difference? I'm looking at this one as being a little bit more than a 55% game for Searle, he's priced at 8/11, which appears more or less spot on, so will ignore this game from a gambling perspective as well.
Williams/Clemens - This one also ought to be great. Jim's bailed us out of a moderately bad start (thanks Jamie) with his second round win, while Gabriel appeared a seed in danger but easily dispatched O'Connor, which most pundits thought would be a lot closer. This one looks tight to call again, but I've got Jim as about a 55% favourite, which intuitively feels correct, the bookies can't separate them, so I can't really suggest taking evens as there's not quite the edge there.
Noppert/Soutar - Alan was someone that I thought had good chances to beat Gurney, he did, but the ease in which he did was surprising, similar to how I was surprised at how Danny let Cameron back into his opener a bit too easily. This looks like it should be fairly easy for Noppert, I'm projecting right in the middle of the 75-80% range. We'll tone that down slightly given Soots is peaking in form, and if we were to call it 75% then there's not enough edge to go with a best price that I can see of 2/5. Will ignore this one again.
Smith/Schindler - Michael had zero problems in the first round, Schindler had a few minor issues with Lukeman but handled them well enough. The German's played well enough this year that I'm projecting him as having a one in three shot, which sounds a bit surprising on the face of it, and the market thinks I'm being a bit contrarian as well, giving 7/2 in multiple places. This seems really close to a play, but I think a combination of Smith potentially playing a bit more freely having binked his major, coupled with Schindler not having done the greatest stuff on TV, I can talk myself out of it.
Cullen/Heta - Christ, this is going to be a tough one to call, we've got someone who statistically doesn't appear great but outperforms all the time, against someone who statistically looks fantastic but has continually botched games on TV. Fuck's sake. Market has it evens, I've got it as Heta at near 70%. Even taking into account that Cullen continually outperforms projections, and Damon never fails to disappoint, especially against Cullen this year, I have to go with it. 0.25u Heta evs
Humphries/van der Voort - This one seems pretty easy to project, Luke's among the elite now and should be in the Premier League, Vincent's one of the weakest players still in the field and got an enormous gift from Menzies to get through to this stage. Looks to be Luke at nearly 90%. Price seems generous. 0.5u Humphries 2/7, temptation to go a full unit is huge.
Chisnall/Bunting - Fun local derby here between two players who came through against potential banana skins 3-1, Chizzy's maybe more so but Bunting couldn't take anything for granted either. Dave is the better player, but it's not by a huge amount - I'm projecting around 60/40. As such, the market's giving a bit of a tempter on Stephen, but I'll pass for a few reasons - 2/1 is only right on the boundary of where we'd play, Dave's hitting form at the right time, and the projection is marginally on the right side of 60/40 for Dave. I don't hate the play on Bunting, but I won't recommend it officially.
Wright/Huybrechts - Neither player was tested in the slightest in their openers, and both have had a huge break, so it's a little bit tricky to say where their super recent form is at, so we just need to look at year long stuff, which as you would expect heavily favours Snakebite. It's even better than the 1/4 we can get, I'm seeing 86%. I'm going to talk myself out of a bet once more, if only because 1/4 isn't available in most places, and given that Peter might be ever so slightly rusty having missed the Players Championship. Seems acca safe, and I'm not going to disagree with you if you opt to fire on this one.
van den Bergh/Ratajski - More games which are close in seedings with 15 against 18, maybe seems a little low for both but I can see why it's happened, neither player got in any real trouble in their first game. I expect this to be spicy and fairly close, but with the Belgian having a moderate edge, projecting at basically spot on 60%. The market is leaning a little bit more towards Dimitri, but not by much, with only my main bookie of 365 offering a fishing price of 7/4, which isn't terrible but I'm not going to get hooked by it. A little bit longer than 2/1 however, and I'd start getting interested, but I would guess that particular line is going the other way rather than towards where we want to go.
Clayton/Dolan - This one looks moderately safe to call. Brendan should have had a real test with Jamie Hughes, but ended up making more of a meal of Jimmy Hendriks than was really needed, while Clayton looked excellent in quickly eliminating another Dutchman in Danny van Trijp. Projections say 70/30 in favour of Clayton, traditional markets are around that price point, but there's better than 4/1 available on the exchange if you believe that Brendan can perform as he has done all year and think he can get the upset. I've had a small personal nibble, but won't be recommending an official play with 10/3 being the best you can get through an orthodox bookie.
Aspinall/Rock - Clear tie of the round for me, Nathan has been playing fantastically, but Rock's just better. I see this as being between the 70% and 75% marks for Josh in this one. Try to take it down a few ticks to eliminate the early weeks when Nathan had injury issues and it shouldn't really change - those were the months when Josh was getting used to the tour. Rock's not been at his peak on TV since the Slam, but what we can get on Coralbrokes still seems easily worth the bet. 0.25u Rock 4/6
van Gerwen/Suljovic - Mensur was lucky to run into the bad version of Mike de Decker, Michael did not need any luck and would have beaten the good version of Lewy Williams if that arrived, which it didn't. This appears a trivial ask for MvG, I'd set a vig free line at 1/7. He is 1/12. That's maybe being a touch disrespectful to the Austrian veteran, but we're not going to go with any sort of yolo shot on him.
van Duijvenbode/Smith - This is another game which is going to be really, really fun to watch which should see 180's for fun, Dirk in particular never fails to provide entertaining matches. I'm not having a great deal of trouble in separating the players on what looks like a moderately close game based on seedings and TV results this year - Dirk is better and this is a 65/35 game. Easy enough bet as a result, 0.25u van Duijvenbode 8/11, wouldn't be taking much shorter though.
Cross/King - Rob got a real good workout by Scott Williams, as we expected, while King also got a good workout from Baggish, which we maybe didn't expect quite so much, but with Mervyn's form, anything can happen. This looks like too big an ask for Merv, I've got Cross at over 80%, line for me would be 1/5. 1/4 is readily available, which isn't really the edge we need, but for an acca, what the hell.
Anderson/Dobey - Tricky one to call this. Gary had some momentary troubles with Razma but came through, while Dobey's averaging against Kleermaker was not impressive but he still got the sweep in sets. Would think that Chris will up his game a lot in this one, Gary on the other hand should have pretty good chances if he brings his best game. Actually seeing this one as about 2-1 in favour of Ando, so this seems a trivial play. 0.25u Anderson 4/5
That's it for round three, what I'll do from Tuesday is start to analyse matchups as and when they're known. Be back then.
No comments:
Post a Comment