Dobey/Aspinall - Huge win for Chris, coming from an early 3-0 deficit to win more than two thirds of the remaining legs and get home 11-7, very strong performance to back up what as already an impressive first round display. Nathan edged out Noppert in a fairly tight one, maybe not quite to the level of Dobey being the beneficiary of a couple of sloppy legs which might have made the difference, but certainly not bad, and again the first round display was impressive. It looks like the market has this one as the tightest of all the quarters, although it's not by much and the most prohibitive favourite is only 4/7 in the first place, Nathan is marginally favoured, and that looks just about right. On longer term form, Dobey is actually projecting as the tiny (not even 55%) favourite, but on 2023 data Nathan is favoured by about the same amount, and he pulls ahead another couple of percentage points again if we trim things to just after the UK Open. As such I'm quite happy to leave it alone, everything points to this being tight.
Cullen/Gurney - Joe provided maybe the second biggest shock of the round with taking out the clear favourite for the tournament in overtime, looking solid enough but maybe not putting on quite as much pressure in some spots as he'd have liked in the legs he let Price win, if anything his first round performance was better. I say second, as Daryl provided the first, taking out Gary Anderson with possibly the best Daryl has played in years, limiting the twice world champion to just four legs (and he was averaging near 115 in those) and only taking more than fifteen darts to get the legs he needed to make the quarters on three occasions. Gurney is definitely improving rapidly but Joe is playing overall the better stuff - looking just over 60% on full twelve month and 2023 data, since the UK Open Daryl closes the gap a touch but Cullen still rates to win nearer 60% than 55% in that data set. As such, the 4/6 for Joe looks to be pretty much spot on, although it wouldn't surprise me if this is a touch closer than the market suggests.
Searle/Clayton - Ryan backed up an incredible opening round display with a case of simply not fucking it up against Peter Wright, getting a decent lead and then just doing enough to keep holding and running out an 11-8 winner, meanwhile Clayton recovered after a not great opener to put away Dimitri very comfortably, only having the two legs go beyond fifteen darts (including the last one) and pressuring well enough to average 99 in the six legs DvdB won. Clayton's put possibly the best numbers up of anyone left in the tournament in the last twelve months after Humphries, and is improving, chances going from high 50's to low 60's to more or less 65% as we get more and more form based at our looks. Prices on Clayton are touching 4/6 in places, that's really not of interest.
Humphries/Heta - Luke needed to claw back from being on the brink of elimination against DvD to get home in overtime following an extremely easy first round win over Jose de Sousa, while Heta had perhaps an even easier time of it in round two, restricting Dolan to just a single leg without ever really needing to get that close to his top game in the process, this after a competent display against the ever dangerous Josh Rock in round one. This one looks like another game where if we trend based on shorter, more form based samples, it swings the balance one way - here in favour of Luke, with just over a 70% chance in the last four months or so, but only just over 60% in the last twelve months. Odds of 4/7 pretty much split the difference, so it's a no bet for me in this one, and for the round as a whole.
Probably back Saturday morning for the semi final run down, although given how the projections look for this round, I doubt we find anything that is approximating value. Check back then, we could be proven wrong (although I doubt it).
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