PC Finals round 2/3 thoughts

That was pretty much a dumpster fire on a day of truly awful darts, Veenstra being the only redeeming feature which prevented us from more or less running into a total loss. But in all seriousness - we see this tweet from Loxley in the immediate aftermath of the Pietreczko/Kist match:

Now I am not casting any accusations whatsoever, but surely this is problematic. We've seen this sort of thing in relation to Clemens last season, and in relation to van Duijvenbode recently, and probably relating to more players who I'm not immediately remembering. Kist was quite clearly priced against Pietreczko as if he was 100% - nobody in their right mind is going to say that a non-card holder against the most recent Euro Tour winner being priced at 6/4 in one place, and shorter everywhere else, is priced as if he was injured. And then we see minutes after Kist chucks a 68 average whoever is running Loxley's social media account detailing knowledge that Kist is in no way capable of playing and was basically drawing dead? This is surely open up to huge abuse. How easy would it be for someone in the Loxley camp to say to someone in the pub "put the farm on Pietreczko, Kist is fucked"? I'd say this if I'd bet on Pietreczko as well, but surely there needs to be some sort of mechanism whereby if a player is injured (or otherwise not able to play at 100%) it needs to be reported somewhere publicly for everyone to see, and not just leaked during or after the game. We have basically zero reputable or notable darts journalism in the same way that major sports have (for example, Wim, who I've got a lot of time for, describes himself in his Twitter profile as "Dutch darts fan/journalist... writing for Darts World" and he knew nothing about this despite it's a fucking Dutch player in question so in his backyard), so I think this needs to be mandated, just to protect both the public and the bookies. They can detect possible questionable things in games in the Super Series seemingly every week, but this gets through in a ranked major? Fuck me.

Right, I'm going to blast through bets in the morning, but will put up projections for the games here:

Price 76/24 Huybrechts

Bunting 45/55 van Veen

Smith 51/49 van Gerwen

Campbell 40/60 Vandenbogaerde

Chisnall 50/50 Dobey

Cross 68/32 Woodhouse

Rock 61/39 Clemens

Clayton 67/33 Zonneveld

Anderson 75/25 van den Bergh

Wade 55/45 Lennon

Humphries 80/20 Szaganski

Searle 61/39 Pietreczko

Heta 65/35 Doets

Kuivenhoven 43/57 Dolan

Wattimena 42/58 Veenstra

Joyce 51/49 Cullen

And to look at the last 16, just picking probable winners (even if not favourites) and going from there, as previously mentioned I doubt that I get on to tip a thing, but just to see where things are at:

Price 65/35 van Veen

van Gerwen 70/30 Vandenbogaerde

Chisnall 47/53 Criss

Rock 50/50 Clayton

Anderson 80/20 Wade

Humphries 67/33 Searle

Heta 56/44 Dolan

Veenstra 44/56 Cullen

Check in in the morning for bets.