Vandenbogaerde/Tricole - This one was annoying. Thibault was exactly who we thought he was - only winning two of the eleven legs he won within fifteen darts, just Mario couldn't finish the chances he created. Tricole won five legs in greater than eighteen darts, Mario just missing countless doubles. Maybe the tour card pressure was a bit too much, but regardless, it's an L in the ledger for us and Thibault is going to need to improve a lot in round two.
van Veen/Leung - Oh my, what a performance from MLL, 180's for fun and a great comeback. Should probably have won set two, but after that Gian's scoring appeared to completely desert him. Big breakthrough performance that should give the Asian game a huge boost, but Gian's got to be gutted.
Lukeman/Puha - Haupai was a little bit disappointing, thought he'd have made this game a bit closer than he did. Martin was solid enough but nothing special, did enough to get through at this level.
Price/Scutt - Gerwyn looked alright barring one or two legs, Connor wasn't terrible but just wasn't able to get up to Price's level, then again if Price is on most people can't either.
White/Goto - Pretty good stuff from Tomoya - steady all round game, didn't do much wrong at all. Neither did White really, outside of that last leg of set one, if he hits a double there I think the game could easily go another way. Think the card will be safe given he needs three specific players to make third round runs or someone to make a hero run to knock him out, but he'll want that leg five back.
Edhouse/de Graaf - Think the best player just about won. Jeffrey was a fair bit better than he's shown this season, was more like the levels he was at when he was at his best, so it's something that we've known is in there, just a bit of a surprise to see it. It proved to be just about enough to handle Edhouse, who was round about where we expected him to be in terms of performance.
Brown/Krcmar - Pretty much went to form this one, Brown took the first one with a very polarised first set, three OK holds in six visits sandwiching two extremely ropey legs on the Krcmar throw, then Boris pretty much took over with a steady enough game.
Wade/Campbell - First seeding shocker, and it's one that we thought might happen a bit more than the market suggested, we just couldn't bring ourselves to bet it. Shame really, Matt looked very good, maybe if Wade was a bit tighter on his doubling he could have got home, but Campbell was just about opportunistic enough. Really opens up a section of the draw which I thought was fairly open anyway.
Beaton/Nijman - Disappointing one for Wessel this, comes down to two things for me - missed doubles in the first set, particularly in the legs on the Beaton throw, then just not getting the scoring after going 2-0 up in set four, gifting Steve the match. Didn't do much wrong outside of that, Beaton was untouchable on throw in set two and Wessel swept set three and got to the good position in set four. Bit of a partisan crowd, but think that was just typical pro-Beaton more than anything.
de Decker/Horvat - Pretty standard game, Mike was a bit sluggish in set one, but sets 2/3 were very good. Dragutin has his moments but didn't in this one so against de Decker playing well it looked one sided.
Pietreczko/Suzuki - Fairly standard game, Mikuru just didn't have the scoring power to live with Ricardo.
van Gerwen/Barry - Michael looked OK. It could have got a bit spicy if Keane didn't miss stacks of doubles in the first set, Barry was scoring well enough throughout but didn't take the chances he had, which was much more pronounced in set one. MvG probably had enough in reserve to step up his game if required but what he was doing was just about enough.
So on to today:
Szaganski/Kantele - Line looks just about correct, maybe Marko's got slightly better chances than the line suggests, but with Radek rounding into form towards the back end of the season, and with Marko doing his best work in the SDC whose schedule is front loaded, any minor differences can be ignored. We're only looking at a 25% chance on a 7/2 line anyway.
Lennon/Bates - This actually looks closer than I thought it would be based on the year long stats, it's only giving Steve a 58% chance, which with the price being 8/11 is pretty much a perfect line. I'd have guessed the projections would have put him more at a two in three favourite, which would have been enough for a bet.
O'Connor/Patel - Next.
Smith/Zonneveld - Sadly, another one which looks to be a perfect line. Despite talking up Smith's performances, Niels has enough game that year long he projects to win about one in four, and with Ross at 1/3, that's not of interest to us. That does go up a bit as we get more form based, and Zonneveld wasn't exactly firing in round one, so maybe it's worth a look at Smudger, but I won't recommend it officially.
Joyce/Spellman - Sadly, this looks like yet another perfect line. Looking year long in order to get enough data on Spellman, Joyce rates somewhere just north of a two in three favourite, but not quite 70%. In other words, the line should be 4/9, which it is.
Veenstra/Robb - First one where we need to make a judgment call given the lack of data on Ben and the price not being ridiculous enough to flat out ignore as it was in the O'Connor game. If I'm looking at either side for a bet, it's the Veenstra side with the line being 1/2 Veenstra and 7/4 Robb. I can't imagine Ben ever being that good that he wins this one even 40% of the time such is the quality of Richard's game, so I'm immediately ruling out the Robb side of this one. Can we bet Veenstra? 1/2 implies that he should win this game 67% of the time. I'd likely need to see a projection of 72%, 73% or there abouts before I'd be OK to fire on it, anything further in terms of edge then just becomes a question of bet sizing. That makes the question simple then - is it unreasonable to think Robb can win this match, say, two out of seven times? I don't think that's the case, so I'll reluctantly pass.
Kist/Littler - Taking this game completely off the board as we have zero idea as to what Kist is going to turn up. If we knew he was 100% healthy it's probably the easiest bet of the round on Kist. If we knew he was going to play like he did in Minehead, it's probably the easiest bet of the round on Littler. With the opaqueness of darts reporting and knowledge on this, it's safest to just avoid it completely.
Wright/Williams - Urgh, the market has caught up on Jim. Or maybe it's caught up on Wright. Or both. 13/8 Williams is the side to take if any - I'm not seeing any sample where that's not the right side, it's a question of edges. Season long it's a coinflip, but we know Wright was playing god awful stuff (relatively speaking) in the first quarter, cut down to just from September and, with both players having near as damnit 200 legs a piece to look at, and Jim's only at 40%, which makes a bet barely break even, and anything else in between floats Wright around 55%, 58%, that sort of thing. That Williams made such hard work of a trivial first round game is the tiebreaker for me not to bet it.
So we have nothing today, and that's another eight games gone with no opportunity to claw back any of the half unit lost the last couple of days. We're not going to just punt at neutral EV selections just to chase losses though.
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