Szaganski/Kantele - We thought this one might be a struggle, and that's exactly what it proved to be, a 21 leg duel that went all five sets, and only two legs were finished within 15 darts. Radek looked slightly the better player, but not really great and he's going to need to step up to get through Barney, a game with his tour card on the line.
Lennon/Bates - And if Radek was to win that, it'd knock Steve back out of tour card contention as is, having got a come back win to eliminate the Master. Fairly slow start with Owen looking pretty darned good, but Steve really picked up his game in the third set onwards. That might have taken a bit out of him, but at least he's still alive.
O'Connor/Patel - Bhav's averaging wasn't too bad, but it's got to be put into context - Willie looked really, really good in a match where he knew he wouldn't need to do a great deal, and Bhav was only down on a double in one leg. Pretty easy to average decently if you're never chucking at doubles.
Smith/Zonneveld - Ross looked a bit flat in this one, a weird game where he won quite a lot of slow legs, but would have been a lot quicker if Niels didn't hit some decent stuff, Ross being left on doubles after four visits three times and five visits twice, averaging over a ton in the legs he lost but only winning two of his eleven legs within fifteen darts. Hard one to really analyse.
Joyce/Spellman - Harsh one on Alex this one. We thought this'd be a first round highlight, and it was, if it wasn't Ryan he was playing, it'd be playing well enough to pick up the win against a lot of the Pro Tour qualifiers. But Joyce looked really good, real joy of a game to watch and one that's going to give Ryan a lot of confidence ahead of a tough round two game.
Veenstra/Robb - Richard didn't really get going until set three, but was still able to do just about enough to get over the line in both of them with Ben misfiring a bit on doubles. Final set was a lot better standard and showed more of what I thought both players were capable of, but Veenstra had the throw and completed the sweep.
Kist/Littler - Good to see that Christian looked a darned sight better than he was a few weeks ago. Only trouble is Luke was unplayable. Everything that could be written about Luke has been written already so I won't repeat the media.
Wright/Williams - Jesus christ both players were extremely poor, but Jim was able to get a couple of key legs at the key point, and pick the game up from the last leg of set two onwards. Big scalp, one we thought might happen, and it did. Puts up the spot where one of Williams, van Barneveld, Szaganski, Campbell or Littler will make the quarters.
Onto the Friday/Saturday conclusion of the pre Christmas matches:
Dolan/Mansell - Not a hugely inspiring opening game, Brendan is priced as a favourite, but not a massive one with the lines looking around 60/40. This does seem fairly close - probably a touch closer than that, if Mickey was a bit cleaner today then maybe I might have a brief look at 11/8, but for that to go I'd need to put Mansell at worst at a coinflip, and he ain't that.
de Sousa/de Graaf - Feels like the market might be slightly underestimating de Sousa, and/or doing a bit of an overadjustment to Jeffrey looking back towards his best in round one. Maybe that duel will have taken a bit out of him, who knows? Year long I've got Jose around the 75% mark, 2/5 is an edge but it's not that much, and if it's the case that de Graaf is doing better than his season long numbers, then that edge quickly disappears to a clear no bet.
Ratajski/Hughes - The Pole should be a strong favourite here, looking at just over a three in four shot season long, and as you get more and more form based that actually increases. It's a few days since Jamie played, he didn't look that good at all, and I find it very hard to believe that he's going to be able to turn that around against someone with Ratajski's quality. If we just had an extra percent or so, I'd probably take a relatively small stab at the 1/3 that Chandler's are offering, one to watch in the event that money starts to come in on Jamie, 4/11 I'd probably be thinking very hard, 2/5 I'd be taking, but I don't see the line going that way.
van Duijvenbode/Krcmar - Boris looked a tiny bit better than I thought he would, but it's irrelevant for this one, with Dirk having injury issues I'm not touching this one at all, Dirk might be completely out of it, or he might be able to pull things together for quick bursts which work in set play. We just don't know what we're going to get and it'd be impossible to quantify.
van den Bergh/Hempel - This is an upset that has happened before, and I think there's a fair shot that it happens again, Florian not playing quite at his best but certainly better than he might have done in a tough first round game. He's just shorter than 2/1 - now year long, that's not of interest as Dimitri has a projection of 70%, but it doesn't take much moving towards form based stats to change things. If we go from the start of May, it's a coinflip, albeit with Florian being slightly more inconsistent. I think this is one where we can trust the form, the Belgian's done little all year, Hempel looked fine in round one, Hempel knows how to win this exact game, and Hempel has more motivation knowing a win will save his card. 0.1u Hempel 9/5, that's in a couple of places, generally available 7/4 also looks enough.
Schindler/Wattimena - Jermaine dealt with a hostile crowd in round one pretty well, one of the better games we've seen from him of recent, but I wonder if that's making things a bit overrated. That, or Martin remains (is back to?) being underrated. I've got him a tick over 70% year long, rising to over 75% soon after the UK Open and continuing to increase. As such, I think this is a fairly trivial bet on the favourite at what 365 is offering, 0.25u Schindler 4/7
van Barneveld/Szaganski - We talked about Radek's game earlier, and it wasn't pretty. Barney is the better player, and there may well be tiny value on the veteran Dutchman, with year long getting him pretty much down the middle between 70% and 75%, fluctuating down a touch at times but up more towards 75% since the Matchplay. With Szaganski looking so ordinary in round one, the generally available 4/9 is extremely close to a bet, and unlike in the Hempel situation, I oddly think that the card pressure will actually be a negative here. I'd take 1/2 if the line moves.
Dobey/O'Connor - Final game of Friday, and this should be a good one with Willie looking like he's on it in round one. Dobey's an entirely different level of player though. It's a similar situation to the previous game, in that I'm seeing Chris generally around a 75% favourite, and we can get 4/9 on Coralbrokes. The difference here is that Willie looked fantastic already and doesn't have the same level of pressure that Szaganski has, as such I'm much less inclined to contemplate betting the favourite.
Huybrechts/Veenstra - Pretty simple one to analyse this. Find it extremely hard to find anything to separate the two of them, it's razor thin. The market has neither player odds against. We move on pretty quickly.
Rydz/Pietreczko - Ricardo looked pretty composed in what turned out to be a trivial match, and surely the same sort of performance would see for Callan in this one. Hard to really recommend a bet here though, season long Callan's a tad over 40%, and Ricardo is 4/6. It does move towards the German as we get more form based, from around May it's more like a two in three shot for Pikachu, which would be enough to consider a bet. I'll avoid it, as Callan's the sort that can show up and perform a lot better than form dictates, and has done so at this venue in the past.
Clayton/Lennon - This is another one which might be worth a form based play with Lennon north of 5/2 in places. Year long, Jonny's taking this three out of four times, which is clearly not of interest, but it doesn't take too long to get to less than two in three, when we can think about considering the play. If Steve had made it a bit easier in round one then I'd probably be more confident, but he didn't, so it's one where we probably monitor the lines and see if the public money comes in on Clayton. 3/1 I probably have a small poke at it.
Gurmey/Beaton - Another form based game here. Daryl's only around two in three year long, but the form sizings move things up towards three in four. He's priced at 2/5, which is more or less in the middle of the two, we're not getting enough of an edge on a more form based look to consider a bet, Beaton didn't show much weakness in the first round that we can draw on either way, so it's a pass from me.
Searle/Goto - Tomoya looked a fair bit better than expected against Ian White, but Ryan's a tougher draw again, and I find it fairly hard to believe that Goto can continue the level of play we did see. If anything, we start to look at Searle - he's 1/5, and year long I'm thinking it should be more like 1/8. I won't make the play, it wouldn't take too much of Tomoya playing better than seasonal to eradicate what looks like a perceived edge, and he has done that once already.
Rock/van Peer - Was kind of looking forward to a Rock/Woodhouse game, but this isn't a bad alternative. Berry played a good game, and I think he's got enough about him that we can't consider taking Josh, with percentage winning chances over decent samples floating between 25% and 30%. Rock's shorter than 1/3 so that's a no go, 7/2 on Berry isn't terrible, but I think there's enough of Josh turning the form on at the right time that we can't really go with it.
Bunting/Joyce - This should be the highlight of the night, and it's one that Ryan's extremely live in, and should give the in form Bunting some problems. There isn't any sample where I see Joyce, who had a great first round game, drops below a 40% winning chance, but sadly the market actually recognises Ryan is a decent player and is only offering a paltry 8/5. That's not enough.
Aspinall/Evans - Nathan's the 96th player into action, and he's up against Evans, who looked professional in a match against one of the easier possible opponents. I'm wondering if it's worth a play on Ricky here, the projections generally aren't giving Aspinall a 70% shot, and in spots it drops to a bit below 65%. That makes the odds of 13/5 on Hills definitely worth consideration, I'm just not sure if Ricky's got the consistency of game to be able to take out a top ten player in the world in a set play format, so I'll turn down what isn't a massive edge to begin with.
Will catch up on the writeups in dribs and drabs over the next couple of days, and probably use Christmas Day and/or Boxing Day to get the round three tips in.
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