Austria round one

Apologies if this is brief, but it's late and I have no confidence in being able to be awake before the off, so I'm going to rapid through the games not involving the HNQ's, for one I can't see lines on oddschecker, for two the performances are such that I don't want to touch it. Lerchbacher was awful. Haberl had flashes but meh. Schnier did nothing, and while Goedl was probably the best, it wasn't great, I'll check (if I'm awake) for any sort of outlier lines putting him hugely odds against versus Dom Taylor, but other than that it's just a waste of four games.

Nijman/Grbavac - not enough information, line seems relatively sensible.

de Zwaan/Sedlacek - Karel being slightly favoured doesn't seem silly. If he's on, he's better right now. If he's not, he's worse. In the middle, it's tight. No real interest here.

Lauby/Joyce - 0.5u Joyce 4/9, he's just playing so, so much better right now with a win chance looking more like 1/5 than this line that I'm happy to push the boat out a tad here.

Veenstra/Evans - this is a flip, simple as. Veenstra at 6/5 is the side you want to aim at, it's kind of close to a play but it's not quite there. Ricky has got better of late in fairness.

Labanauskas/Razma - lol this draw, the line seems kind of fine on a very quick glance having decent enough data on Darius still, which is good as I don't want to have to consider this one too much.

Monk/Edhouse - Monk might have slightly more chances than the odds suggest, market may be getting slightly ahead of itself but not by much.

Lukeman/Gurney - getting into the evening session where we have a lot of bigger names against each other and have good data, sadly so do the bookies. Maybe Lukeman is fractionally undervalued, but it's incredibly fractional.

de Sousa/van Veen - Jose still has enough about him to rate to get about 40% of the wins here. That's where the line is at, so no bet.

Hall/Dobey - line looks just about right. Hall has enough to nick this in the low 20% range. With the market as it is, that's of no interest.

Schindler/Wade - 0.25u Schindler 8/13 on Coralbrokes right now looks a damn good bet. He's over 70% for me. Nick it while you can.

van Barneveld/de Decker - this is tight. I'm seeing Mike as slightly better, as is the market, I'm seeing it as slightly more in favour of de Decker but it's too marginal to punt.

van den Bergh/Clemens - standard flip, market can't really separate, if anything I've got Gabriel as a tad better whereas the market has it the other way around so taking Clemens I guess is no worse than neutral EV.

So not much here, I may throw up a one line post if I see Taylor/Goedl lines that look comical tomorrow afternoon but don't bank on it.

Ando takes it

Don't think there can be a more popular winner than that, as he stated it's been a while since he's won a stage title, and there can't be any doubt that he's at a level right now where he can still add a bigger one than that. Fair play to Ross for getting to the final, if things drop a bit differently maybe he nicks a first title, but it does at least solidify a top 16 position as we get closer and closer to the Matchplay. New FRH rankings:

1 Luke Humphries

2 Michael van Gerwen

3 Michael Smith

4 Rob Cross

5 Gerwyn Price

6 Nathan Aspinall

7 Damon Heta

8 Dave Chisnall (UP 1)

9 Peter Wright (DOWN 1)

10 Jonny Clayton

11 Dimitri van den Bergh

12 Stephen Bunting

13 Chris Dobey

14 Luke Littler

15 Gary Anderson (UP 5)

16 Joe Cullen (DOWN 1)

17 Danny Noppert (DOWN 1)

18 Ryan Searle (DOWN 1)

19 James Wade (DOWN 1)

20 Ross Smith (DOWN 1)

Elsewhere, it was a pretty good weekend for Brandon Weening, picking up a brace of WDF titles, while on the Asian Tour it was a great weekend for Ryusei Azemoto, while Alexis Toylo is continuing to run away with the overall lead having got a win and a final this weekend, Azemoto got two titles and is looking pretty good to make the worlds as of right now. But it's no rest on the main circuit as we head to Graz for another Euro Tour - there's a few fun names that came through the qualifier, man of the moment Edhouse will look to continue his streak of form, Wessel Nijman and Dom Taylor should be interesting young threats, Danny Lauby, Madars Razma and Karel Sedlacek add good international feel to the event, Romeo Grbavac will get another shot at this level while we see Darius Labanauskas for the first time in a while. We don't know who the home nation qualifiers will be yet, but maybe we see Rusty in the field as well? Who knows. Back Thursday, not sure when as it's a bit of a funny night for me but should have some bets up at some point as we look to continue what's been two pretty good weekends of late.

QF bets

Not taking Ando, 8/15 I suppose isn't bad, but I'd just need fractionally more before going for the bet.

0.1u Cross 12/5 on 365, here I think he has just enough quality to get there often enough more than the line with the frequency that's worth a small stab.

0.1u Smith 5/4 on Ladbrokes, Heta's quality of play and Ross making heavy work of the last sixteen is a natural concern, but I do think Smith is the better player right now, and all the concerns are really doing is tempering my sizing.

0.1u Clemens 11/5 on 365, Gabriel looked very good earlier today, van Gerwen wasn't bad but was forced to work by Clayton, the numbers give this more of a high 30% chance than the low 30% chance the line suggests so I'll go with the flier here again.

ET4 quarters

OK, we got lucky with that Smith/Edhouse game, so I think our overall ups and downs are more or less level now. The last sixteen is still going on but I want to head out for the Cup game, so let's have a quick look at projections for the three that are finalised:

Rock/Anderson - 71/29 Anderson

Cross/Humphries - 61/39 Humphries

Smith/Heta - 57/43 Smith

Then in the last one, and these are without any sort of data on the last sixteen, MvG would be 55% against Chizzy and 61% against Clemens, while Clayton would be 37% against Clemens and 32% against Chisnall, so might be a case of betting whoever comes through the second game? Will post bets if any probably at half time or there abouts.

ET4 round 3

What an incredible display that was from everyone yesterday. I'm just looking at the numbers, I was watching El Crapico and didn't actually see any of it personally, but that's got to be close to, if not the best, days of European Tour ever, especially notable since it was only the Saturday, and we've got a great lineup today. On the betting I think we were a tad unlucky, Clemens winning got us out for relatively minor damage, but a combination of Clayton playing the best he has done in ages to even put Dobey into a position where he can miss three clear at double for a leg, including in the decider, is an unfortunate combination, Mansell did not play badly at all, it's just that Heta was playing so well he would have beaten anyone with that display, then Barney was able to take things all the way, if never looking like actually winning the match, although he had left himself on a two darter after twelve, so to ask the question of the other player in that spot I guess I'll take. Eight games today, what do we like?

Rock/Smith - Josh really wasn't in top gear against Sparidaans but didn't really need to be, Smith was pretty good but couldn't really put Barney away, my data literally cannot split the two (they're so close that a world final would be 50% to two decimal places), so if I lean either way I lean Rock, given a small consistency edge and the odds against tag, although he'll need to up his game from yesterday I feel. If it was any longer I'd probably take a small stab.

Anderson/Price - Two players who played back to back and both looked equally dangerous meet up for the latest encounter of a fabled series of matches. Market is having real trouble separating the two, but is perhaps surprisingly putting Price as the marginal favourite. I think there's close to a bet here - if you have Sporting Index and can get the 11/10 go with it, if anyone offered 6/5 then I think that's enough to go larger, but for now I'll just go 0.1u Anderson 21/20 on Coralbrokes/Betfred for a game that looks 55/45 in Gary's favour.

Noppert/Cross - Danny had another very solid game against Gurney, not really putting a step wrong at any point, while Rob needed all eleven legs to see off Schindler, coming from 3-1 down to fire in three twelve dart or better legs in a spell of four then holding out. Looks to be Cross for me, slap bang in the middle of 60% and two in three chances, which I think is enough chances at the prices to go small, 0.1u Cross 3/4 again on Coralbrokes, 8/11 is probably also fine but 4/6 isn't enough.

Humphries/Bunting - Luke came through a great 6-5 game against Littler, while Bunting dodged a bullet (see what I did there) against Ryan Searle to also come through in a decider. Stephen's doing enough to get just over 35% win chances, there's only really the spread companies that are offering better than 2/1 and that's only just, I'd probably need north of 9/4 before I could really start going against Humphries in this one.

Edhouse/Smith - Ritchie continues a push towards what looked like an optimistic Matchplay slot but is now looking more realistic with a steady win over a bit of a below par DvD, but 6-1 is still no joke, while Ross was another comfortable early winner, having 2-3 poor legs but not really being threatened seriously by Luke Woodhouse. Edhouse is full of confidence but Smith is no joke and I'm seeing him as right in the middle of the 70% to 75% range, which gives us a fairly easy bet, 0.25u Smith 8/13 on Betfred, 4/7 I think is just about close to enough as well, anything the right side of 1/2 I think is alright.

Williams/Heta - Scott had a very solid game, just the slow first leg in the first game of the day but otherwise barely slipped at all against Ratajski, while Heta was unplayable against Mansell in maybe the performance of the day where there were a LOT of contenders. Heta looks about a 65/35 shot here, so with the relative level of play yesterday, Damon generally being just a touch shorter than 1/2 at best seems fine to me.

van Gerwen/Clayton - Michael did a more than professional job in seeing off Johan Engstrom for the loss of just the one leg, while Clayton nicked a decider against Dobey in, as stated, maybe the best game he's played all year. MvG is obviously much the better player at this stage, looks like a 70% to 75% punt again, so 4/11 appears close to a perfect line.

Chisnall/Clemens - Dave was fairly sluggish but came through a equally mediocre Keane Barry in possibly the only real damp squib of a game yesterday, while Clemens beat Pietreczko 6-2, a poor first two legs aside he was completely on it. Chizzy only looks about a 55/45 favourite here, so with the German crowd, the 6/4 we're getting offered on Clemens is extremely close to being worth it. I'd probably only need one more tick, 13/8 would be a go.

ET4 rapid round 2 stuff

Bunting won as expected, it's really rare that I pick someone that odds on, but it looked good, we will take our ten percent, lol cullen lol wright lol us not pushing margins more, this is going to be a ready money round and we're going to be bang bang bang and if I post more than one word it's because the game in question is not close to the line. Vamos.

Ratajski/Williams - close on Ratajski but no

Smith/Woodhouse - no

Searle/Bunting - no

van Duijvenbode/Edhouse - weird one this in that Carl questioned what this one might look like. I had a guess at what the line would look like. Paddy Power is replicating my line right now. People are paid to do this shit

Noppert/Gurney - no

Clayton/Dobey - 0.25u Dobey 8/13 on 365 at least, line should be the other side of 1/2

Chisnall/Barry - no

Rock/Sparidaans - maybe Rock isn't short enough but can't see the edge

Anderson/Perez - maybe Ando isn't short enough but can't see the edge

Price/Dolan - no

Smith/van Barneveld - 0.1u van Barneveld 11/5, still not overly convinced Smith is consistent enough, Barney in form, numbers place this a lot closer to 60/40 in Smith's favour than him being better than a 2-1 favourite

Heta/Mansell - 0.1u Mansell 11/4, yes Wright is much worse than Heta right now but Mansell is legitimately playing fine and has much, much more than a one in four shot, this is easily more than 65/35, 11/4 is great so we go with it

Cross/Schindler - that this is evens isn't them taking the Schindi kool-aid, it's legit

van Gerwen/Engstrom - not touching after missing the Johan boat, that sort of price might have worked against Cullen but not against MvG

Humphries/Littler - pure flip so no

Pietreczko/Clemens - 0.25u Clemens 10/11, this is projecting better than 60/40, Ricardo is a tad more consistent, but Clemens has just come off a real easy win, Ricardo is maybe not in the best form, we'll take the price

ET4 bets

Rydz/Sparidaans - line looks fine.

Burton/Barry - line might be favouring Barry too much but only fractionally.

Williams/Springer - if Niko had shown us something recently I might have had a flier, but lack of recent data makes it hard to be confident about his level of play.

Gilding/Dolan - line seems accurate enough.

Woodhouse/Lukeman - line's in close enough of a ballpark, if Woodhouse drifted a tick or two we might go for a small stab but that seems unlikely to happen.

Engstrom/Cullen - 15/2 seems like a big number, might be a bit too big, wouldn't hate the tiniest of tiny stabs at it.

Zonneveld/Perez - market might be underestimating Zonneveld, but it's only marginal at best.

de Sousa/Gurney - might be the closest we have to a bet here. While the projections say it's a coinflip, I get the sense Daryl is playing better. As such, while 11/8 on Jose might be at worst neutral EV, I won't recommend it officially.

Edhouse/Wade - market's caught up to Ritchie and we can only get 13/10. That's just not enough.

Bunting/Grbavac - 0.5u Bunting 1/10 on 365, this is long odds on but I really do not see how Romeo can even get close in this one.

Roetzsch/van Barneveld - I guess the line is close enough to correct. I like Franz's game but would need a bit more than 9/2 against someone with a recent Pro Tour title to think about it.

Dobey/White - Chris might be ever so slightly undervalued here, but we're only talking about him being 4/11 when he should be maybe 1/3, 3/10 or there abouts, not enough confidence to chase that sort of edge.

Merk/Littler - LOL.

Schindler/van Veen - Martin's 4/5 which represents exactly the 55% we see him having, next.

Wright/Mansell - maybe there's the tiniest of value on Mickey. 11/8 isn't a bad play but I'd probably need 6/4 to open up with a tenth of a unit. And after Wright dropped a 70-something average yesterday, I hardly see the public money flying in on him.

Clemens/Eidams - hard to tell on this one really. Best guess would be that 4/1 is being slightly harsh on Eidams, but not truly out of line so I'll ignore this.

So nothing really of interest, understandable if you don't want to invest heavy in getting a 10% return in the only one we suggest.

Ultra rapid ET4 thoughts

Just going to look at the first round for now:

Rydz/Sparidaans - Decent opportunity for both. Callan's the better player but it's not prohibitive and Jeffrey probably rates to nick this nearly one time in three, so could go either way.

Burton/Barry - Fairly close one. The sort of game Keane needs to be winning to make progress, the sort of game Burton needs to be winning to have real chances of retaining his tour card. Could go either way again, Barry is only a tiny favourite.

Williams/Springer - Not seen Niko in a while. Pretty much a whole year at any reasonable level. He has shown flashes in the past and Scott won't have it all his own way you feel, but Williams ought to be favoured.

Gilding/Dolan - Two players who are in the category in the previous post they wouldn't want to be, so prove me wrong gents. Dolan's ever so marginally better but not even 55/45, it is slightly more of a favourite than Keane is a couple of matches prior though.

Woodhouse/Lukeman - Another competitive game between two players who'd like to push up into the top 32, although Lukeman seems a fair bit further off right now. Real coinflip here.

Engstrom/Cullen - Joe won't hate this draw, been a minute since we've seen Johan play, he's not awful but even if Cullen isn't at his best it's hard to say that he's going to have much trouble here.

Zonneveld/Perez - Niels is a late call up and Christian is making a debut on this stage, and it's Perez who is probably the underdog here, Niels approaching a 70% win chance as he looks to solidify a top 64 place after a decent 2023.

de Sousa/Gurney - Two players on the periphery of the top 32 here, you can see from the previous post that we're liking Daryl's game a fair bit more at present, but in this clash of major champions the projections are having a real hard time separating them in the slightest.

Edhouse/Wade - James is always a tough opponent but Edhouse is in a rich vein of form and won't be fearing anyone, and is showing enough that Wade is favoured but only by a couple of percentage points, so a real competitive game to open the evening session.

Bunting/Grbavac - Stephen ought to be just fine here, Romeo's had a few cameos and could be a real useful World Cup partner, but his standard is way off Bunting's and it's hard to see Grbavac grabbing more than a leg or two if we're being realistic.

Roetzsch/van Barneveld - Another game featuring someone who's off to a good start in the Challenge Tour, Franz actually being a touch higher in the rankings than Romeo is, but this is a tough draw with Barney having got somewhat of the winning bug back, and the veteran ought to be solidly favoured here.

Dobey/White - Ian's the second of two late replacements, and while he's playing better is still going to find it tough against one of the toughest draws he could have got, Dobey being in the hunt for a first title at this level and with a great second round draw, Ian is just the wrong side of 25% in a match up that projects a bit more one sided than I thought it would.

Merk/Littler - Welcome to the European Tour Arno!

Schindler/van Veen - This one should be a real fun one that we could be seeing at levels much higher than this for the next decade or two, and such is the level that Schindi is at, coupled with Gian not being quite so red hot as he was six months ago, the newest winner at this level is actually favoured 55/45, which surprises me a little.

Wright/Mansell - Peter could have got worse draws, but so could Mickey, there's probably at least a dozen players that Mansell could arguably say he'd have preferred not to draw as opposed to Wright. Mansell is a dog, but he's not even a 45/55 dog, he's really playing just fine and it highlights how Wright's game, while not in the slightest a secret, is not where it was.

Clemens/Eidams - Home nation derby to finish things off, Gabriel could do with a good win here to spark a bit of momentum with a winnable seed up afterwards, Rene's always been a bit hit and miss and didn't really do anything outstanding in the quali (then again, the only player that did something notable more than once was Horvat, who isn't even here), so Clemens ought to be just fine.

Bets probably in the morning.

Top 32

Matt Edgar posed an interesting question on X the other day, asking a pretty simple question - if the PDC wiped all the rankings/seedings etc clean, how many of the current top 32 would actually be top 32 players? That's one that I'm going to look at, and try to pick out who clearly is, who probably is, who's a marginal case and who isn't. I'm going to use the scoring figures from September to give the main idea, but will use a bit of subjectivity as there are likely going to be some that are close. I'm also generally going to work on the assumption that it'll take some time to have the results finalise, so I'm taking general trajectory somewhat into account. Let's go.

Obviously yes

1) Luke Humphries - world champ, second in scoring, easy.

2) Michael van Gerwen - sixth in scoring but one of the few players still a danger to win any tourney he enters.

3) Michael Smith - down at 20th in scoring, which is a fair bit of a difference, but I don't think there's any question he's top 32 at all, can up his game when needed.

4) Nathan Aspinall - he's only just in the top 16 in scoring, but he's won a major title in the last twelve months which makes a clear case.

5) Gerwyn Price - fourth in scoring, top five in the world, maybe not quite as red hot as he was twelve months ago but still in the world's elite.

6) Rob Cross - only the one spot behind Price in both the actual rankings and scoring, and yet still perhaps underrated.

7) Dave Chisnall - maybe had a bit of a quiet start to the year, but clearly in the top 16 in scoring, had a fantastic 2023, still looks more than competent.

10) Damon Heta - just on the outside looking in of the top ten in scoring, and still looking for that really big TV run to push to the next level, but I can't think of any format or metric that says he isn't a top 16 player at the very worst.

14) Chris Dobey - Premier League in 2023 did him a world of good, is in the top ten in scoring, really does feel like he's at the spot where it's just a case of him binking something bigger - be it a Euro Tour (that he still only has one final is insane) if not a major, he's getting into the business end on TV a lot now.

17) Stephen Bunting - his numbers are more or less identical to Ross Smith just above him in the rankings, but I'm putting him a tier up based on results - while I don't care about the Masters, he did win it, and the form at the back end of 2023 was undeniable and a ranked breakthrough seems more likely than not real soon.

20) Josh Rock - 2023 was not as explosive as 2022 was for sure, but he was not playing badly in the slightest, and a season of relative quiet is probably going to work out well for him. Still top 10 in scoring, bags of time on his side, he's rapidly gaining experience and a logical next step of a Euro Tour feels probable sooner rather than later.

24) Gary Anderson - still top of the world in scoring. That's all that needs to be said.

26) Luke Littler - obviously a top five player in the world, just needs time to get points on the board and for the rankings to correct themselves.

Safe, but not elite

9) Dimitri van den Bergh - similar to Wright, the scoring isn't there, actually scoring less than Wright in that sample, but it does look like he's turned a corner and, with the UK Open win, is heading back in the correct direction. It's not an obviously yes, but I can't think you can ever exclude him.

12) Danny Noppert - does have a recent win, scoring is outside the top 20 level, he's not really kicked on but he's nowhere near a point where he's not a top 32 player.

16) Ross Smith - statistically he's not too dissimilar to Dobey, but without the feeling that he's going to go and bink something big. Which, of course, he already has done, but while we all know he's good, he's still not someone that'd be on the dark horse list for a TV major for most people. But a clear top 32 player.

19) Ryan Searle - numbers very good, solidly inside the top 16. Early results in 2024 very promising. Putting him outside the 32 would be ridiculous but he does feel like a "well he could be the next to win a Euro Tour maybe" sort of player rather than a "he's a real contender for a TV title".

22) Martin Schindler - has just crept into the top 16 in the scoring rankings. Has just won a Euro Tour. Is still only 27. Now that the senior title monkey is off his back, he is surely only going to go in one direction with the added confidence he should now have.

Marginal

8) Peter Wright - he's actually just outside the top 32 in scoring, so while I wanted to put him up a category, I'm not sure I can realistically do so, still shows up often enough at the right end of tournaments and has a major fairly recently so can't really exclude him.

11) Jonny Clayton - his game has really, really fallen off of late. Like Peter, he's outside the top 32 in scoring, but there's more than a dozen players that are between him and Wright, Clayton being on the wrong side of Wright. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt having got wins at the Euro Tour level and a major final in fairly recent history, but like Wright his best form might be permanently gone.

13) Dirk van Duijvenbode - is directly adjacent to Wright in the scoring charts. Has yet to properly regain the form he had in 2022 and early 2023, sadly down to injury, he may be over it now and may get back to binking titles, but results speak and he's in the marginal category until proven otherwise.

15) Joe Cullen - have mentioned Joe a few times in Euro Tour tips so far this year. What's he done recently? He got two major semis last year, so I think he's still in, but since then it's been really quiet and his numbers are pretty much splitting the difference between Wright and Clayton.

21) James Wade - numbers are pretty much on the top 32 borderline, but Wade often outperforms his numbers and the experience he has is undeniable, he's probably closer to being out than being in the top 16 for sure but finding 32 better players seems a stretch.

25) Krzysztof Ratajski - only real difference between him and Clemens is that Krzysztof has won a Euro Tour in the last twelve months, so is showing the ability to get results. Without that, I probably put him in the category below.

27) Daryl Gurney - ranking is in the mid 20's. Scoring is in the mid 20's. Has shown some occasional flashes and does have major title pedigree, is still young enough that he can rise back up the ranks for sure and just about holds a spot here.

30) Raymond van Barneveld - very much borderline, but has the same sort of scoring as Gurney has and has shown within the past month that he still has the ability to win titles, so a combination of just enough at both scoring and results is enough for me.

LOL nope

18) Andrew Gilding - this might seem harsh given that he won a major just over a year ago, but the numbers he's putting up are just not there, ranking outside the top 40, not really getting much of anything in terms of results, and we have seen his form tail off after a real purple patch at a UK Open before, except this time he's 53 and may not be able to get it back.

23) Gabriel Clemens - I can understand if you want to put him in the marginal spots, given he is just inside the top 32 in scoring, but he's really not kicked on from that worlds semi, decent Players Championship Finals run aside, and it doesn't feel like he's getting the results to justify a top 32 spot. He's only just outside, but outside for me.

28) Brendan Dolan - only really just about holding on in the top 32 thanks to that worlds quarters run. I can see an argument that he's just inside, the scoring would give some support to this, but I think that ranking money is just delaying the inevitable second slide outside the actual 32 given he's now into his 50's and does not feel like a player that has a title still in him.

29) Jose de Sousa - seems way too long since he's been a relevant player and is just one making up the numbers in the 32 at this stage. Not awful for sure, scoring has him around about the number 40 mark, but another one that's the wrong side of 50 and it's hard to make a case that he's going to be able to hold a spot after the next worlds.

31) Scott Williams - that worlds run was nice, but it's giving him maybe a little bit of an inflated ranking, with his scoring only just breaking 90, the last man on the charts to do so and the lowest player apart from Clayton on that metric. Still only in his mid 30's, he's got room to grow consistency in terms of results and his general level, but that's not 32 right now.

32) Ricardo Pietreczko - I could see an argument that he should be in the 32, but the numbers are more or less at Gilding's level and, outside of that Euro Tour win, I'm not sure he's put up enough consistent performances and results to warrant a top 32 spot. Yet - he is trending the right way but the ranking does seem a touch too high.

So there's six that I'm saying shouldn't be there, as such there should be six that should be in, right? Let's see:

Gian van Veen - still one of the hottest names in the sport, numbers aren't quite so red hot as they were say six to eight months ago, but it seems inevitable he'll win a senior title very soon.

Cameron Menzies - I think the secret's out on just how good he is, if he tidies up the occasional slack spot within matches and puts everything together throughout a tournament, there's no reason he can't win one right now.

Ryan Joyce - trending very much in the right direction, Pro Tour win at the back end of 2023, first major semi final soon after, numbers in the top 32, showing more frequent very good performances.

Mike de Decker - numbers still very strong, ranking safely inside the top 32, had a strong 2023 which saw a first breakthrough into the difficult TV majors, still under 30 and a lot of the inconsistency that was in his game a few years back looks to be getting ironed out and is showing the ability to beat the big names more frequently. Bit of work to do to secure a Matchplay return but could easily do it.

Jim Williams - now this one might be controversial given I'm not sure that he will ever play enough of the circuit to actually get up to where he should be in the rankings, but in terms of pure quality he is absolutely a top 32 player. Numbers are there, he's shown a big stage TV game, he's won a Pro Tour, let's hope he can turn a current provisional Grand Prix spot into an actual one.

Andy Baetens - alright, this might be regarded as a stretch and I won't disagree with anyone that says that, but we're dealing in the context of a complete seeding/ranking reset, so I think that would negate a lot of the adaptation that he's needing to do to the PDC tour, and the level of scores he's putting up is pretty much bang on the top 32 level. Pretty clearly the best player outside the PDC system in 2023, I do think he's that good and at just 35, he's got more than enough time to turn that into reality.

Expect me back tomorrow with thoughts on the next Euro Tour once the draw is out, I'm not sure what time though and it might be a brief post with things I might be doing tomorrow.

ET3 aftermath

So it's Schindler that gets a first Euro Tour title, and a first senior title of any description, it's been well overdue and very well deserved given how he played this weekend - let's see what it's done to the FRH rankings:

1 Luke Humphries

2 Michael van Gerwen

3 Michael Smith

4 Rob Cross

5 Gerwyn Price (UP 1)

6 Nathan Aspinall (DOWN 1)

7 Damon Heta

8 Peter Wright

9 Dave Chisnall

10 Jonny Clayton

11 Dimitri van den Bergh

12 Stephen Bunting

13 Chris Dobey

14 Luke Littler

15 Joe Cullen

16 Danny Noppert

17 Ryan Searle (UP 1)

18 James Wade (DOWN 1)

19 Ross Smith (NEW)

20 Gary Anderson (DOWN 1)

Price's final sees him up exactly 3k compared to Aspinall, while Searle making the final session puts him a bit less than that ahead of Wade. Smith edges out Ando and Rock with a good run to get back into the 20. Schindler is now up to 24 after his win, not far behind Gilding for the 23 spot, and more importantly he's now the highest ranked German, one place ahead of Clemens. Final day runs for Richard Veenstra and Cameron Menzies see them inch up into the mid 40's, Edhouse's final session sees him back into the top 60.

Really good event for the betting - we put nine bets in play and won seven of them to claim a unit of profit and get into the black for the season, however as four of those winning bets were on Schindler and Menzies, I do wonder if we've lost a bit of an opportunity going forward. We'll have to see again on Friday - Menzies isn't there for that one but Schindler is along with a pretty exciting selection of qualifiers. We've got a great selection of youth with Barry and Littler, Edhouse is back again, Perez will make a debut (I think), we get to see early Challenge Tour contenders in Grbavac and Roetzsch, it looks like it should be a good one. I may update in midweek to do a "next players to win at this level" post, it'll depend on time though and I might wait until the start of May once we've got another couple of Euro Tours in the books, as it feels like there's a lot of players that could break through at that level real soon. Be back Thursday in any case for thoughts as we head into Sindelfingen.

ET3 quarters

The Menzies money printing streak comes to an end, really just missed doubles, missing three clear in multiple legs (and busting when just looking to hit big 3 to get another two clear) isn't something to make a habit of. Oh well, we move on to the quarters, looking at things I have the following projections - Schindler 61/39 Noppert, Searle 44/56 Dobey, Bunting 70/30 Edhouse and Price 61/39 Smith. Will reign the Schindler one in a tad due to consistency, the rest all seem pretty much in line with each other. As such, I'll take 0.1u Schindler 6/5 which is on 365 right now, the Dobey and Bunting games look close enough to correct just looking at the one market, 365 have Smith at 2/1 which I'd be thinking about were it not for Price's obscenely good display against Pietreczko.

ET3 round 3

This is real quick as I'm late up this morning:

Veenstra/Schindler - Market may be finally taking notice of Schindler. I'm seeing it about a one in three shot for Veenstra, 13/8 clearly is not of interest, Schindler being slightly longer than 1/2 isn't bad but there's not the edge there.

Aspinall/Noppert - Looks about a 60/40 in the favour of the Asp for me, looked really good yesterday, 4/5 is pretty close to being worth a play but it's not quite there for me and I don't think it ever gets any longer than that.

Heta/Searle - Kind of a similar spot where we don't quite have the edge, but it's close. I'm seeing Ryan as just short of a 55% favourite, we can get even money, going with it isn't bad but again, I'd want slightly more to recommend a play officially.

Clemens/Dobey - Dobey 60/40 for me, so we're again in the ballpark where we can consider looking at Clemens. 7/4 is not a bad bet, but there's not quite enough there for the third game running, and that's without considering just how fantastic Chris played today.

Humphries/Bunting - Stephen's certainly a live dog here. Luke's not even projecting to win this two out of three, I've got the Bullet as fractionally over 35%. That said Humphries is 1/2 so with vig it's a clear move on quickly spot.

Cross/Edhouse - Rob's the better player here, around 75/25, and he is priced at 1/3. Ritchie's doing OK of late and it was a fantastic kill to win, but the market does look to have his value correct right now.

Price/Pietreczko - Same price as the above with Gerwyn being 1/3. I think this could even be a tick shorter, I'm getting Price as a touch closer to 80% than 20%, but that's not even as good a spot as the Aspinall/Searle thoughts, chuck in the crowd and I can ignore this one easily enough.

Menzies/Smith - Pure coinflip for me. Cammy needed to ride his luck slightly, but got there. Ross was generally pretty solid on the legs he won (where O'Connor averaged over a ton), but was mediocre on the five legs Willie won, a really, really slow start to go 4-1 down. I think we can go small here, 0.1u Menzies 11/8, it's a couple of extra percent which I think is enough to open the wallet and try to repeat what we had yesterday.

ET3 round two

Ok first day. Evans completely didn't turn up against Rydz who absolutely was there for the taking, but Edhouse was comfortable, Menzies was mostly comfortable and Clemens rode his luck but got there, we take those and have booked a small profit for the day. Onto round two now:

Smith v O'Connor - Willie was OK yesterday but nothing special, but it was enough to beat King, Ross is going to be a big step up but I'm thinking he can get home one in three times, maybe a fraction more. At 7/4 we're not taking a punt though. 

Heta v Rydz - Callan was very rusty yesterday but Evans couldn't capitalise. Try that again and Heta's off the stage in 10-15 minutes tops. I've got Rydz's chances as a little bit better than the 2/1 you can get, but with the unpredictable nature of his game and a right poor first game, we're not touching it with a barge pole.

Searle v Gurney - Daryl just did a professional job against an interesting qualifier, can't really draw much of anything from that one. Searle should make for a good contest, think the market is marginally overvaluing Daryl but not enough where we can start to think about taking Ryan.

Ratajski v Dobey - Chris looked, if not in top gear, certainly solid in a trivial win over Dylan Slevin and rightly comes into this one as a favourite. Maybe a bit too much of a favourite, Ratajski is still a really good player and the line should probably be 6/4 and not 7/4 for me, but I'd need slightly more than that to open the clip, 2/1 probably.

Noppert v van den Bergh - Dimitri was a bit up and down in round one but never really threatened, and comes into a game with Danny as more or less his equal. 5/4 is really close to a bet on the Belgian - if he had shown a bit more yesterday, or if Noppert wasn't coming off a Pro Tour win, I'd probably go small, and wouldn't dissuade anyone wanting to take that price on for all intents and purposes a coinflip.

Bunting v Unterbuchner - Michael caused pretty much the only upset yesterday to dump Luke Woodhouse out, didn't look as good as we have seen him in the past, but it was OK. It wasn't enough to make me think he has much of a chance against Stephen, 1/5 seems about fair to me.

Clayton v Aspinall - Nathan could easily have been dumped out by Owen Bates, who hit a very nice 350 out in six, but then missed match darts, so maybe a good omen for the Asp? He's rated in the market as having low 60% chances, which to me is really too low, Clayton is a name player but his level of play has been average at best and this looks a 70/30. As such, 0.25u Aspinall 8/13 on Coralbrokes, typically available 4/7 also looks fine.

Smith v Edhouse - Ritchie had a couple of good legs against Jitse, but generally didn't need to push too hard to get the easy win. He'll need to up it today, he's rated just shorter than 3/1 which looks fine to me.

Pietreczko v Wade - James wasn't bad against de Decker, and now comes into a game with Ricardo where neither myself nor the market can find any real differences between the players. As such, easy no bet.

Chisnall v Veenstra - Richard was made to work by Andrew Gilding, but looked more than competent and he has more than enough game to take this match from Chisnall just over 35% of the time in my estimation. We can't even get 2/1 though, so we're not interested in bets. 

Cullen v Schindler - Martin was pretty much flying, just having the one duff leg which the qualifier was able to nick, so seems in good form into a game with Joe, who's outperformed projections a couple of times but has been fairly quiet for a while. I'm getting Martin as a near 2-1 favourite - even if we say that we are wildly underestimating Cullen and he actually has 10% more chances than that, it's still a play. 0.25u Schindler evs 

Price v Dolan - Brendan looked really good against Gotthardt, who wasn't playing bad at all and just unfortunate to run into Dolan playing as he did, against probably half the field we're still talking about Kai today. Gerwyn is a different story, if Brendan continues this level he's more than capable of causing a few problems, but the 2/5 line for Price seems accurate to me as to how often the former world champ lets that happen.

Rock v Menzies - Cameron won all his legs in 15 darts or legs and was averaging in the mid 90s in the ones he didn't, so the game is on. That is more than enough to trouble Rock, who we still love, but such is the level of play from Menzies I don't think Josh should be the favourite here. It looks close still, call it 55/45, but that makes things easy enough for us, 0.25u Menzies 13/10, we absolutely take odds against here.

Humphries v de Sousa - Jose came through with a good late spurt to put away a spirited Cor Dekker, who played well himself to keep things tight at 3-3, and there's enough there on that display to indicate that he might be able to ask some questions of Luke in this one. I've got it slightly tighter than the 4/1 that is available, but not by much. The edge isn't there to fire, but if you want an underdog play then I don't think it's -EV at all.

van Duijvenbode v Clemens - Touched on Clemens above, he nicked the scrappy legs and otherwise had just about enough to get home, and we have another game that is too close to call. Can't see value in this one, Gabriel is slightly odds against in places, but I've likewise got Dirk as a really tiny favourite. In Germany, I guess you're not losing money in the long term if you take Clemens here but that's really gambling for the sake of it to me.

Cross v van Veen - Gian had things a little bit easier against Barney this time, first four legs were not great from either player, but he picked things up albeit not really hitting his stride at any point. Will need to clean things up a bit against Cross, it's absolutely a game he can win and it looks around 60/40 to me, I'm thinking Rob's chances are being overstated slightly at 8/13, but there isn't the value there to go on GvV.

So three bets, they all seem solid to me, let's clean up.

ET3 round 1 bets

van der Wal/Edhouse - Think this is good enough to be worth a play, 0.25u Edhouse 4/9, Ritchie's in good form and Jitse hasn't done a great deal this year, this looks to me to be at least 75/25 and as such 4/9 is a take.

Gotthardt/Dolan - No play, maybe there's some angle here as Brendan's shorter than 1/3 and Kai has shown enough of late to make me think that he's a live dog, but I'd want a bit more before I'd take a stab.

Unterbuchner/Woodhouse - Same sort of prices here, think this one is closer as I'm thinking Michael's probably a touch more likely to win than Kai is, but still not confident enough against a decent opponent to play it.

Masek/van den Bergh - I mean there's a couple of places that are offering 1/8 which surely isn't that bad?

Gurney/Klingelhoefer - Not really interested in this one. The qualifier is not good and Gurney's 1/14 at best.

Veenstra/Gilding - I think they've got who has the tiny edge the wrong way round, but as both are so tiny we only have a tiny edge, and we don't play tiny edges.

Rydz/Evans - 0.1u Evans 7/4, I took better than 2.8 on the exchanges yesterday immediately on seeing the draw, but he is certainly live enough against in fairness a dangerous but inconsistent opponent.

O'Connor/King - Looks to be round about the right line. Mervyn's maybe a touch undervalued which is likely just the market not quite getting to pace with both players' relative form this season, but it's only by a tick so nothing worth punting here.

de Sousa/Dekker - Cor's half tempting here. Against an opponent who's not been outstanding when you're getting close to 4/1 and the underdog has shown a little bit of recent form is a formula that works sometimes, but I'd ideally want 9/2, maybe 5/1 before I go with it.

Dobey/Slevin - Chris is pretty short in the market as expected, perhaps he could be a bit shorter even compared to what he is, but it'd be a pretty slim bit of value that we'd be pushing and I wouldn't even be certain it's there in the first place.

Dueckers/Schindler - Martin's big odds on, that seems fine.

de Decker/Wade - Market can barely separate the two, but they do correctly have Mike as being the favourite. 5/6 would be kind of a marginal play, if you're aggressive then I don't hate it, I would probably want 10/11 before I actually recommend a play but I don't think I'll ever see it and if anything the exchanges are bullish on de Decker.

Menzies/Whitlock - 0.25u Menzies 8/13, took even better than this on the exchange yesterday, 4/7 also looks more than OK for this one, that's just a case of how much better Cameron is right now.

van Veen/van Barneveld - Line seems near enough to me. Gian's better, but he's not that much better, this is pretty similar to the de Decker game where if you have more risk tolerance than me you can push 4/5, but I won't officially recommend the play.

Clemens/Wright - 0.1u Clemens 11/10, there's a couple of places which are offering this price including Hills which I think is enough to make a pushy small stab. The extra couple of percent compared to van Veen or de Decker, plus the intangibles of Wright having to make an awkward trip (having been to Riesa I would not want to get from Birmingham to Riesa in under 24 hours) and Clemens being at home gives me enough confidence to play it.

Bates/Aspinall - Half tempted with Owen, 3/1 I don't think is awful and I wouldn't disagree with anyone that says go for it, I just don't know where his confidence is at really.

So four plays, good luck everyone.

Into Riesa

Running into a busy period of the schedule, and an important one as we start getting closer and closer to the Matchplay, the next three weekends having half the Euro Tour events before the cutoff so a huge chunk of the money is at stake this month. Before then, of course, we had a couple of Pro Tour events, with Chris Dobey and Danny Noppert being both surprising (given the strength of the fields) and unsurprising (given they're both bloody good players in their own rights) winners, which has done the following to the FRH rankings (which include minimum money for ET3):

1 Luke Humphries

2 Michael van Gerwen (UP 1)

3 Michael Smith (DOWN 1)

4 Rob Cross

5 Nathan Aspinall

6 Gerwyn Price

7 Damon Heta (UP 1)

8 Peter Wright (DOWN 1)

9 Dave Chisnall (UP 1)

10 Jonny Clayton (DOWN 1)

11 Dimitri van den Bergh

12 Stephen Bunting (UP 1)

13 Chris Dobey (UP 2)

14 Luke Littler

15 Joe Cullen (DOWN 3)

16 Danny Noppert (UP 1)

17 James Wade (DOWN 1)

18 Ryan Searle

19 Gary Anderson (UP 1)

20 Josh Rock (NEW)

The big one is van Gerwen overtaking Smith by less than 100 points, but Smith can regain the number 2 spot just by winning one game at ET3 with van Gerwen absent. Heta's bump appears to just be to do with Wright being in bad form, Chizzy and Clayton being in a similar spot. Bunting has had some OK decent runs, obviously Dobey and Noppert won this week, while Rock made a final and Ando's getting the benefits of good form.

So, onto Riesa, and we've got no less than five players who'll enter the FRH rankings so a few names who we'll not have great data on, but they're not all unfamiliar, let's go through in running order.

Jitse van der Wal v Ritchie Edhouse (Michael Smith) - Jitse's a fairly new tour card holder, and has done well to win through to here given he's had a bad start, with just one win and pretty miserable numbers, and plays Edhouse who got qualification to two future Euro Tours yesterday and has had some pretty nice performances, and rates something like an 80/20 favourite albeit on rather limited data. Smith I believe is who Edhouse beat on TV a couple of years back at something like the PC Finals, and he's merely been OK for someone with world champion money on his rankings, maybe only being about a 70/30 favourite against Ritchie.

Kai Gotthardt v Brendan Dolan (Gerwyn Price) - Kai is a name we've seen occasionally, I thought he'd made the Euro Tour more than once before but that's what it looks like, we've also seen him in things like the German Superleague and he's off to a pretty good start on the Challenge Tour, so maybe showing signs of improvement, although he only peaked in the mid 80's in the quali, which is likely not going to be enough to trouble someone as competent as Dolan, who's not had a bad start to 2024 relatively speaking. Price can't complain with this draw and he does like the event, and is doing well enough that he's closer to a three in four than two in three shot for this one.

Alexander Masek v Dimitri van den Bergh (Danny Noppert) - Masek won the Eastern qualifier, and will make his debut having got through to the second stage of Q-School but otherwise being basically unknown, and apart from a real good first round win, didn't threaten much more than mid 80's at any point in that quali, which against someone with the renewed confidence of a recent major win just isn't going to cut it. Another player with recent confidence will of course be Noppert, and that second round game rates as too close to call.

Richard Veenstra v Andrew Gilding (Dave Chisnall) - Stupidly good game to have in the afternoon session of round one, but that's the new quali rules for you, Andrew had a nice run in the last Euro Tour while Veenstra hasn't really kicked on massively after a good worlds, but still looks good enough to make this one an effective coinflip with Goldfinger having only the tiniest of edges. Chisnall won't particularly like this matchup in round two whoever comes through, but still should be in the 60-65% range against either of them, which is an edge but not a game he can remotely take for granted.

Daryl Gurney v Patrick Klingelhoefer (Ryan Searle) - Patrick's pretty much unknown, first appearing in the PDC for real at this Q-School, not making stage two but he does have three Challenge Tour cashes now and makes his debut, albeit only getting higher than the low 80's in one round of the qualifier, so he may well not be able to put up too much resistance against Gurney, who's looked pretty good as he looks to hold in a race to partner Rock at the World Cup. Searle is going to be an interesting opponent, he's better but not that much better and a second round game only gives Searle slightly closer to 60% than 55% chances.

Callan Rydz v Lee Evans (Damon Heta) - Rydz had a couple of good early runs to start 2024 off but has tailed off a bit since then, while Evans has merely been steady if not spectacular, but doing enough to be possible value with Callan only rating around a 55/45 favourite in this opening round encounter. Heta shouldn't be too displeased with this draw, but they both look dangerous enough opponents to warrant having a chance somewhere in the 30% range, Rydz naturally being a bit higher, so it's a good but not perfect draw for the Aussie.

Willie O'Connor v Mervyn King (Ross Smith) - Willie has been pretty average on the floor so far this season, but it's a bit more than King's been doing as Mervyn's battling to save his tour card, although King did at least have the consolation of a solid UK Open run to give him a bit more of a chance. It's the sort of game he needs to win and he's got around a 45% chance to do so, so certainly not out of things, and Ross is kind of in the same spot of "I'll take it but it could be better" in terms of draws, he's just dropped out of the FRH top 20 but, like Heta again, has got somewhere in the 60% chances to win against either opponent, so may be able to nick the spot back dependent on other results, or claim it back outright, a final session run ought to be enough for that.

Michael Unterbuchner v Luke Woodhouse (Stephen Bunting) - Michael is in a second appearance of the season, which is a nice return to form for someone who was making a bit of a name for himself in the BDO days and probably has the best numbers of any of the qualifiers we've looked at so far, not breaking 90 but being closer to that than 80 for the most part. Woodhouse had a good UK Open and has had a good run in midweek as he looks to lock down a Matchplay spot, he's in good shape and ought to be able to get through this one, but then Bunting in round two, although maybe not doing quite as well as he might have done in 2024 given his red hot form towards the end of the year, is going to be a tricky one with the Bullet being closer to 65% than 60% to advance past Woody to a potential matchup with the world champion in the last sixteen.

Jose de Sousa v Cor Dekker (Luke Humphries) - de Sousa is now out of the FRH top 32 and hasn't really been doing enough to make us think he'll be out of the top 32 proper this time next year, currently solidly on the outside looking into the Matchplay reckoning and it's not ridiculous to think he won't be seeded for the worlds this season. Dekker however isn't the worst opponent as the Norwegian makes a first Euro Tour since 2019, he's a name that's been known for some time who's had World Cup appearances, but was wildly up and down in the quali with a couple of 90's but one game down in the low 70's, although did back up making this event in weekend 1 of the Nordic series with making the final of an event last weekend. Jose should have enough, but Humphries should easily win the second round game at least 75% of the time.

Chris Dobey v Dylan Slevin (Krzysztof Ratajski) - An all card holder battle here, Dobey's right in form for reasons stated above, while Dylan has had an OK start to 2024 but nothing quite as good as what he had in early 2023, which is looking more and more like an outlier, albeit in a career that's still very much in its infancy with plenty of time to grow some more consistency to the game as we know the peak game is pretty good. Dobey ought to be extremely comfortable here, a projection of nearly 85% may be a touch overkill but not completely outrageous, and in Ratajski he's got one of the better seeds he could get and looks about a 60/40 favourite in that second round game, assuming he gets past Slevin.

Jan Dueckers v Martin Schindler (Joe Cullen) - Dueckers is another player who's pretty much unknown, did Q-School but didn't make stage two, and did play the German leg of the Challenge Tour picking up one mincash. In the quali he had a good 6-2 win with a 90 average against the in form Franz Roetzsch, but was below 80 in three of the other four games and only just over in the other one, so it's hard to see Schindler having problems here. Cullen ought to be a good test, the projections I'm getting are showing Cullen as a fairly significant underdog with having just a one in three chance, but he's not actually looked bad when we've seen him, so despite pretty middling results in 2024 it might play out a bit closer than what a 2-1 game ought to look like.

Mike de Decker v James Wade (Ricardo Pietreczko) - Real interesting section which could go any way. de Decker got qualification for another Euro Tour this past week, has made the final day once already this season, and is within touching distance of a Matchplay return, while Wade is not actually guaranteed to get there himself and hasn't had the most fantastic start to the season, and actually comes into this game as just less than a 40/60 dog, that's just how competent de Decker is right now. Ricardo isn't a bad seed to draw and has had his moments over the past few months, and actually rates as possibly the worst player of the three, being a 65/35 dog to de Decker and being on the wrong end of a coinflip against Wade, although he will have the benefit of a first game on evening session crowd which always helps.

Cameron Menzies v Simon Whitlock (Josh Rock) - Menzies is continuing to play really good stuff as we move into 2024, with some moderately good runs, while Whitlock is struggling to put up results, and is now out of the FRH top 50 and rates as less than a one in four shot against Cameron, that's just how good he's playing right now (and/or how middle of the road Simon has been of late). Rock made another final this week so looks to be playing well - but actually projects as a tiny underdog if he were to face Menzies in the second round.

Gian van Veen v Raymond van Barneveld (Rob Cross) - Didn't we have this in the last event? Why yes, yes we did. van Veen won that one 6-5, and that sort of close scoreline doesn't look out of the question, with the younger Dutch player projecting up towards, but not quite at, 60%. Really could go either way. Cross would have a similar sort of edge against van Veen, so while Rob will be looking for a deep run and to go one better than he did in Belgium, this is a nasty draw and while there's a logical order to the players in terms of chances of getting through, making an argument that any of them might progress would not be ridiculous in the slightest.

Gabriel Clemens v Peter Wright (Dirk van Duijvenbode) - Clemens is still continuing to look for a first tour win, and hasn't really been getting close this year so far with just the one board win. Wright's been a bit more up and down with a couple of semi final runs, but nobody can realistically say that Peter is anywhere near his best game and we may well be at a stage where that best game is forever in the past - although he still has enough game to be competitive, albeit Clemens does project as a 55/45 favourite despite a lack of results in 2024. Dirk has had a final run on the floor and is probably off our do not touch list, and looks to be flipping against Clemens and having a similar edge against Wright as the German does in round one, so this may well be the tightest mini section of the lot.

Owen Bates v Nathan Aspinall (Jonny Clayton) - Tough draw for the Master here, Owen hasn't gotten off to a fantastic start on the tour with more first round losses than wins and not even a board final to his name yet, but he got through the quali here for what appears to be a debut on this stage. Aspinall's no joke though and being in the playoff spots more than half way through the Premier League is seriously good play. Nathan is actually only projecting around 70/30, which does surprise me and feels like an underestimate, Owen's numbers are a bit inconsistent. Then again, so are Aspinall's. Clayton it feels is someone who's just there right now and kind of making up the numbers of the top sixteen, feels like some time since he's done anything hugely notable - probably since the Matchplay game he lost to Aspinall to be honest. Aspinall actually rates about the same sort of edge to repeat that result as he does against Bates, which seems kind of nuts but Clayton's only just scoring over 90 a turn since the start of September, which is behind a lot of players who are not even in the top 32 in the world right now.

Bets tomorrow morning, don't know if oddschecker will make things easy for us but lines are at least out.

Day 3 quick bets

Rock/Smith - Got quite excited when I saw Rock being quoted at 2/1 on oddschecker on VC, but naturally that was quickly corrected to 11/8, that I don't think is an awful play with there not being much of anything to choose between the players and I'll go small, 0.1u Rock 11/8 which is also there on 365, I would probably go a bit larger if I could get longer than 6/4 given how good Smith looked in round two.

Price/Searle - Not touching it, I'm seeing Ryan as having a touch over a one in three shot, and he's best priced at 7/4 so nothing doing here.

Cross/Noppert - Maybe there's a sliver of value on Rob in this one, I'm seeing him just shy of a two in three chance, and some of the spread companies have him at longer than 4/6, if you've got money there then I don't think that's bad, but the traditional bookies aren't giving better than 4/6 which isn't quite fat enough particularly in the context of Danny looking fantastic in round two.

Humphries/Joyce - Line looks fair enough, Joyce being priced at 3/1 I think is a fair enough reflection that he's a good player but running into probably the best player in the world right now, maybe he should be a tick or two shorter but that's neither here nor there and 3/1 certainly doesn't represent value. Might have a tiny dabble on the exchange if we can get bigger possibly.

Aspinall/Smith - Another one where I was momentarily excited when I saw oddschecker's front page showing 6/5, which when I'm seeing the game the other way around would provide enough of an edge to fire, but going in we're not actually getting better than evens, which I don't think is dreadful or -EV, but it's close enough to correct to ignore as a punt.

Schindler/Dobey - Chris is maybe ever so slightly shorter than he ought to be, this is one of the few matches we're likely to see at this stage where we've got someone who is maybe a little overvalued against someone who is a little undervalued, and a partizan home crowd would certainly help Schindler, but that's Dobey's best price. We can't get better than 11/8 on Martin, which is just break even and we're not interested in betting for the sake of betting without a better edge than "bet Germans in Germany".

van Gerwen/Cullen - Line looks fair enough again. Joe's a touch longer than 2/1, we've got him at a touch less than a 30% chance, but there's enough data points to show that Joe might be a tad better than the projections say. Certainly not enough to make us even remotely think that 11/5 is a good bet though.

Chisnall/Wattimena - We finish with another no bet. The angle we'd be looking at is on Dave, 4/9 is maybe a little bit undervaluing just how good he has been playing for the last year or so, and he is the most recent Pro Tour winner, so if you want to go for it, there's tiny value there. I won't recommend it as an actual play as Jermaine's shown enough over the first couple of Euro Tours to indicate he may be playing a bit better than the numbers suggest, but I can't think that price is in anyway bad if you want to bet on Chisnall.

So just the one play, and we're back to Josh Rock. Is it 2022 again?

Day 3 thoughts

Small profit today, basically cancels out the day one losses. Joyce and Schindler played great, Menzies also played fantastic but just ran into probably a top 10% sort of level performance from Smith which you can't really do a great deal about. Still feel convinced Cameron is going to maintain solid betting value for the foreseeable future, at least until he binks something which is surely going to be sooner rather than later if he just maintains his level of play.

Not got lines out for most games yet, certainly oddschecker isn't up, so will just run through the thoughts quickly with a raw projection for each:

Rock/Smith - 53/47, seems realistic, Smith looked great today as mentioned above, Josh was alright but mostly doing enough against Veenstra, don't expect this one to differ too much from evens but we'll see.

Price/Searle - 63/37, game for Gerwyn looked closer than it actually was, scoreline for Ryan was the same but Searle definitely played worse today, thought the projection might put Searle a bit closer but I guess not.

Cross/Noppert - 65/35, Rob still real good, no issues against Gurney, Noppert however looked incredible against van Veen, who also might have put up the best losing performance we've ever seen. Ought to be a cracker.

Humphries/Joyce - 72/28, Luke was also up there with Noppert and Smith in terms of the best performance of the day but that's kind of just expected now, Joyce just hit consistent five visit kills which if continued tomorrow is going to be tricky for Luke to live with.

Aspinall/Smith - 46/54, Nathan didn't do a great deal wrong, but got a few too many legs in more than five visits which a player on top form could punish. Smith isn't necessarily at his peak game based on yesterday, but certainly isn't out of form so this should be tight.

Schindler/Dobey - 44/56, Martin routed Heta while Chris put in a very solid showing against Ratajski, don't think it's unreasonable to say that Dobey is the better player, but it's not by that much.

van Gerwen/Cullen - 71/29, Michael was generally pretty steady in his game with de Zwaan which could have been more lopsided than it actually was, while Cullen only really had the one moderately poor leg in a comfortable win over Clayton. This might play out a tad closer than the projection.

Chisnall/Wattimena - 74/26 - Dave shut down a really poor Dimitri, especially compared to yesterday, seems a miracle with how he played that DvdB managed four legs, while Jermaine continues a great start to the year with a solid win over Bunting, the key thing being nicking the scrappy legs. Another one that might be a tad closer than the projection.

Will fire out any bets in the morning, but don't expect anything for the quarters onwards because football.

Day 2 bets

Let's rattle through these quickly having already done the projections last night:

Smith/Dolan - Seems close enough to a correct line, it's got Ross a little bit shorter than the projection suggests but it did feel at the time like it might be overestimating Brendan a little anyway so I'm fine with a no bet.

Rock/Veenstra - Line appears pretty close to perfect, both are probably a bit underrated in general so that kind of cancels each other out.

Ratajski/Dobey - Almost feels like we're close to a stab on Ratajski. Krzysztof is still playing solid darts. If we had the inverse of Chris's odds, i.e. we could get 2/1, I'd probably take a small stab but we've got a fair bit of vig in the market so nothing doing here. Yet.

Joyce/Pietreczko - Market can't separate the two but we think Ryan is solidly better. A little bit of consistency at play and home field won't help (although it is the afternoon session), but VC are offering a good price which we'll take, 0.25u Joyce evs

Bunting/Wattimena - Projection really, really loves Bunting, and with good reason, but I think in reality it's probably a tad closer than what I've put up, Jermaine did get a 6-0 over a competent opponent yesterday, albeit with a not great performance, line's close enough for me.

Searle/Lennon - Market's throwing this around 70/30, I've got it marginally tighter than that, Steve's undervalued, but it's not enough to bet on Lennon, Searle isn't exactly playing badly in 2024 and Lennon wasn't overly convincing yesterday.

Cross/Gurney - Market has this one round about spot on. Think it's one where both are a tad undervalued, Gurney yesterday was pretty much par for the course.

van Duijvenbode/Aspinall - I think with Dirk having had a decent Pro Tour run we can stop taking him off the board for injury reasons now, but we're certainly not going to jump in either way when both the projections and the market have Nathan as a small favourite.

Smith/Menzies - Both players are scoring exactly the same in my database since the start of September. Exactly. To two decimal places. Menzies is doing better on winning legs hence why he projects as a favourite, but this one's going to be very close so we take the VC line again, 0.25u Menzies 6/4

Noppert/van Veen - Market can barely separate them, it gives Noppert the tiny edge with van Veen at evens, I think this is very close to a punt but Danny's a touch more consistent and van Veen was merely good, not spectacular yesterday. Wouldn't hate a tenth of a unit at evens but I'll wait and see if we can get 11/10 which would be a go.

Price/Wright - 1/2 on Gerwyn appears really, really close, but Peter has looked good over the last week or so, as such I'm fine with holding fire on this one.

Humphries/Woodhouse - Line's fine, the lesser Luke's good but the world champ is in a really good place right now and being priced at 2/9 is not completely ridiculous.

Heta/Schindler - I'm calling this one as being real close, Heta is scoring more but Martin's scoring better on the winning legs, which is why I projected him as favourite. Coralbrokes are offering a good price which I'll have a small nibble at, 0.1u Schindler 11/8, if Damon does have an edge it is not as big as that line suggests.

van Gerwen/de Zwaan - Jeffrey was both a bit fortunate and unfortunate yesterday, he got away with the game but ran into back to back ton plus checkouts from a great position. Still, nothing to suggest that the market isn't close to perfect.

Chisnall/van den Bergh - Dave as a small favourite seems just about right. Dimitri was excellent yesterday and Chizzy at 10/11 and Dimi the inverse is as close to perfect as I think you'll get.

Clayton/Cullen - Similar thing here, I'm showing Joe as a small favourite, the market is doing the same 11/10 and 10/11 thing, we're not touching it.

So three bets here. Let's go.

Munich day 2 thoughts

To whoever commented on day 1, yeah it does look like I missed Aspinall against Unterbuchner, I guess that scrolling down oddschecker there wasn't a line available anywhere that they'd imported, I don't think anything of value would have been lost. Anyway, today was up and down, it could have been a lot worse if de Zwaan hadn't pulled his game out when it could easily have been lost, but looking at things Soutar didn't show up, Wenig missed doubles and then Gilding didn't show up. Would I have done anything different? Probably not, we trust our reads. Still, let's put up quick reads on what round two will look like, all the qualifiers are gone so we've got a pretty vanilla field with a lot of data, I guess we find little value (tips, if any, will come in the morning) but let's see:

Smith 62/38 Dolan

Rock 64/36 Veenstra

Dobey 61/39 Ratajski

Joyce 63/37 Pietreczko

Bunting 77/23 Wattimena

Searle 67/33 Lennon

Cross 65/35 Gurney

Aspinall 54/46 van Duijvenbode

Menzies 56/44 Smith

van Veen 56/44 Noppert

Price 72/28 Wright

Humphries 76/24 Woodhouse

Schindler 55/45 Heta

van Gerwen 79/21 de Zwaan

Chisnall 54/46 van den Bergh

Cullen 51/49 Clayton

A couple of interesting ones, but when I check on the markets in the morning I don't see myself betting on much. But we'll see.

Munich day 1

Was meaning to get this up yesterday, but was just too tired, then kind of half forgot this was on with the scheduling being a little bit funky compared to other Euro Tour events and the calendar/days off work also throwing me. God knows what the clock change tonight will do, but let's get into it:

Joyce/Doets - Feels like this is an important one for Doets, currently being on the right side of the Matchplay spots, but not by much, getting a decent wedge to try to bridge the gap up to Rydz (there's about 5k difference between between 13th and 14th right now) would be very beneficial. Joyce is looking safer on that front, and it feels like he's playing slightly the better darts, and the numbers agree with him projecting just over 60%. 8/11 looks like a small undervaluing of Ryan, not enough to punt though.

Dolan/Soutar - Brendan however is on the other side of the Matchplay cutoff, albeit not by much at all, so getting a win over Soutar, who kind of needs a big year himself after a down 2023, would be crucial so it's an important game for both. It feels like Alan's been playing better of late, and I don't have this more than just a weighted coinflip in Brendan's favour, so I feel with a bit of momentum in Soutar's favour, we can have a small stab, 0.1u Soutar 11/8 on 365.

Roetzsch/Wattimena - Franz is a player we've been aware of for some time and he's had an alright start on the Challenge Tour this season, does feel like it's surely just a matter of time before he comes good in something and gets his card. Jermaine's been a bit resurgent of late and should be favoured, hard to tell with general lack of data on Roetzsch, maybe 4/11 is a bit harsh, but 5/2 I don't think offers sufficient value to take a flier on the German qualifier.

Menzies/de Decker - This one looks good on paper and is another one which might have Matchplay consequences with the two players currently 18th and 19th on the Pro Tour list. Seems like both are playing well, but I'm getting Cameron as approaching a 60% favourite, he is still somewhat undervalued and I think there is a sliver of value here, 0.1u Menzies 10/11 is generally available.

Dobey/Tingstrom - Viktor won the Nordic qualifier, and looked pretty decent in a couple of matches against the highly rated Harrysson and Lukasiak, and not exactly awful in his other games either. It's an enormous step up against someone like Chris, I'm not sure that 15/2 is really being fair on the Swede, but it'd be reasonable to think he might be a bit nervy in this one. Or maybe it's a free hit? Who knows.

de Zwaan/Ehlers - Jeffrey looks like he's continuing to get a little bit better, but is still someway off his best, and he's got an alright draw against a domestic qualifier who I've not heard of before, so I guess it's a debut, the quali was alright, mostly low to mid 80s with one flash up into the 90s in the semi final, I don't think it's enough to really threaten de Zwaan, his Q-School numbers look a bit better than his quali numbers, but this looks like a take on the known quantity at the price, 0.25u de Zwaan 2/5 on Hills

Mueller/Veenstra - Oliver's another one to have come through the quali, and if anything the numbers look less convincing than Matthias's do, and Veenstra feels like a tougher draw than de Zwaan is. The market's giving Richard a bit of a better chance accordingly, so I'm looking at the same sort of thing again, 0.25u Veenstra 3/10 on 365 looks good.

Zonneveld/Woodhouse - This ought to be competitive but with Luke being a late call up for Gary Anderson, maybe he's not quite 100% in terms of preparation, he's perhaps a little better than the odds suggest (is 10/11, I've got it better but closer to 55% than 60%), so I'm not going to take the shot as I did in a similar situation with Menzies just because even a fraction of underperformance due to potential less than ideal preparation is enough not to punt.

Wenig/Lennon - This ought to be fun to start with a home country card holder against a known good player, I've actually got these two running pretty close and Lukas has had some steady results. I'm reluctant to bet against Steve, but it is home field advantage, I'll go with 0.1u Wenig 6/4 on 365, with it being in Germany and the numbers being just about at close as they are, I can push out to recommend a small play.

Wade/Gurney - Not a bad second game either, both been around for more than a decade now, Gurney is actually projecting as a favourite which did surprise me, and you can't actually get better than 4/5, which also surprised me. While Daryl does project as better in my numbers, it's not enough to be worth a play, he's perhaps 2-3% stronger than the line suggests which really isn't enough given it's not unreasonable to think projections will underestimate Wade.

Gilding/Cullen - This is already shaping up to be a great session, both have just been quietly getting their job done, and Joe did us with a couple of real good performances in ET1. Gilding is projecting better - it's a little bit down to consistency, but there's not a great disparity, and he is not a favourite in the market. 0.25u Gilding 11/8 on VC, anything down to about 6/5 is probably worth the play, below that I'd go down to evens on a tenth of a unit.

Schindler/Sedlak - Martin's got one of the qualifiers here, it's a name we've seen before, but not a huge amount recently, he's got some game so I'm not going to say take Schindler 2/7 and print money, but Martin looks clearly better and should be comfortable enough to get the win.

van Barneveld/van Veen - Clash of eras here in a local derby, and the line looks pretty much close to correct - Gian projects a little bit better than the 4/5 line suggests, but we can clearly temper that with the knowledge that Barney is playing really well in the relative short term. Easy enough one to just avoid for betting and enjoy.

Wright/de Sousa - Session isn't exactly getting worse, is it? Peter's showing a little bit more of late, while Jose is still fairly anonymous, not really doing anything to make us think he'll get into the tough majors this year or arrest a slide that looks like well out of the top 32 this time next year. That said, the projections make this a tough one to call, so while my first instinct would be continue to lay Wright until proven bad, Jose is actually only 6/5 and that is a hard pass at the price.

van den Bergh/Clemens - And we finish with another banger, Dimitri's got the big win recently, while Gabriel is remarkably still looking for a first title. Seems legitimately too close to call, the market has neither odds against and is just shading Dimi as the favourite, I'd probably have it the other way but it is neither here nor there and we're not interested in either until we start getting up towards 11/8, which we're not going to see.

Round 2 may also be fairly late.

Wieze done

Was only going to be a matter of time before Littler won one of these. Winning the first one was maybe a little bit ahead of the timescale that some people thought, but meh, he's good and nobody denies that.

New FRH rankings are as follows:

1 Luke Humphries

2 Michael Smith

3 Michael van Gerwen

4 Rob Cross

5 Nathan Aspinall

6 Gerwyn Price

7 Peter Wright

8 Damon Heta

9 Jonny Clayton

10 Dave Chisnall

11 Dimitri van den Bergh

12 Joe Cullen

13 Stephen Bunting

14 Luke Littler (+4)

15 Chris Dobey (-1)

16 James Wade (-1)

17 Danny Noppert (-1)

18 Ryan Searle (-1)

19 Dirk van Duijvenbode

20 Gary Anderson (NEW)

Nothing substantial changing, Ando pushing into the top 20 over Gilding was probably only a matter of time, Littler winning obviously pushes him up in the rankings, by the time we make a significant discussion again he is probably already up to twelve on account of when he's won his money. Lower down, Pietreczko seemingly didn't move but just pushed a bit closer to those above him, Wattimena is now #43, and that's pretty much it in terms of things of note.

Upcoming, we've got a Challenge Tour weekend in Germany which should be interesting, leading straight into Pro Tour events, but the next big thing will be the usual Munich/Easter Euro Tour event. This weekend's Isle of Man events have zero coverage because reasons, there is one silver ranked WDF event later in the month in the States which it looks like we should find on Dart Connect, but I am guessing this next month should be probably quiet in terms of updates. We'll see, maybe someone does something stupid and we can talk about things. Who knows.

Wieze QF bets

Pietreczko/Clayton - Appears extremely tight. Have it closer than 51/49, Clayton being favoured but only by a fraction. As such, the line being slanted with Ricardo at 13/10 offers a sliver of value, but with Clayton looking so good in the last sixteen, one leg excepted, it's hard to think we have the edge right now, not that Ricardo played badly in knocking out Joyce at all.

Littler/Wattimena - This is looking like a great chance for Littler to make a breakthrough at this level, he was fantastic against Heta, apart from in the legs where he lost where the scoring was a bit weak, while Wattimena was fine against Cullen, took advantage of a couple of weak scoring legs from Joe, whose purple patch in the last two rounds ended rapidly. Projecting Luke up near 85%, 2/11 doesn't seem unfair, Jermaine's had a good run which'll be something to build on, but it surely ends here.

Searle/Cross - Ryan didn't put a foot wrong, just a couple of slightly slow legs where Luke was not able to finish, while Cross had probably the easiest run of anyone, dropping just the one leg with Noppert only in a position to be waiting on a double in another two. I've got Cross as a small favourite, split the difference between 55% and 45%, and the market is shading him about the same at 4/5, so I don't see any value in this one.

Price/Bunting - Gerwyn looked fantastic against Ando, who was playing exceptionally well himself, with just the one leg between them going beyond fifteen darts and the two combining to over a ton in the legs they lost. Great stuff. Bunting had three extremely strong legs, but otherwise just did his job and will need to be a bit more consistent in this one. The market can barely separate them, if you've got money on VC then take the Price line there and arb elsewhere, but I'll just take the price full stop, 0.25u Price evs, I've got him closer to 60% than 55% so that's enough edge for me to fire on the back of a fantastic last sixteen display.

Wieze R3 bets

One out of three yesterday - given they were all around 2/1, that's going to result in close to break even regardless of which one actually one, unfortunately it was de Decker that won who was fractionally the shortest price, but we move on to the last sixteen:

Joyce/Pietreczko - Both players came through 6-5 deciders, Ricardo right at the start in an evenly matched game with Luke Woodhouse, whereas Joyce had much the better timing to nick one against Chizzy. This one seems fairly close, but Joyce has a bit of an edge for me, about the best we can get is 5/6 on Boyles, which is close to a play, but I would probably need 10/11 before I started really thinking about it given the level of play from both yesterday. Possibly evens.

Wright/Clayton - Jonny did for one of our bets yesterday, coming from a 2-0 hole to beat van Peer 6-4 with what was a good display, while Peter also won 6-4 against a somewhat underperforming van Gerwen for what has to be considered a bit of an upset at this stage. Wright surprisingly projects as a 60/40 favourite for this one, it's the same sort of scenario as the one above, we're only getting 5/6 and I'd probably want evens given how both have played yesterday (and Friday as well, in the case of Wright), and how it feels like a false prediction with the general mediocre form of Wright.

Heta/Littler - Damon had zero problems with a bit of an off Dolan, although if Brendan had have hit any double in the comedy second leg, maybe he gets it to 3-2 on throw and it might be a different story. Littler had little (lol) trouble with Ratajski, a little bit of a slow start but came through comfortably in the end. Luke looks about 70/30 here, he's 1/2 so for maybe the first time since the worlds, he's actually being underrated? It's not enough edge to bet obviously, but an interesting development.

Cullen/Wattimena - Joe came with another really good game to take Dirk out, while Jermaine continues a good run with a solid showing against Ross Smith, who clearly wasn't at his best but Jermaine didn't give him too much of a chance. This feels like a hard one to call, the projections are only giving Cullen just shy of 60%, and as the projections have typically maybe underestimated Jermaine as well, it might be right, but Joe looks to be playing a lot better than the sample this weekend, so 9/5 on Wattimena probably goes from being tiny value to being, if not -EV, certainly not safe enough to bet.

Humphries/Searle - Luke cruised past Wade with really no issues at all, just a shame he couldn't make it a 6-0, while Ryan was made to work by an opportunistic Richard Veenstra, who nicked what he could despite Searle's game being just fine. Two in form players, the projection is giving Searle ever so slightly more than a one in three shot - 12/5 is not really enough to give confidence to bet, maybe if some money comes in on Humphries, I'll go with a small play.

Cross/Noppert - Rob could easily have been 4-0 down to Lukas Wenig, but managed to escape to 3-3 and win a decider, Danny also won a decider against Dobey from 5-3 down, dodging some bullets in the tenth leg especially. Cross looks to be a solid enough favourite in this one, I'd have said about 4/7 would be a fair line, we can actually get 4/6 which is overrating Danny ever so slightly. 8/11 I'd probably say screw it and fire small.

Price/Anderson - Gerwyn was a bit up and down against Clemens but never really looked in trouble to lose the match, while Gary definitely was having some issues against an inspired Andreas Harrysson who continued his level of play from Friday and was unlucky to completely run out of steam in the decider where he had the darts. Ando is clearly the better player at this point in time and projects just shy of 60/40, the market basically has neither player odds against, with Price being the one who's hitting evens. If that was Gary I'd go with it, instead it's another one that's really close to a play but I don't quite have enough to pull the trigger.

Bunting/de Decker - Final game sees Bunting, who looked pretty decent but needed every leg to dispose of Josh Rock (kid is still playing fine, just not getting results), while Mike had a very good 6-2 win over Michael Smith, maybe the most noteworthy of his career even though the numbers were merely good if not spectacular. Bunting is about the same sort of level favourite as Gary is, but he's priced at 1/2 and not just shorter than evens. So I think it's another one where we're very close to going with Mike - 7/4 is just not quite enough, even factoring in the home field advantage, I'd want another tick or probably 2/1 flat out before I'd actually fire against Stephen on this one.

So no bets, but if you're more bullish on some players that I think are close, maybe there's some value for you.

Wieze round 2 bets

0.1u van Peer 15/8, as stated below he actually projects as favourite. Even if we say it's all consistency and flip him from a 55/45 favourite to a 55/45 dog as a result, that still gives us a pretty big edge and we take those, I only don't go a quarter unit as I fear I may be missing something fundamental here. Maybe Jonny having a quieter schedule makes him unexpectedly fresh or something.

0.1u Dolan 9/4, don't love this anywhere near as much as the above one, but we're still getting better than 2/1 on someone we're thinking at worst has a 40% chance. Even if that's 5% too much, it's still a +EV play.

0.1u de Decker 7/4, someone we're saying is close to a flip on home soil at approaching 2/1 odds? Sign me up.

That's the lot, the only other real consideration was Dirk, a play I don't hate, but there's enough uncertainty as to the state of his game that I'm happy enough to effectively put him off the board as of right now.

Wieze R2 thoughts

Not going to lie for one minute, that was not a good day in terms of results. Think the process was fine - when you get an unrelated account agree with your main play, it does give a bit of confidence that you're coming to the right conclusions, but it's not always going to work. Schindler wasn't at his best, but Cullen played really well and we've got to give credit where it's due to Joe, it's probably at least a one and a half sigma negative in terms of outcomes, but these things happen. Wright played pretty ordinary as we thought, de Vos just didn't have it either, while Barney was in the position to win, and just fucked it up. These things happen. We just keep putting the volume of bets in where we think we're right, and in the long run we'll be fine.

So, onto round two - first round's only just recently done, so while some lines will be out, I'm going to blast out a quick bets post in the morning (and I mean quick, just pointing out plays and that's it, I've got a moderately long trip to a game tomorrow, so if I just mention a game you can assume that I'm thinking line is close enough to thoughts) and then be done with it, and then catch up on everything on Sunday morning.

Pietreczko/Woodhouse - Competitive enough one to start. Luke was alright in round one, nothing spectacular one way or another, and is actually projecting about 55/45 ahead, so could be a chance of a seed going out here.

Smith/Wattimena - Didn't have Jermaine whitewashing anyone at this level in the thoughts, but he did, but this is a bit of a step up and Ross is projecting more than 75/25. There is no consistency thing here, that's just how good he's playing.

Clayton/van Peer - Was able to get a little bit of respite on van Peer getting through Klose with a personal side play, but I don't think he did too much notable, just got the job done, but here's the bonkers thing - van Peer is projecting as a favourite. Not by a lot, 55/45 at most, and if you take into account Berry's wild inconsistency, he might not be a favourite at all, but if he's a dog, it's not by much, so this could be a favourable play on van Peer here.

Heta/Dolan - The guy Brendan played actually did a bit more than we thought, but Dolan still came through, and it's another one that looks weirdly close in the projections, again around a 55/45 clip. Heta does have a consistency edge, but it's not by much, and we may be looking at the history maker for an underdog flier potentially.

Searle/Veenstra - Richard did well to pull away after holding on by nicking the scrappy legs in the early stages, and gets another tough opponent in Searle here, this is again showing up as a 2-1 sort of game which seems fair enough, especially given Ryan's current good form.

Noppert/Dobey - Chris came through as expected, the other guy did kind of what we thought and it'll be good to see him a bit more going forward (maybe in the World Cup?), but for now this should be a competitve game but one where Dobey is coming in as the better player, dropping right in the middle of the 60%-65% range and it looks one where Danny's solidity can't handle what looks to be a clearly superior player on paper.

Anderson/Harrysson - Andreas probably had the game of his life to storm past van Veen, and I'm thinking this is one where we get a bit of a hangover and where the (unfiltered on the sample size I'm using) second best player in the world just turns over the best player in the world and moves on.

van Duijvenbode/Cullen - As mentioned above, Joe looked extremely good in his first game, Dirk I think is still a bit of a mystery but is projecting nicely into the low 60% range. Huge questions with consistency and with injury, he looks to be getting back to where he was, but this one is going to be look at the line and go with feel as opposed to data given there are a lot of intangibles saying go with Cullen.

Chisnall/Joyce - Ryan just got the job done, nothing special there, but has been doing enough in recent months where Dave is nowhere near 60%, he's actually closer to 55% than that. He had a great 2023 but maybe much of it was in the early stages and tides are changing?

Smith/de Decker - Mike was made to work earlier, but seemingly had a big home crowd with him which you have to expect will continue here, and on the relevant numbers I'm not finding a lot to split the two. Smith is better but it's very marginal, so look for a bet on the home favourite here.

Price/Clemens - Gabriel moved through with little problems, now we get one of the biggest upshifts in terms of quality of opponent you will see on this circuit, but Clemens is certainly not without chances. Price has lost to a comparable German player over a longer format pretty recently, and Clemens has a touch more than a one in three shot - the Iceman should come through, but this is not a formality.

van Gerwen/Wright - One that looks better on paper than it probably will be in real life. Wright's actually projecting at a moderately reasonable number a touch over 35%, but there's big inconsistency numbers in play here that we really need to consider in this one.

Ratajski/Littler - Can't think I'll be the only one that was surprised that de Sousa forced Littler to a deciding leg. Krzysztof is not going to care about the hype and will just step up and do his thing, which on the numbers should get there a tad less than one in three but a tad more than 30% of the time. Will watch the bookies, but this might be a play, although little was offered in the JdS game.

Humphries/Wade - Probably one of the bigger projections we've seen in that it's showing near to 80/20 in favour of the world champion. Is that unfair on someone of Wade's calibre? Frankly no, it's not.

Rock/Bunting - Stephen was getting quite a lot of steam in the markets, to the point where the flier price I wanted on Dimi on the exchanges was actually met. Still, he came through, just about, and is showing enough where he's the tiniest favourite over Josh in this one. Rock almost feels a bit like a forgotten man, but he is more than keeping pace with one of the more hyped up names of the present.

Cross/Wenig - One of the less interesting games, Lukas got through a qualifier but was a touch sluggish, he is projecting at about a one in five chance but context of form makes me think we're not going to hit near that likelihood and we won't have a chance for a flier play on Wenig.

Check in tomorrow for any bets, if they're not up by quarter to ten or so, then assume nothing of value is there.

Wieze R1 bets

van Peer/Klose - Looks close enough to right. May be undervaluing Berry extremely fractionally, like maybe 1% or 2%, which isn't enough to bet.

Joyce/Gilding - Again, looks pretty close to correct, Gilding's 6/5 and we were saying he had a 45% chance.

Wenig/van Put - We're clearly not going to touch Lukas at shorter than 1/8, question is whether we have enough confidence in what Born can do to fire, and I think that's a categorical no.

Gurney/Wattimena - First one we can really think about firing on, with Daryl at 4/7 which is implying just under a 65% chance, when we're thinking it's probably around 70%. That said, we did think that was a bit of a possible false projection, and on further inspection Jermaine's a couple of points better on consistency so I'm happy enough to reign in Gurney's chances enough to make it a no bet.

Woodhouse/Hurrell - Luke's coming in at just shorter than 1/2, which is pretty much exactly where I thought it would be.

Dolan/Strobbe - Would need a lot, lot longer than 9/1 to consider Strobbe here. Dolan at 1/14 probably isn't terrible to be honest.

Dobey/Grbavac - I'm kind of half tempted to consider Romeo to be honest here, given he's actually longer in places than Strobbe is, which seems a bit silly to be honest. It is a bit step up in class against a very good opponent though, so I won't actually bet it.

Harrysson/van Veen - Lacking real data on Andreas here, but Gian at 1/5 seems like the right sort of ballpark figure.

de Decker/Landman - Thought Chris might be a bit shorter, but you can actually get 3/1 on 888 which does offer a small arb. I'd actually need longer to bet him though, so we're clearly not going to play him, or Mike, whose best odds look just about right and whose worst odds are clearly unplayable.

Schindler/Cullen - Market can't split the two, which seems bonkers. Unlike the Gurney game, we are going to play though, 0.25u Schindler 10/11, for two reasons - Martin's coming off a huge win, and we're getting a massively better price. Cullen is a lot more consistent but that consistency isn't going to make near evens not the correct play, since the summer Martin's two points a turn better which is a lot.

Caron/Clemens - Jeroen's a lot closer than the other two qualifiers we've looked at so far, which I think is probably just about fair enough given what little amount we know of him. As such I'm happy not to play it, he's got a puncher's chance but that's about it and Gabriel should be, and is, a strong favourite.

Littler/de Sousa - Might be tiny value in Jose at 4/1, which would fit in with current lay Littler early and often theory, the concern is he's coming off of what ought to be a really confidence damaging loss. As such, I'm not going to play the lay Littler card on this one.

Wright/de Vos - 0.1u 11/2 de Vos, we don't have recent data on Geert outside of the quali, but this is just a general principle "nobody competent should be longer than 5/1 against Wright in a first to six" bet right now, and de Vos at least qualifies as competent. For comparison, Jurjen van der Velde shows at over a 20% chance.

Wade/van Barneveld - Wade's actually the market favourite here, albeit only just. There is, as you might expect, a consistency issue with the numbers, Wade is as you might expect a fair bit more consistent, but if we reign Barney's advantage on the winning legs all the way in from just below 60% to just above 50%, there is still enough of an edge for a small stab. 0.1u van Barneveld 6/5

van den Bergh/Bunting - Stephen is, quite correctly, projecting as favourite, but while I'd have it at 4/6, it's actually 8/13. So that's underrating Dimitri a tiny amount already looking at the raw numbers, without factoring in intangibles such as "just won a major title this week" and "playing on home soil penultimate game of the evening session". Depends on how much you think that bumps Dimi's numbers - if you think it'll give him an additional 2-3%, then go with the shot.

Aspinall/Veenstra - Looks about right to me. Wouldn't be touching Nathan, maybe Veenstra is no worse than a neutral EV play, 2/1 looks a perfect line so if you factor in the travel then perhaps you can justify it clearly not being a losing play.