Dobey, Burton, Merkx

Chris Dobey (#15 FRH, 94.59 (#4), 757-567 (57.18%, #7))

Stephen Burton (#60 FRH, 88.30 (#62), 340-309 (52.39%, #43))

Alexander Merkx (#151 FRH, 87.53 (#71), 108-113 (48.87%, #73))

It's been another really solid season for Chris Dobey, while he has perhaps not made quite the breakthrough on the TV stage he would have liked following his Masters win and respectable Premier League outing, the numbers speak for themselves, and on the floor he is absolutely a force to be reckoned with. That number four in scoring is no joke, only Anderson and the two Lukes have been doing more than him this season, and that level of play has seen Dobey clean up at the Pro Tour level, where he claimed three Pro Tour titles, made a further two finals and did enough overall to just finish top of the Pro Tour rankings and have the number one seeding going into Minehead, and at that level finishing second only to Anderson in terms of averages. It was also his best European Tour season for some time, with two semi final outings but a bit of a mixed record before that. The next thing is to do something big on TV to match the numbers, he has back to back quarters here but hasn't managed to convert quality into a huge final yet. Dobey would run into Anderson at the last 32 of the UK Open, Michael Smith in the second round at Blackpool, a couple of not great losses to Cullen and Clayton at the Grand Prix and European Championship respectively, then miss the Grand Slam despite his Pro Tour outings due to the variety of major finalists. Finally, as the number one seed at the Players Championship Finals, he would be undone by Nathan Aspinall in the opening round. Chris clearly seems to like this venue, and it could be here where he turns fantastic play into fantastic results.

Burton is making his second appearance here, and the first for six seasons after coming through the PDPA qualifier in 2019 only to be whitewashed by Ryan Searle. This result has been enough to keep his card, but what's he done this year? In terms of stage events, it's been just the two Minehead events, going down in his opening game at the UK Open to Owen Roelofs, but doing enough on the floor to return in November where he would get a surprising win over James Wade but finish a clear second best to Danny Noppert. Making that event would imply above average floor performance, and it's generally been steady accumulation - only losing in the first round rarely, but only pushing through to a singular quarter final and going out in the second round almost as frequently as the first, so kind of a steady, top 64 sort of performance, which is where all the metrics more or less put him. Stephen did make a couple of Euro Tours as well, losing 6-5 to Keane Barry in one, then defeating Boris Krcmar in another before going out in the second round to Daryl Gurney, so stage play has been extremely limited. He does feel like one of those players that's solid, but doesn't have enough of a game right now to threaten to push up to the top 32, and instead will be reliant on getting to this stage and hopefully winning his opening game to keep his card going forward.

In his way will be Merkx, the Dutchman who finished fourth on the Challenge Tour, but upgraded into one of the two worlds spots on account of the exploits of Connor Scutt and Wesley Plaisier. It is a debut here but not in a world championship, as last year he did OK at Lakeside, getting past his fellow Dutchman Arjan Konterman before becoming one of Dennis Nilsson's multiple victims. This season it's been all about the Challenge Tour and the WDF circuit - in that, he would likely have ben seeded again if he didn't qualify for here, having added a tournament win in Romania to his list of achievements. On that Challenge Tour, Alex got two wins, the first over Plaisier in August, then a second in the final weekend over Darryl Pilgrim to give him enough breathing room to hold off a host of players who were not that far behind him in the tables. His averages on the Challenge Tour were surprisingly low, being outside the top 30 which is kind of unexpected for someone who finished that high up the rankings, but it's getting the wins that matter. Naturally, he was able to get into some Pro Tours, but got his main Challenge Tour money too late to play in that many, just getting into the five and only picking up a solitary win over Matt Campbell, and while it may have been a clash of schedules, he didn't try to get into the one European Tour that he could have played in the Netherlands.

The first round game is pretty intriguing. Burton clearly isn't one of the top tier Pro Tour qualifiers, and Merkx clearly isn't one of the lower end international qualifiers. I've got Stephen as better, but not by much, only around 55/45, so this one does feel pretty open. Dobey shouldn't have too much to worry about against either of these, he's projecting up near 85% if he were to face Burton, and the level of play he's capable of showing makes me think that he probably doesn't lose a set.

van Gerwen, Hurrell, Long

Michael van Gerwen (#3 FRH, 93.90 (#8), 630-455 (58.06%, #4))

James Hurrell (#81 FRH, 88.58 (#58), 293-320 (47.80%, #79))

Jim Long (#168 FRH, 85.21 (#83), 99-91 (52.11%, #46))

This might be the most under the radar van Gerwen has been going into a World Championship since, well, forever? Seems like all the talk has been about the two Lukes, there's hype around Anderson, around Bunting, there's even more talk about Mike de Decker and other similar names it seems. Still, MvG comes into the event as one of the players we can realistically look at as a possible finalist, being on the other half of the draw to Littler and Humphries being somewhat of a contributing factor to that. In terms of raw performances, this is by no means his best level of play, but his best level of play was arguably the greatest player we've ever seen in terms of peak, which is hard to sustain, and it's still good enough that he can realistically win any game whenever he steps up to the oche. In terms of results, Michael would have wanted more - the closest he got to a major title was the Matchplay final where he stopped Littler straight out of the gate and only lost by the odd break in the final to Humphries, but aside from that it's been a bit of a trainwreck - losing to Mensur at the UK Open, Gurney in six straight legs at the Grand Prix, Ando at the Euros is I guess fine after beating Clemens, but he couldn't get out of his Slam group finishing behind Ryan Joyce, and then also lost his opening game at the PC Finals to Ian White. That's not van Gerwen esque by any stretch. A solitary European Tour win seems like very little and the season overall was slightly worse than last year, which in turn was the worst he's ever had outside of severely truncated years, and while he did pick up a couple of Pro Tours, he did go on a dry spell of over a year without winning one which seems unthinkable. The numbers are still top, top level, it just seems that some other players have just slightly passed him by, the lack of just winning stuff frequently maybe being a bit of a knock on how well he can play.

James Hurrell won his card on the points system in January after a very solid BDO/WDF career where he was always a contender but never really lived up to the rankings in terms of major results, James had gained some limited experience at the main PDC level following some call ups based on last season's Challenge Tour rankings, and I think he'll be happy enough with his first season, getting into the worlds putting him in a relatively decent position to hold his card in twelve months time. The bulk of his play has naturally been on the floor, and he came out of the blocks with an opening quarter final, getting a win over Michael Smith and only being stopped by Luke Littler, and he'd make it two out of three in event five to give him a very strong start to the year. He'd add a further quarter final in the summer, but has been moderately quiet in the second half of the year with three board finals being the best he's done on the Pro Tour outside of that one run. It was enough to get him to the Players Championship Finals, and he'd come close to beating Danny Noppert in a quality game where Hurrell had the higher average but just get pipped 6-5. His other TV appearance was also a first game defeat, that early Pro Tour run getting him a first round UK Open bye, but he would surprisingly lose to qualifier Joe Croft. The European Tour is one obvious area of improvement, obviously the number of quali spots was severely cut this year but he'd like to make more than just the one, appearing in the opener in Belgium, losing to Luke Woodhouse, but not making another one since then. It's been an alright season, but maybe he'd have liked a little bit more.

Jim is back here after a six year absence, and makes his second appearance, and he's looking to repeat what he did that time, where he got through his first game (this would be the infamous Mickey Mansell game) before losing a tight one to a Dutch opponent, although Benito van de Pas was alright at the time, he's certainly no Michael van Gerwen. Jim is here through the CDC rankings, finishing joint top of the table with Leonard Gates and by definition being the top Canadian player, fellow seniors player Dave Cameron pushing him somewhat close with Jacob Taylor being a bit further back again. Long took two of the twelve titles, one in Illinois and one in New York, and back to back finals in the last weekend, both in deciding legs, would be enough to seal his Ally Pally spot. Jim also featured in the Cross Border Challenge where he lost in the quarters to Stowe Buntz, and was cruelly denied a Grand Slam place in the Continental Cup, where Gates would pip him 8-7 in the final after Long led 7-6 and apparently had championship darts. presumably going a weird route on 76. Jim also had a nice run at the World Seniors, getting past compatriot Cameron, Martin Adams then Paul Hogan before losing to eventual winner John Henderson in the semi final, not exactly a bad list of opponents to beat.

I think we have enough data on Jim to be fairly confident that James will come through the opener. Hurrell is projecting at over 80% - I think maybe that's an overestimate, but there is a bit of a solid difference in the numbers and I can't see Long being able to cause too much trouble, unless Hurrell is off his game or has a slow start. The second round game looks just about as comfortable, I've not even got Hurrell at 20% over van Gerwen, Michael's not the all-world talent he was, but is still clearly good enough to be a substantial favourite and one of the seeds with the easiest task in terms of getting ro round three.

Bunting/Soutar/Gotthardt

Stephen Bunting (#6 FRH, 94.12 (#6), 857-669 (56.16%, #15))

Alan Soutar (#56 FRH, 89.01 (#53), 343-332 (50.81%, #58))

Kai Gotthardt (#120 FRH, 89.59 (#48), 119-141 (45.77%, #85))

It's been a fantastic season for the Bullet, where he's been able to push back up into the world's top ten, looks like a clear top 10 level player, and he's also picked up a first televised title, becoming the last Masters winner under its old format. That title, with wins over Ross Smith, Luke Humphries, Peter Wright, Nathan Aspinall and Michael van Gerwen, is representative of how well he has been playing throughout 2024, being at a level where he has to be in serious contention for the Premier League, especially with a good run here. The one thing that might hold that back is a relative lack of TV form - he did get a good run to the UK Open quarters, only being stopped by Humphries but certainly not having the hardest path to that stage, but besides that it's been fairly ordinary - losing to Humphries again at Blackpool after beating Ryan Joyce, Humphries again at the Grand Prix from a near unassailable position, Anderson in the Euros and also in the first knockout round of the Slam, and then Mario Vandenbogaerde at the return to Minehead being the only one he might want back. It's ordinary finishes, but generally speaking it's needing a truly elite player to knock him out. It's perhaps surprising that he's yet to win a Euro Tour, he was moderately close this year with five final session appearances, but couldn't turn any of them into a final, which given his floor record in finals at Pro Tour level might not have been a pretty sight if he did. At Pro Tour level he went a crazy 0-6 in finals, including losing three back to back, the closest he got in any of those was losing in deciding legs to Littler and Humphries. This might be the best he's ever been playing, the time when he moved over straight after winning Lakeside was a while ago now, but I don't recall him being quite this strong at the time.

Soutar had a pretty darned good 2022, but a fairly awful 2023, which was bad enough that he missed the worlds and could have been in trouble for retaining his card. That didn't turn out to be a problem however, as Alan was one of the more unlikely winners of a Pro Tour title this season, picking up his maiden victory in June to make him safe for this, although it wasn't realistically enough to make a run at either of the Matchplay or Grand Prix. That win of Alan's was a weird one - I don't think he played any bad players at all, the only player who isn't here that he faced was Steve Beaton and five of the other six players have all reached or won major finals, but probably the hardest opponent he faced was Danny Noppert in the board final, so there was some element of fortune in that he managed to avoid the truly tough tests for the most part. Still, you can only beat who was in front of you and it was a great result. Other than that on the floor, it was mostly misses - he did get to a semi final in the opening event of the season, but would only win his board on a further two occasions, and barely has a winning record in the first round after a horror ending to the season, being on a run of seven straight defeats, six of his opponents not qualifying for the worlds this year with the only exception being Andrew Gilding. Soutar made four Euro Tours, but only in Prague did he really do anything by beating Florian Hempel and Ross Smith to make the last sixteen, his only other win being over a domestic qualifier, and his only TV appearances were both at Minehead where he lost to Brett Claydon and Jermaine Wattimena.

Kai has got to be one of the most improved players of the season, going from effectively being just a guy who we've seen in the European Tour on several occasions, to making his debut here after winning through what has been dubbed the Europe Super League, which appeared to consist of all Germans and one Austrian. Still, he won through his group and then showed enormous cojones to win four straight last leg deciders against former European Tour winner Max Hopp, solid talent Franz Roetzsch, upcoming youngster Dominik Gruellich and then card holder Paul Krohne in the final, What else has he done this year? Well, Gotthardt did make it to one European Tour event, where he averaged over a ton but lost 6-2 to Brendan Dolan, and also made decent inroads on the Challenge Tour, just ending up in the top 25 of the rankings as well as 25th in the averages, not making a final but having six runs to the last sixteen or better, peaking at a couple of semi finals, and the defeats he's had have generally been to known players as opposed to complete randoms, indicating that it often takes someone decent to stop him these days. A lot of those good runs were early in the season, which has allowed Kai to get very useful Pro Tour experience, appearing in ten events and actually winning his board on a couple of occasions, getting a best win against Damon Heta, and again, generally requiring an above average player to stop him, the only ones he might want back being losses to Perez and Crabtree.

This first round game is going to be tight, tight, tight - Alan actually projects slightly lower than Kai does, with Gotthardt showing up as a marginal 55/45 type of favourite in the projections. Maybe it's closer based on experience, but I also half wonder given Alan's run to end the season if something isn't quite right, but he wasn't terrible at Minehead so maybe it's just a bad run. The second round game should be extremely comfortable for Bunting though, the projection's only showing 75/25 but I can't help but think that in reality it'll be a bit more one sided than that suggests.

Smith, Doets, van Leuven

Michael Smith (#14 FRH, 92.53 (#17), 645-512 (55.75%, #18))

Kevin Doets (#48 FRH, 88.20 (#67), 408-396 (50.75%, #59))

Noa-Lynn van Leuven (#128 FRH, 84.58 (#86), 34-52 (39.53%, #91))

Michael's now had basically two full years where he hasn't really pushed on from his world championship victory, and a big slide down the rankings as that prize money falls off this time next month is incoming, but where is his game actually at? It's kind of hard to say looking at numbers, his scoring is just outside the top sixteen, but it doesn't feel like there's sixteen better players in the world right now by any stretch of the imagination. Results have been mixed, the highlight being a run to the Matchplay semi final, coming through a strong set of opponents who I was backing all the way before dropping out to Michael van Gerwen, but outside of that there's not been much of anything, at least in the ranked arena (he did of course win the World Cup). The sole wins in knockout stages were against Joe Cullen in the UK Open, Dave Chisnall at the European Championship and Nick Kenny at the PC Finals. He didn't get out of the group at the Slam, and losses to Luke Woodhouse, Gary Anderson, Ritchie Edhouse and Daryl Gurney are, Ando aside, matches he'd expect to win (heck, after the Matchplay, even Ando maybe). The European Tour had just a solitary semi final, and while he did bink one Pro Tour, he only made a further two quarter finals, and that wasn't through playing a reduced schedule or anything. He probably is still better than his FRH and scoring rankings suggest, but he needs to start showing it. Quickly.

One possible second round opponent would be Kevin Doets in a replay of their cracking game at the same stage last season, where Doets averaged 99 and took the game to a deciding set. Kevin's probably not had as good a season this time around as he had then, recall he was very close to making the Matchplay and Grand Prix, but there's still been some highlights, although they're somewhat sporadic On TV he got a little bit of a UK Open run going with wins over Robert Owen and Daniel Klose before losing out to Stephen Bunting in the last 32, but couldn't really do anything against Gilding on the return to Minehead last month. He wasn't close to anything else, but did have a very nice cameo at the World Series finals, putting together a near 110 average in a demolition of Keane Barry and pushing Rob Cross very close in the last sixteen (which would have brought forward a rematch with Smith). Doets played five Euro Tour events, not doing a great deal but getting a win over Mike de Decker (although this was in May before Mike went mental), while on the Pro Tour it's been steady accumulation, picking up four boards wins, two of which he converted into quarter finals, so while his scoring at times has been pretty mediocre, and he's not looked likely to repeat the floor final he made in 2023, there have been some highlights and there's plenty of time on his side, still being very young at least in darts terms.

Noa-Lynn van Leuven will be Kevin's first round opponent, making a debut here after a second placed finish behind Beau Greaves in the Women's Series table. There, Noa won four events to finish comfortably high enough to qualify for here, as well as make the Grand Slam (on account of Beau having won the Matchplay, where Noa lost in the first round to Mikuru Suzuki). There Noa ended up in a group with Anderson, van Gerwen and Joyce which went about as well as can be expected given the toughness of the draw. Outside of that, Noa's played some WDF events and would have been at Lakeside were it not for opting to play here, but seemigly only got the one win, but more notably was able to pick up a Challenge Tour win, and you don't win those by being a bad player. It was one of the ones in Germany, so maybe not quite so strong a field, but the quality of the opponents van Leuven faced from the last 64 onwards was still extremely strong, arguably the weakest being final opponent Tytus Kanik. That was early enough to get Noa into a handful of Pro Tours, but without any success against, Gary Anderson excepted, relatively weak opponents for the level of play, drawing two other non card holders.

This one seems simple enough to call. I don't have enough reliable data to accurately assess van Leuven, and I don't think that Kevin's stats in the database are particularly reflective of how well he can play either, but I'd guess that Doets advances maybe around 70% of the time, perhaps a little bit more. In round two, it's probably about the same sort of thing, if not a bit more one sided. Smith's a quality operator and while he's dropped off from his best, it doesn't seem like as much as Kevin has, and it seems more likely that Smith would be able to up his game than Doets would be able to.

Clemens, Zonneveld, Owen

Gabriel Clemens (#37 FRH, 91.64 (#29), 418-422 (49.76%, #64))

Niels Zonneveld (#44 FRH, 89.93 (#44), 433-402 (51.86%, #52))

Robert Owen (#77 FRH, 88.58 (#59), 243-273 (47.09%, #81))

Clemens is hanging on in the top 32, but for how much longer it is unknown given he is defending semi final money in this event, even a quarter final would not guarantee him a top 32 spot after the worlds, that's just how precarious a position he is in. Still without a ranking title, he didn't come particularly close to adding one (as Schindler did), with a floor record of just the one quarter final all season, and while Gabriel did get enough board finals and other appearances to get into Minehead, albeit ranked fairly low down which threw him into a first round tie with Luke Humphries, that's not the sort of record that someone in the top 32 should be producing. The European Tour wasn't much better, he did play most of the events and made the final day on a few occasions with a best run to the quarters in Sindelfingen, but it would only be enough to scrape into the field at Dortmund as one of the last few in, where he lost to van Gerwen in round one. His floor results have regressed enough that he failed to make both the Matchplay and Grand Prix for the first time since 2019, and his only other ranking appearance at the UK Open saw a tough opening tie against Danny Noppert, which Danny narrowly won. It makes you wonder if confidence is an issue, but the darts he's throwing look somewhat better than the results he's been getting, so with the draw not being the worst, maybe Clemens can use this event to spark a revival in form.

Looking to stop him will be Niels Zonneveld, a player still well south of 30 who it seems like we've been watching forever. Niels has been one of those players in the past who's been kind of too good not to have a tour card, but not quite good enough to retain it, this season has seen what feels like genuine progression to solidify a top 64 spot. The highlight would be in the final Euro Tour of the season in Prague, where Niels would reach the semi finals, knocking out seeds in Dave Chisnall and Ricardo Pietreczko, only losing to Kim Huybrechts by the odd leg in 13 and finishing an agonising £250 short of making a European Championship debut. The floor has also seen progression with three quarter finals, albeit mostly in the first half of the season, which allowed for a bit of a Minehead cameo, eliminating Willie O'Connor and Nathan Aspinall before the in form Mike de Decker was too strong. This is now his fourth appearance here, and he got his first win twelve months ago over Darren Webster, and he'll be looking to at least repeat that, if not go further, it genuinely feels like this is the best he's ever played and that he has good chances to put a little bit of a run together.

His opponent will be Robert Owen, whose appearance here is a bit fortunate as if it were not for Dom Taylor's issues, Owen would have been the last man out, and while he qualified through the Pro Tour list, Jeffrey de Graaf making it both ways shunts him into the international qualifiers list. A bit weird, but it's where we are. Robert is here for a second appearance, returning after a year away and looking to go slightly better than a narrow defeat to Andrew Gilding two years ago. Probably still best known for his UK Open semi final run now over six years ago, Owen has had a moderately quiet season, picking up a win over Karel Sedlacek in the only major he played this year, but nearly beating Kevin Doets to get into the pot with the big boys. Owen has shown some flashes - he's made a couple of floor quarters, firstly on the opening weekend where he defeated James Wade, then later on in October where he defeated Ross Smith, but losing out in round one more often than not saw him miss Minehead by a couple of grand. However, a couple of European cameos where he defeated multiple Krzysztofs in consecutive weekends would give him enough cash to creep into the field.

There is not an enormous amount between the two first round players. Less than a point and a half is not huge, and while Niels is better, it's only around 55/45 better on the projections, which I feel might be a bit of an underestimate and could be nearer 60/40. That said, Robert is basically on a free hit so maybe that comes into play. Clemens is a bit better again, but once more, it's not prohibitive, it's nowhere near a 2-1 shot, closer to 60/40, and I think with the players' respective form and confidence, 60/40 would be the better shout than 65/35, Owen being that little bit further off where Gabriel would have a tad more than a two in three chance. Genuinely competitive little section of the draw, but one that might have the potential of turning into a tough watch and one for the purists.

Aspinall, Menzies, Gates

Nathan Aspinall (#24 FRH, 91.79 (#26), 359-325 (52.49% (#42))

Cameron Menzies (#38 FRH, 92.67 (#15), 590-459 (56.24% (#13))

Leonard Gates (#106 FRH, 87.27 (#74), 181-141 (56.21% (#14))

Bit of a weird season for Aspinall. The obvious thing to point out is that a lot of the season may have been affected by injury - he did take somewhat of a break after the Matchplay, missing a group of five events straight after having already taken two pairs of events off, and similarly had a spell of four Euro Tours in a row where he was absent. He came back around September time - with an odd interview where it sounded like he was indicating he was still a fair bit away from coming back, only to show up on the Pro Tour two days after that event finished. I think in the circumstances, looking back at what he did pre-Matchplay would be misleading, so let's look at what he's done since. He did play the last eleven Pro Tour events, but only made two board finals, but generally speaking the averages were pretty good, only dropping under 90 a couple of times and cracking three figures on more than one occasion, which was just enough to creep into the Minehead field, where he knocked out the number one seed Chris Dobey before losing to Niels Zonneveld. He picked up Euro Tour wins over Ratajski and Chisnall amongst others, which was just enough to see him creep into the Dortmund field only to draw Luke Humphries, while possible opponent here Menzies stopped him from qualifying for the Grand Slam. It's always hard to tell exactly where somebody is at in this sort of spot, but there's enough decent signs to make me think he's on the right track and probably playing better than the statistics suggests.

And he may need every little bit of that, as he's drawn a possible stinker in Cameron Menzies, who if not the most dangerous opponent he could have drawn, was certainly top of the Pro Tour rankings and would be in the conversation of everyone who has even the slightest bit of knowledge. Menzies' talent has been known for years, but 2024 has seen him finally make the breakthrough on the big stage, and he is throwing a lot, lot better than the rankings suggest, and may be getting even better now that he's finally cut back some of the day job. Cameron was consistently pushing further and further on the floor, getting a run of five straight quarter finals (and six in seven) mid season, which included a first final where he lost to Chris Dobey by an odd break, but he would claim a ranking title in the penultimate event of the season over Stephen Bunting. This would give him more TV appearances - after a bastard UK Open draw against Gary Anderson, Menzies would just miss the Matchplay, but make the Grand Prix, although there his preparation seemed rushed and he didn't win a single leg. He would qualify for the Grand Slam and get out of a group including Noppert, Schindler and Greaves (only just though), then edge out James Wade in the last sixteen before losing in a deciding leg to Mickey Mansell with the draw being wide open for him. Most recently he beat Jim Williams before losing to Ryan Joyce at Minehead, maybe a bit disappointing but everything's pointing in the right direction for Menzies.

In his way is Leonard Gates, who returns for a second appearance here after a year absence, and qualifies as a result of topping the CDC rankings. On that tour, Gates was able to win three titles, to finish level on points with Jim Long and just ahead of Stowe Buntz. Nice performance, but he was able to do a bit more in the CDC world, being able to claim the Continental Cup with wins over Alex Spellman and Jim Long at the business end of the event. This qualified him for the Grand Slam, where he picked up a win over Peter Wright and gave Rob Cross and Martin Lukeman fairly competitive games. Gates would also make a surprise appearance at the UK Open, winning one of the Riley's qualifiers and knocking out Conan Whitehead, Rhys Griffin and Jim Williams to make the last 64, where he would also face Martin Lukeman, ending up with a 10-5 reverse. Leonard's also played much of the seniors circuit, but seemingly hasn't made as much of an impression in 2024 as he did in 2023, and continues to do enough in the WDF events to maintain a top ten ranking in the world in that system, so would have been seeded for that event if he hadn't qualified here.

I think both players in round one will be mildly unhappy with the draw, Gates especially so - Gates very much has a puncher's chance with the sort of game that can win a set early, and if he gets off to a fast start then who knows, but I think Menzies is north of 80% to claim a second round berth. There against Aspinall, it would be very hard to judge things for obvious reasons stated above, but the projections show a coinflip. While Nathan is probably playing better in the second half of the year than the first so may be underrated, Menzies may be the same based on confidence and likely better preparation, so I think it remains too close to call and a real highlight match of the pre-Christmas line-up, assuming Leonard doesn't spoil the party.

Wright/Plaisier/Azemoto

Peter Wright (#19 FRH, 89.76 (#45), 442-427 (50.85%, #57))

Wesley Plaisier (#55 FRH, 90.25 (#40), 441-374 (54.11%, #30))

Ryusei Azemoto (#164 FRH, 84.18 (#90), 71-54 (56.80%, #10))

It's not been a good year for Peter. Much like last year was not a good year for Peter. Now out of the world's top 16 for the first time in over a decade, he is outside of the top 16 on merit, and with the way he has been playing, it is reasonable to make a case that he is ranked too highly, with his numbers being well outside of the top 32 on pretty much any sort of reasonable metric, and the suggestion that the best version of Snakebite is not only in the past, but versions close to that best are also in the past. It's been the first year since before he became a world champion that he has not won some sort of major title, and outside of a pretty comfortable draw at the UK Open where he was able to progress a couple of rounds, his TV performances have been a total loss in the ranked events, not to mention a horrorshow of a Premier League campaign, back to back last place finishes with only seven match victories across two years and 32 events. There is the occasional flash which makes you think there is still something there, and he did take a Euro Tour in Hildesheim with what was a very good tournament showing, but he didn't get a Pro Tour final all year (and hasn't even been to a quarter final since March), is on a run of eight events where he didn't even reach a board final, and was outside the top 64 in Pro Tour averages (in terms of just Scotland, he finished below both Darren Beveridge and Andy Boulton). He might not be the most out of form seed, but he's got to be pretty darned close to it.

One guy who is in form is Wesley Plaisier, who shocked a lot of people when he didn't win a tour card back in January, but has done more or less everything else apart from that. Wesley would have qualified through the Challenge Tour if needed (finishing second only behind Connor Scutt), but is here on right after three tour finals - two back to back where he narrowly lost out to Ross Smith then went down to Jonny Clayton the day after, before winning one late in the season after getting a narrow final victory over Josh Rock. Plaisier's won two Challenge Tours and reached two more finals this year, he won the World Masters and nearly won the Dutch Open, only losing in the final of that latter event to upcomer Jarno Bottenberg, and he was able to get some wins at Minehead, playing in the UK Open through the '23 Challenge Tour ranks, he ironically beat Connor Scuttand then Haupai Puha, before losing to Daniel Klose, and just recently he was able to sweep aside Mensur Suljovic before going out to eventual semi finalist Ross Smith. Wesley's on debut here but did make a quarter final run at Lakeside in 2023 so isn't a newcomer to a world championship stage, and has good chances of winning his card outright - a first round win would put him into the top 64, while a second round win would make him absolutely safe, and there's no reason why he can't do that.

Standing in his way however is Azemoto, who's qualified as the fourth ranked player on the Asian Tour. On that tour, he's been pretty consistent, with four victories and a further final as well, along with a handful of runs to the last four and eight which he'd ideally liked to have taken further, but his overall level of stats on that tour make a quarter final position somewhat par for the course. Ryusei is on debut here, and we have seen plenty of the Japanese players give strong showings, although this is a big step up in quality - he didn't play in the Asian Championship (although he was a semi finalist the year before), and his pairing with Goto in the World Cup this year ended up with a pair of group stage defeats. He'll probably be competent enough, but the raw stats don't look near convincing enough to make me think he can hang with someone of Plaisier's quality.

This first round match looks easy enough to call. Data on Azemoto is not as extensive as I would like, but what we do have indicates a bit of a gulf in class, and giving Ryusei a 10% chance of the win might be on the optimistic side. Can Plaisier beat Wright is the more pertinent question - I think it's pretty darned close and wouldn't like to install either player as a favourite. Wright projects better, although it's only 55/45, but Plaisier is scoring more down to greater consistency. Maybe Peter draws on the wealth of experience he has to push him over the line, but back to back opening game defeats remain a huge possibility.

de Decker/Woodhouse/Ilagan

Mike de Decker (#13 FRH, 92.64 (#16), 625-483 (56.41%, #12))

Luke Woodhouse (#33 FRH, 90.82 (#35), 524-486 (51.88%, #50))

Lourence Ilagan (#105 FRH, 84.47 (#87), 154-119 (56.41%, #11))

The break out year for Mike de Decker that many have been thinking would happen for some time has happened. We've always known at his best he's an excellent player, but didn't really show it quite often enough, but he's tightened up his entire game and while him getting a Pro Tour title (which he did) isn't something that would make too many observers blink, doing enough to not only qualify for the Grand Prix (his maiden title coming in August after missing the Matchplay) but to win it, taking out Heta, Anderson, Wade, van den Bergh before Luke Humphries in a final where, having been 4-1 up but pegged back to 4-4 in sets, getting over the line might have been a question - I don't think anyone realistically saw that. It's a huge achievement that will have filled him with confidence, backing it up with TV wins over Josh Rock Michael Smith in a 5-0 demolition, and then three victories at Minehead before running into Luke Littler, makes us think it's probably not a fluke and his top sixteen position in every rating is more likely to be legitimate than not. His results before that Pro Tour win, where I don't think it's fair to say he had a friendly draw outside of needing to eliminate Dave Chisnall in the board final, have been up and down, maybe he could have got a bit more out of the UK Open where he lost to Ricky Evans (but he avenged that one to win his Pro Tour title), maybe he could have got a bit more on the Euro Tour, but that's in the past. Since he got a title, the floor has basically been board final or last sixteen every time. He's not dropping the easy games, and he's showing his top level game enough where he can, and does, win titles.

Luke's had a wee bit of an unfortunate season, mainly with de Decker (and later Edhouse amongst others) picking up big pieces of cake to prevent him from being seeded in this event, leaving him as one of the really dangerous floaters in the Pro Tour pool. It's been a good season of progression from Woody. Luke got three wins at the UK Open including showing bottle to take deciders over world champions in RvB and Michael Smith, perhaps wanting that last sixteen game against Ricky Evans back, he also reached a first major semi final in the European Championship, coming through a tough if not elite line up of Ross Smith, Searle and van Duijvembode, before losing out to eventual winner Ritchie Edhouse (who would also do for him at Minehead later in the season), and he's doing enough on the floor to have got to both of the "hard" majors in the Matchplay and Grand Prix, although he would be edged out in those by Aspinall and van den Bergh. He's still searching for a first title and couldn't repeat his final run in 2023 on the floor, but has got to a couple of European Tour final sessions, and has added a couple of Pro Tour semi finals this year, so it does have the feeling that getting that first win, or at least getting to another final, isn't that far away, and that the push up into the top 32 has merely been delayed.

Lourence is very much a veteran of the scene at this stage and is making his seventh straight Ally Pally appearance, and his ninth overall in the PDC, and will ideally want to be breaking a string of first round exits, which has only been broken by one deciding leg win two years ago over Rowby John Rodriguez, maybe he just needs me to be the lucky charm given I was at that session. The bad news for Lourence is that I will be very much at work when this game is played (actually, it might mainly be on my lunch hour, particularly if Plaisier lays down the pwnhammer on Azemoto), but you get my drift. Ilagan is here through the Asian Tour rankings, where he finished second behind new discovery Alexis Toylo, being able to pick up three titles in three different weekends (two over Toylo, the other over Muramatsu) and add on another four finals for another consistent season at that level. Excluding those who only played a really limited number of events, Lourence would finish fourth on averages on the Asian Tour, behind fellow qualifiers Goto, Nebrida and Toylo, that average being 85 maybe being misleading, and he also won the Asian Championship, beating another player who's here in Sandro Sosing in the final, this booked his ticket to the Grand Slam, where he didn't win a game in an awkward group with Littler, Barry and van den Bergh, but did take three wins over those first two players and average in the 90's while doing so, which I think gives more of an indication as to where he's at than his Asian Tour average.

That said, I do think Luke wins this first round game, and should win it comfortably. The projection is showing a winning chance in the high 80's - I think that might be a tad of an overestimate, but we've seen enough over the years from Ilagan to know that if Woodhouse shows up with his A game, or probably even his B game, he should advance pretty comfortably, assuming Lourence doesn't put on a show and stun us all. de Decker is a different kettle of fish. Luke is certainly good enough to ask questions, come to me six months ago and I'd be calling it a coin flip as the two were kind of in the same area in terms of the rankings, but Mike's pulled away enough now to be approaching a 2-1 favourite. It'd be a fun game which could legitimately go either way, but de Decker should be the favourite and should be moving on to the last 32.

Price/Huybrechts/Barry

Gerwyn Price (#20 FRH, 94.58 (#5), 441-371 (54.24%, #29))

Kim Huybrechts (#46 FRH, 89.33 (#52), 309-327 (48.58%, #74))

Keane Barry (#54 FRH, 88.53 (#60), 363-370 (49.52%, #67))

Has it been a good season for Gerwyn? He'd probably think not, given results have been a lot more hit than miss, especially on the ranked circuit (he did pick up a couple of World Series events), but statistically he's still right up there - probably not quite at the Littler and Humphries level, but definitely in that chasing pack that's just behind them. So in terms of results, after that shocking result against Dolan least year, it's been a little bit of bad luck, hitting an in form Schindler first up at the UK Open, a similarly good Ross Smith at Blackpool, the resurgent Wade at the Grand Prix, but things would tail off after that, first round defeats to Gurney and Tricole at the two majors he did play, having not made the Slam at all. Not exactly running into bad players early, but would have liked more late. A six year streak of having won a Euro Tour looked like it would continue with two semis and a final to start the season, but would only make the one final session after that, have a string of second round defeats, and he made just the two semi finals on the floor all year, losing to van Gerwen in his one final. It's hard to say quite what's going on, it's half as if he's not that bothered about the game, but at the same time the numbers don't lie and he still does appear perfectly capable of hanging with anyone in the world and winning major titles. Maybe having less expectations will help him - he's certainly in the easiest quarter, but what will he actually do?

It's been a weird season for Kim as well. In 2023 it was looking like he was turning the corner back towards staying the top 32, but this season has been wildly different, clearly still being good enough to hang around in the top 64, but the higher tier where he'd be seeded here looks further away than ever. Outside of the unranked World Cup (which he won't be at next year thanks to the explosion of Mike de Decker), he's done little, having crept into the seeds for the last worlds he crashed out to Richard Veenstra without winning a leg, in what could be an omen he lost his opening UK Open game to his opponent here in Keane Barry, and only just got into the Minehead field in the last quarter, where he did get an impressive victory over Wessel Nijman before losing in the second round to Scott Williams. That sounds moderately standard, but the European Tour was the weirdest, not qualifying for a single event, but getting a late replacement call up to the final event and making a run to the final, where a win (which he obviously didn't get against Luke Humphries) would have got him into the Euros. That run, while he wasn't playing awful players, didn't see him come up against a single seeded player until the final, as well as getting a first round bye and a match against a domestic qualifier, so while you can only beat who's in front of you, it's not as big an achievement as it seems. Kim didn't get beyond the last sixteen of a single floor event, so it's kind of miraculous that he's even here.

Keane on the other hand has needed to rely on the Development Tour as a backup to qualify here, which to be fair is not exactly his fault. There's a post a bit ago where I looked at who had the toughest floor draws and of those that were playing the majority of events, Keane was having by far the hardest time, so that he was unable to qualify for Minehead was not a surprise in the circumstances. He did get three quarter final runs, which isn't bad at all (and three more than Kim had), and elsewhere he's generally been alright - the UK Open saw him come through a Riley's qualifier, the aforementioned game with Kim and then Ryan Meikle to get to the last sixteen where he fell to Rob Cross, he got through the qualifier for the Slam and got a win over Lourence Ilagan before coming out second best in a winner takes all tie against van den Bergh, and he did the same in the World Series finals but ran into an inspired Kevin Doets. As stated, the Development Tour was his friend, Keane taking two of the first three titles and adding a third later on, finishing third in the rankings which with Nijman qualifying by right was enough to get him here.

First round is a tight one to call - I think Kim is favoured, but it's the correct side of 2-1 from Keane's perspective (but safely over 60% for Huybrechts), he's got an experience advantage but Barry does have the head to head in important games advantage, and additionally has two other lower profile wins in my database, one each in 2022 and 2023, so maybe in context it's a bit closer to 60/40? Price should be comfortable enough with either opponent, he's projecting just shy of 80% in the sample against Huybrechts (and Barry would be a bit further back again), but maybe with Gerwyn not having been getting results, it may be a bit closer in reality, it is after all three years ago since they had their chippy third round match which went to a deciding leg. We shall see.

Wade/Wattimena/Bellmont

James Wade (#8 FRH, 92.29 (#21), 600-527 (53.24%, #35))

Jermaine Wattimena (#31 FRH, 92.37 (#19), 552-471 (53.96%, #32))

Stefan Bellmont (#98 FRH, 85.88 (#80), 186-230 (44.71%, #89))

It's been an extremely good year for James - playing arguably the best stuff he's done for maybe a decade, probably around the time when he was making world semi finals and winning major tournaments on a regular basis. With how the game's moved on, you could make the argument this is the best Wade we've seen ever, not sure I'd quite go that far, but it's been pretty solid, at least in terms of pure numbers. In terms of results, maybe he'd have liked to do a bit more, he did reach the semi final of the World Matchplay as well as the quarters at Leicester, but aside from that it has been a bit of a dry year, especially on the floor events, where he only made the final day on the European Tour once, and in the Pro Tour he had just the one semi final. I think a lot of that is variance, he has typically only been eliminated by players who are also playing real good stuff, like on TV where he's been knocked out by Littler, Humphries, de Decker (losing every set 3-2 in the tournament Mike binked), Menzies in a deciding leg, Wattimena (hello) in a deciding leg, probably the only one he would want back is Minehead just recently where he went out early to Stephen Burton. That he is the number 16 seed does limit his upside here, and the opening game draw hasn't been particularly kind, but trending in the right direction looks like it could continue.

Another player who's been playing extremely well is Jermaine - we first saw sights of this towards the back end of last year, and he's another one who's playing as well as he has done, at least for 4-5 years looking back to when he was in the top 32 and pushing towards the top 16, and again, maybe ever. The highlight was clearly his run to the final of the European Championship - as mentioned he has maybe the critical win over Wade, but did also defeat Luke Humphries, but seemingly ran out of steam after a deciding leg semi against Danny Noppert and couldn't show his best in the final against Ritchie Edhouse. TV runs weren't isolated to that event, a quarters at the Grand Slam (losing to Littler) probably maximised his earnings and he did also pick up a couple of wins at the PC Finals, including one over Josh Rock before running into an inspired Dirk van Duijvenbode. He made three European Tour quarter finals, but the Pro Tour was a bit of a disappointment, he's still yet to win a title in the PDC and had far too many tournaments where he would reach the board final and then lose out. I think if he continues to play as he is, that duck gets broken in 2025, and there is the scope to make a bit of a run this year, and whose to say he can't repeat the TV win he has over Luke on the biggest stage of them all?

This is a nice breakthrough for Stefan, who makes the first appearance of a Swiss player at the PDC worlds, and his first worlds appearance of any description. He has made it here through the very strong west of Europe qualifier, beating WDF worlds favourite Jimmy van Schie in the final, and also eliminating card holders Berry van Peer and Jurjen van der Velde, as well as Moreno Blom who is playing in the WDF worlds as I speak. It has also been an excellent year in terms of gaining experience - rule changes mean he's been limited in terms of European Tour possibilities (and he'll be kicking himself at missing the first Swiss event), but an early Challenge Tour win set him up extremely nicely for getting into the main tour. Here he played over 20 events - there were quite a lot of first round exits, so maybe getting onto the tour might be a step too far right now (or would have been in 2024 at least), but he did have some flashes with a couple of quarter final wins, and he has picked up victories over Menzies, Cross and Michael Smith, so names won't necessarily put him in an uncomfortable spot. An overall finish of twelfth on the Challenge Tour is solid, and should see him creep into the UK Open assuming they still admit eight Challenge Tour players, and it will be good if he can continue with what's been a solid year of development.

This is a real tough draw for Stefan. Wattimena is probably in the top quarter of players from the Pro Tour list you don't want to face, and I can't realistically see him winning even one time in five, I think he may only be as high as having 15% chances. Bellmont isn't bad for sure, this is just a stinker of a draw. If we do get the match up of JW's, I think it is probably too close to call. Year long, maybe Wade shades it in the stats 55/45 or there abouts, but with Jermaine coming into form, I think this is going to be a pure coin flip. Too close to call. Will Jermaine having the TV win this year make the difference?

Humphries/Tricole/Comito

Luke Humphries (#1 FRH, 95.97 2024 scoring (#3 in tournament), 819-546 legs W/L (60.00%, #2 in tournament))

Thibault Tricole (#62 FRH, 87.59 (#70), 350-360 (49.30%, #71))

Joe Comito (#163 FRH, 83.96 (#92), 126-91 (58.06%, #5))

This ought to be one of the least controversial sections to call. Luke's had an extremely solid season in terms of performance, remaining one of the three or four players who can legitimately stake a claim to being the best player in the world, but maybe he could have done a bit more in terms of majors - he did claim a first Matchplay title and retain the Players Championship, but missed out in two further finals to players he really should be beating (Dimitri at the UK Open, de Decker at the Grand Prix), and the results in the run up to the worlds might have been of some concern (losing in the Euros quarters to Wattimena, then crashing out of a relatively trivial group in the Grand Slam) were it not for a statement win over Littler at Minehead recently. It's a tricky section of the draw - van Barneveld, Wade and then Bunting if seedings go to plan is not the easiest way to win a quarter by any stretch of the imagination, and you'd then have the mouthwatering prospect of a repeat of last year's final at the semi final stage, but Humphries clearly is that good at this point in time that he can run the table and retain his title. Whether he does is another question.

Thibault is a known extremely solid player, best known to most from his 2022 WDF final appearance where he narrowly lost to Neil Duff, having come through games in deciding sets to Cameron Menzies and Andy Baetens (both of which look much better now than they did at the time to get there), as well as quarter final run in the World Cup last year with Jacques Labre, getting past Northern Ireland in the group stages then South Africa in the first qualifying round. A new tour card holder in 2024, this is not Tricole's first appearance at the event, he won through the notoriously difficult West Europe qualifier to play last year, coming through a tight tussle with Mario Vandenbogaerde before being easily defeated by Rob Cross. His first year on tour has been fine, he's made it here, generally winning more often than not in the opening round of Pro Tour events and having a peak of a semi final in August, only being beaten by the odd leg in 13 against Menzies, but I'm sure he would like to have made a better effort on the European Tour, where he got to just the one event and was comfortably beaten by Andrew Gilding.

Joe is making his debut here, which surprises me as I'm sure he's played before, but it is a first appearance, after making a dramatic late run to finish top of the DPA rankings. Being well behind coming into the final event of the penultimate weekend, he binked that and then in the last weekend made the final of every event, winning two of them, finishing solidly ahead of Brandon Weening to claim the title. Joe's results in the database have come almost exclusively from the DPA tour, but we have seen him on big stages before - he got destroyed by Humphries in the World Series this year where he barely averaged 70, averaging almost as badly the year before in a whitewash defeat to Damon Heta, and back in 2022 he was again down in the seventies not winning a leg against Michael Smith. I'm not sure if he's just a good floor player, or just ran hotter than the sun in one weekend. We'll find out soon enough.

Thibault should get through We've got enough data on Joe to be confident in projections and Tricole seems a prohibitive favourite - that many books have him at around the 1/5 mark does not seem out of the ordinary in the slightest, that's where the projections say Tricole should be, if not even shorter. Then in the next round, Luke should be an even shorter favourite, the quick look on year long stats doesn't even give the Frenchman a 7% chance. God knows what it would be against Comito. bet365 are currently showing a line of "stage of elimination" for Humphries at 5/1. You may need to be quick, but that could represent immediate, easy value just by taking a long odds on bet on the world champion.

One quick WDF bet

0.1u Prior evs vs Walters - did Scott do anything at all in the first round to make him shaded the favourite? A 67 average with legs won in six visits once, seven visits twice, eight visits twice and nine visits once? Against a seeded player? Either something is badly wrong with Cliff that I'm not aware of, or this is a solid misprice.

I doubt I get much more in before round three and I've seen everybody. I'll have a poke at the remaining round two games, but don't expect anything there. I'm going to start on PDC worlds write ups soon, so just expect things to be mentioned post script if anything WDF does turn up.

WDF worlds - what the heck?

So it's a couple of days (I think?) until Lakeside, let's blast through each section of six players and try to work out who'll come through to the quarters. Numbers indicate leg count in (year long) database and scoring from there.

Potrter (96, 79.76) v Schweyen (17, 85.94) or Cassar (24, 84.75), Turner (44, 81.53) v Raman (17, 86.44) or Groeneveld (24, 82.68) - Porter is the one seed how? Obviously there's a stack of Australasian based events that he's been able to win cheaply, although he's clearly not had to play that well to win any of them. Schweyen is one we've seen on the Euro Tour, while Cassar actually has a win over Porter in what limited data we have on him. On the other side, Turner has pretty much all his data from the last worlds and seems to be accumulating minor finishes, while Raman is someone we know and Groeneveld is mainly known for a good World Masters run. There's a few decent shouts but I don't think either seed wins their opener. Let's go Raman who's had the higher peak of anyone here.

Pratnemer (20, 81.12) v Wilkinson (28, 79.98) or Taylor (156, 88.06), Junghans (86, 79.15) v Beeton (59, 83.28) or Kirk (21, 83.03) - Benjamin's a name we know from a PDC worlds where he gave Justin Pipe a good game, but has done his best work of late in events that aren't on Dart Connect, so hard to say where he is at. Wilkinson's been around for a while now and perhaps is unlucky not to be seeded here, while Taylor we have a lot of data on from the CDC circuit. Thomas had an OK run last year and is fairly well known, but didn't even make the Euro Tour event in Switzerland which was a shocker, while Beeton had a good run in Ireland recently and has been seen on the Dev Tour for a while now, while Kirk isn't an unfamiliar name but I know less about him. Another one where I think the seeds could be in trouble, although both I think have better chances than in the first section, but will still go Taylor just based on the raw numbers.

Weening (300, 82.78) v Brooks (25, 71.60) or Matsuda (none), Torbjornsson (18, 83.76) v Barilli (18, 72.33) or McGuirk (77, 87.65) - Brandon has got a lot of information in my database from extensive play on the DPA circuit, and looks to be pretty solid, Brooks meanwhile is the opposite and Matsuda is even less known of late with all his qualifying points coming from 2023, so I'm thinking Weening ought to be somewhat OK. Edwin only has data in my database from the last worlds with, again, the majority of work done in 2023 or in non-DC events, although may benefit from the general progression in the Swedish game of late. Barilli has been around for years but of late has mostly been an accumulator, while McGuirk we know from solid Challenge Tour play (and Pro Tour call ups) and looks like pick of these. McGuirk to advance.

Machin (62, 79.65) v Gillet (35, 75.44) or Smith (none), Prior (19, 80.68) v Walters (7, 69.52) or Brown (none) - Peter's been around for a bit, probably best known for a bink of the old World Trophy which got him in the Slam, but we've not heard a huge amount since and again is probably seeded just based on location. Mike's also been around for a bit but I can't recall the last time he did much of note, while Ky is a previous PDC worlds competitor but has dropped off the radar again. Cliff got a good win at the Welsh Classic but I don't really know too much about him, Scott is a name I'm aware of but drawing blanks, while Craig I've never even heard of. Tough to call who'll take this section as there's no real standout name, Peter probably has the most big stage experience but Prior I think might be playing the best right now, although there's not much in it.

van Schie (300, 90.31) v Kovacs (40, 80.78) or Lejon (none), Hogarth (21, 85.36) v Edgar (19, 83.39) or Bottenberg (95, 83.34) - Jimmy's the favourite and for good reason, unfortunate not to be at Ally Pally, a top 10 Challenge Tour finish, him picking up a card in January seems more likely than not. Patrik has been round for some time, we've seen him in Euro Tours and World Cups and seems competent, while Lejon is a complete unknown, although at least he's looking like he's been doing his best work this year rather than last, albeit in non-tablet events. Ryan has been around for come time as well, has a Dutch Open final on his resume although this year feels moderately quiet. We all know Matt and what he's done, while Jarno of course does have the Dutch Open bink and a few lines of data from PDC secondary tours, but not much else on the WDF circuit. van Schie seems like the easiest pick to move on to date.

Leung (25, 79.32) v Blom (49, 82.73) or Lim (73, 82.21), Stone (53, 87.27) v Nilsson (113, 83.34) or Jones (34, 78.05) - Kai is a former card holder and Ally Pally participant who we know fairly well, but another one whose best counting result was in 2023. Blom is moderately experienced at this stage but still young enough to have played Dev Tour this year, and did get a win on the Euro Tour. Paul is Paul, obviously. Gary might be playing the best in terms of numbers in his life, maybe better than when he was in the PDC, but has never really done a great amount at this level. Dennis has decent course and distance with a semi final last year (and is the only semi finalist to return, with the rest getting onto the PDC circuit) and will always be a threat, while Howard is the one I clearly know least about, getting the majority of his ranking points from one event last February. This one seems wide open, Gary may be putting up the best numbers but I don't buy him being able to get through and will gamble on Blom to make a big step up, although Nilsson repeating a run from last year wouldn't be ridiculous.

Duff (74, 84.62) v Johnson (46, 78.16) or Colley (120, 86.87), Copeland (31, 83.79) v Turner (17, 72.12) or Springer (91, 85.39) - Looks a fairly strong section. Neil's obviously got a previous bink, but it kind of feels like his 2024 is not as strong as previous years have been. Darren has all the experience in the world and can probably still bang if needed but his best days are probably behind him, while Reece is still developing and with his recent World Open win, he might have taken the step he might have been waiting for at senior level. I can't work out why Barry is seeded, unless he's just had a ton of points drop off he's surely too far down in the rankings but the numbers seem OK, while Aaron feels like a make up the numbers sort of player, with Jeff has some good data from the CDC and doesn't look too bad. I'm going to go with Colley to build on his recent big win and make further progression, although I think a case for anyone outside of Johnson/Turner can be reasonably made.

Maendl-Lawrance (63, 79.74) v Gijbels (12, 76.46) or Luke (6, 62.17), Brandon (41, 87.50) v Kadar (8, 78.67) or Schnier (9, 89.37) - Liam I think is best known from his European Tour adventures, which he's not been able to really repeat this year and similarly most of his best WDF results were from 2023 so has maybe taken a step back. Sybren had a bit of a Dutch Open run but we know limited things about him from that, while Luke is just a name I know but don't really know his name. Jason went alright in the World Masters and is someone we've seen on occasions in the CDC, Laszlo has been here a couple of times but has never really threatened to go very deep in a big event, while Hannes is also pretty experienced having played in a PDC worlds over fifteen years ago now. Hard to call but I'll take Brandon to come through, I think this is the only section where it's just going to come down to the seeds. 

So in terms of outright prices, I've got Raman at 33/1 (just using 365 for consistency), Taylor 14/1, McGuirk 9/1, Prior 50/1, van Schie 7/2, Blom 100/1, Colley 66/1 and Brandon 18/1. Make of that what you will.

PC finals done, now on to the worlds

Didn't envisage too much of value appearing in rounds 3 onwards, so we finish the tournament as the year's gone, on a bit of a damp squib. Big result for Humphries to lay down the final marker, and good to see Dirk and Smith getting deep runs. Final FRH rankings before the worlds:

1 Luke Humphries

2 Luke Littler

3 Michael van Gerwen

4 Rob Cross

5 Dave Chisnall

6 Stephen Bunting

7 Damon Heta

8 James Wade

9 Gary Anderson

10 Michael Smith

11 Jonny Clayton

12 Danny Noppert

13 Ross Smith (UP 4)

14 Mike de Decker

15 Chris Dobey (DOWN 2)

16 Josh Rock (DOWN 1)

17 Dimitri van den Bergh (DOWN 1)

18 Ryan Searle

19 Peter Wright

20 Gerwyn Price

Not a huge amount of movement, likely directly correlated to needing to reach the quarters to do anything of note, that and the top two getting all the cake again. Dirk moved back up into the top 30 at least.

Worlds draw is done. Sky are obviously praying to god that Meikle loses first round, but I can see this being moderately chalky, outside of Nijman getting a fantastic draw. I've done a bunch of chat about it here if you want to go and have a listen, it's not great quality audio I know but I sorted by price when getting a headset. As I think I previously stated, I'm not going to go into quite the level of detail that I've been to in previous years, nor am I going to give outright tips, but I'll start getting things up once I can see the schedule and know where I need to prioritise on the draw (other than Humphries obv). But first, there's another world championship before that, and it's mostly a case of working out who the fuck is in it and why Gary Stone is the second favourite. More on that soon.

PC Finals round 2

Bit of a mixed day. Gilding and Scott got the job done. Clemens and Wright didn't show up (although, in the latter case it wouldn't have mattered, Gabriel however should probably have been 3-0 up), Sedlacek and Woodhouse were in good positions but couldn't bring it home, and the less said about Dom Taylor the better. On to round two, this is going to be very rushed:

0.1u Hempel 7/4 v van Duijvenbode, Dirk's getting better but that's pretty much factored into the sample now and that gives Florian a touch more than a 40% chance, which with the price I think is worth the shot.

0.1u Huybrechts evs v Williams, I've got this a bit more than 55/45 in Kim's favour and he's looking a bit more confident in the last couple of months so evens looks alright.

0.1u Zonneveld 7/4 v Aspinall, exactly the same analysis as Hempel.

0.1u Meikle 7/4 v Schindler, they're not actually that far apart in terms of raw scoring, although Ryan is wildly more inconsistent. After that sort of win though, I don't think it's unfair to say that he's got better than a 40% shot.

PC finals round one

Before I get into things, let me expand on something I alluded to in the previous post - this is going to be the last tournament that I'm going to offer explicit tips for, unless I see any outstanding value in the WDF worlds. There's a few reasons for this - firstly, I feel there are much fewer spots of value, primarily due to the rule changes in what was my bread and butter set of events in the European Tour. While my overall volumes are actually up on last year, oddly seemingly mostly because of the Euro Tour, it does have the general feeling that with so many more games being between known/better players, the chances aren't there. Secondly, I don't really have the time these days to look at all the lines in detail, particularly on days when I need to do it - Thursday nights in particular are especially bad, Saturdays (especially during the football season) are also kind of bad, so I'm always seemingly rushed and maybe not putting enough into things as I should do. Finally, I'm typically betting more on the exchanges, which makes it harder to track what I'm actually doing, oddschecker or the bookie in question is more easily validated, seeing precisely what I got on the exchange which can move second to second is more hearsay. So, while I'll still look at events, and while I'll still be betting personally, I'm not going to say bet this much on this player. I'll just stick to giving my thoughts, and then letting the reader make up their own minds.

That said, let's get into Minehead and the last event before we know how the worlds will be seeded (and, as an aside, with it being rumoured that the worlds will be going to 128 in the near future, let's hope to fuck they don't ruin it by putting all 128 players into round one and giving us a stack of mismatches, eh?), and here's how I'm seeing things. The ranking is just how the players rank in terms of scoring in the dataset (May onwards) I'm using. It's not their seeding, their OOM ranking, their FRH ranking, it is just 1 = highest scoring, 2 = second highest scoring and so on (within the 64 players in the tournament).

So, with that said, here's what I'm going for in terms of bets:

0.1u Gilding 7/10 v Doets

0.1u Woodhouse 6/5 v Edhouse

0.1u Sedlacek 29/20 v Joyce

0.25u Scutt evs v Lukeman

0.1u Wright 7/5 v Gurney

0.1u Clemens 3/1 v Humphries

0.1u Taylor 13/8 v Smith

Was kind of close to a couple of others. Landman probably the closest. Sizings are generally small to account for the shorter races - winning the bull makes a fair difference and would make a fair few of these plays marginal at best.

wannnnnnnnnnnnnnunderdaneiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiighty

Long time readers will know that, with very few exceptions, anything that I advise in terms of betting (please stay tuned for a development on that) is purely match result based. I've done the odd piece on what I try to look for in terms of outright tournament bets (although, as the few bookies that offered some fraction to make the semis are now only offering each way to make the final, that value's probably done) and correct score (wait until you know who's won the bull then don't bet a score that requires your guy to break in the specific final leg). But I've never touched most 180's.

That's mainly because I don't track data that intensively, it's just not a market that I'm interested in - I didn't realise that, until doing some basic research, the general market is actually three way with a "can bet the tie" option, I initially thought that just on brief sightings when I'm scanning through the markets for comedy value that they typical market was two way and that a tie would be regarded as a push. I also think it's too easy a market to manipulate - while anyone that pays the slightest attention knows that, say, Madars Razma goes for T19 a disproportioniate amount of the time, it would be extremely easy for someone who wanted to throw the market to switch at what looks like a perfectly reasonable time for strategic reasons. Start with back to back ton 40's to be on 221 and then start with two trebles on visit three with your opponent in a spot where they can leave a likely checkout? Going down to bull to leave 76/51 and not 81/41 looks extremely reasonable to me, and that's not taking into account of many a time where I see players (notably the Dutch) have a mediocre first visit then go down to 19's for no obvious reason whatsoever.

So what caused me to make this post was when I was looking at the Slam last sixteen around this time last week. I had Edgar's watch along in the background. Now Matt's a pretty knowledgeable guy, and does like his stats. I'm not sure that he's qualified as I am to talk about it, but he's at least done one video where he's done a breakdown in terms of a checkout (I think it may just have been a redo of the Deller 138, but I could be mistaken and it could have been more recent) so I'd say he's probably more comfortable with the numbers than maybe 80-90% of players, and especially pundits just based on that one video. What really surprised me was when he was talking about the Ross Smith against Martin Lukeman game. Now here, he'd produced some stats in terms of how often the two have hit 180's. Everyone that's paying attention knows that Smith is a huge 180 hitter. In terms of Lukeman, I can think of things to describe him - good finisher? Sure. A bit Wadey in terms of taking chances? Yeah, sure, I think I've used that analogy in relation to Smash before. A power scorer, maybe not so much. What Edgar did produce is that Lukeman was hitting a 180 in every 0.18 legs, while Smith was getting it in 0.37 legs - at least on seasonal data. Where he's derived that from, I don't know, but I'll take him at face value. That is twice more likely per leg for Smith. What was disappointing is, and I quote, Edgar saying "there's no value in 180 betting whatsoever" when looking at the prices and it seeing 1/8 on Smith. That might be true, but that's lazy.

To me, my initial thought is probably "he might not be wrong, but being twice as likely to hit a 180 in a leg over a match that is going to run for a minimum of 10 legs, and maybe up to 19, where your chance of hitting a 180 is more than one in three (I mean if you chuck two bad pub players against each other and say first to ten then the 180 race probably ends 0-0 but these players are a tad better than that)? I'm not sure that we can be quite so dismissive and say "lots to one on clearly no value lel". But how do we model this? Now here, unfortunately we do not have the greatest data available - namely because there are instances where a player can hit two 180's in a leg. Clearly, the most obvious situation is where someone gets on a nine, but we've all seen plenty of cases where someone's gone 180-60-180 or hit back to back after a shit first visit. That's fine. What I think we ned to look at is, at least in the pro game, how many visits a player will get where someone can hit a 180.

If we think about this at the most basic level, you can score up to 319 points before you can't score a 180. That's fundamental. Once you're down to 181 required, you're fucked, you're not scoring any more. So at a pro level, you're typically saying you will get at most four visits where you can hit a 180. If you're averaging less than 80 when going for pure scoring, that's not good, sure there will be the odd leg where there is a serious scoring malfunction and you get one or more visits after that, but those are outliers. The point of what I'm saying is that it'll take a lot from the opponent to limit that four to a smaller number - he's either going to have to start on throw and hold in four himself, or hit a nine. I think it's not unreasonable to say your chances of hitting a 180 in a leg are independent of what your opponent is doing. Not ideal, but let's roll with it.

Similarly, to go back to the chances of you hitting two 180's? I think that's also moderately infrequent. You can only score 320 points before you can't hit a 180. If you know you are going to hit a 180, that only leaves 140 points to play with - score that or more, and you're done. Open 140? You're fucked. This isn't something we can go into with any sort of Poisson distribution analysis, as the probabilties will change once we've hit one. Hitting a second 180 in a leg is a lot, lot harder once you've hit a first one, if you're even able to hit a second at all. As such, I think it's also not unreasonable to just model on pure 180s/leg stats and ignore the possibility of hitting two in a leg - again, not ideal, but if we factor in times where we'll hit two and the other guy will hit one (or two for that matter) back, it gets drawn back a tad. We just need to be aware that whoever's projecting to hit more 180's per leg may be slightly underestimated in terms of how much of a favourite they are.

So let's crunch some numbers. Edgar's saying Smith hits one every 0.37 legs, Lukeman every 0.18 legs. If we're ignoring the small possibilities where someone hits two, we basically have four outcomes:

- both players hit one

- neither player hits one

- one player hits one and the other doesn't (each way)

So in the case of Smith against Lukeman, this says that Ross will gain a 180 point (for want of a better term) 30.3% of the time, and Martin will gain one 11.3% of the time in any given leg. All we need to do is to expand this out across the match.

What does this give us? Well if either player won 10-0, Smith would get the most 180s 77% of the time. Heck, if it went the distance Smith only gets up to 88% of the time, which is break even for the price that Edgar was quoting. Lukeman was only at 11% on a 10 leg match, and down to 6% on a 10-9. As it turned out? We'd have been "don't bet either lel", Lukeman would sneak home 6-5, and Edgar would technically have been right. Thanks for wasting my time Matt!

That was the tournament that was

Crikey, how unpredictable was that? Sure, Littler winning isn't a big shock, but Lukeman into the final, Mansell into the semis, that was a bit nuts. It's done the following to the FRH rankings (I have incorporated first round PC Finals money already but the top 40 is unaffected):

1 Luke Humphries

2 Luke Littler (UP 3)

3 Michael van Gerwen (DOWN 1)

4 Rob Cross (DOWN 1)

5 Dave Chisnall (DOWN 1)

6 Stephen Bunting (UP 1)

7 Damon Heta (UP 1)

8 James Wade (UP 2)

9 Gary Anderson (UP 11)

10 Michael Smith (DOWN 5)

11 Jonny Clayton (DOWN 2)

12 Danny Noppert

13 Chris Dobey (DOWN 2)

14 Mike de Decker (UP 4)

15 Josh Rock (UP 4)

16 Dimitri van den Bergh (DOWN 1)

17 Ross Smith

18 Ryan Searle (DOWN 4)

19 Gerwyn Price (DOWN 6)

20 Peter Wright (DOWN 4)

Following his final, Lukeman is now just on the brink of the top 32, while Mansell has just crept into the top 40. It is weird to see Price and Wright that low, but they've at least got chances to rectify things, and have about a 10k gap to Schindler below them. van Veen and Wattimena solidify top 30 positions, while Menzies climbs a couple of spots up to 38. But obviously the big one is Littler - although he is over 600k behind Humphries, such is the dominance that Luke has had in the past year and a bit.

There's a piece I want to do on 180 betting at some point this week, and I'll need to get thoughts for the PC Finals out as well, so stay tuned. Weird to think that this time next week, we'll have the worlds draw, but we will!

Quarters

Alright,. That tip we had today went how we thought it might have done, but while we believe there's safety in numbers, we at least limited our liabilities. Let's blast through these as I don't have much time:

Menzies/Mansell - Market saying 2-1. It's kind of uncharted territory for both which makes it a bit weird, but I'm seeing Cammy as up above 70%. Not a huge amount. He's got a bit more in the longer numbers than the market suggests, but not enough to bet and we'll give Mickey enough credit here and say avoid the game.

Lukeman/Cross - This projects a tad more one sided, indicating Rob should come through 75% of the time. The market has it a tad tighter, again we'll give credit to Martin for how he's playing, and I'm not going to make an official play, but as has been the case for years, they may be sleeping on just how good Rob is.

Anderson/van Veen - Someone might want to fact check me on this, but I think this must be by far the longest game that Gian's been involved in ever? That might make a difference. Whether Gary can still ping for that long a game is also something that can make a difference. To go from 8-2 to 8-6 like he did today is alright if you only need to get to 10 and can fall over the line, but if you carry on and end up down 11-13 and still need five more legs, then we're talking. I've got close to 80/20. That feels excessive, but 0.25u Anderson 4/6 seems extremely automatic.

Wattimena/Littler - Christ, both these players got away with one tonight. Difference is how they played. Luke - great. Jermaine - not so much, This again looks very strong for one player, obviously Luke, split the difference between 75% and 80%. Market is saying 1/5 - that's excessive, but not unsurprising, and I don't think there is enough value the other way to stab at Wattimena in this one.

Will not be back for the semis as I am away this weekend. 

More last sixteen

So one up one down yesterday, what about today? First up, it seems like the Wattimena value train has well and truly left the station, being solidly odds on against van den Bergh at 4/6. Frankly I think this could be even shorter, most places do see it that way, while I've got him right in the middle of 60% and 65%. Nothing in the group stage makes me think Dimitri is outplaying overall form, if anything the differential between the play is favouring Jermaine.

van Veen against Joyce is next, and here they favour Gian more than they favour Jermaine. I'm not sure about that. Not sure at all. Yes, van Veen's numbers have been spectacular, while Ryan's simply haven't been, and if they continue to play like this rather than historic numbers, the Dutchman should have few problems. Issue is that, while Gian is favoured, I'm only seeing it as maybe 5%, with Ryan projecting solidly over 45%. Their stats really aren't all that different at all. Regardless of how phenomenal Gian has played, we can't ignore that, but we will temper the bet sizing - 0.1u Joyce 13/8

Littler then plays in form de Decker. Here I think Mike is undervalued - but not by a great deal. The odds are showing Luke as having a three in four shot, while I've got Mike as a fraction over 30%. Here it's another one where the difference in tournament performance is notable, but at the same time, maybe de Decker is outperforming his longer term stats based on confidence. I won't go with the play, but I think this will be tighter than the market suggests and wouldn't be putting Littler in any accumulators.

Finally we have Ando and Bunting. This is putting two top six players against each other, at least in terms of how I'd rank everyone right now, but Gary looks better, probably better enough that he should only lose one time out of three. This is enough that the lines of around 8/13 are close to being worth considering, neither's really shown a great advantage over the other in the group stages, I've just got a feeling the game plays out slightly tighter than the projection, which is enough to go from ultra marginal into a no bet situation.

I'll try and blast out quarter final numbers tomorrow morning.

Grand Slam

You may have noted that I didn't put anything up in terms of the group stages. That's for a few reasons - one, I didn't have the time. Two, the ultra short races mean there is a fair bit more variance than more or less any televised event, so I think I'd need a bit more edge than normal to cover still hopefully being neutral EV if our pick didn't win the darts. Third, there's too many matches that are not worth looking at, either because they are dead rubbers or feature players we don't have reliable data on, then finally there's also a fair number of games where it's just something like Cross against Wright and we're seeing two very well known players, limiting the upside. So sorry about that, looking through the results I'm thinking it may be for the best, we might have picked up some money on Mansell and Wattimena but then given it back in more places. But we can at least look at the last sixteen. Noppert against Mansell isn't of interest. While Mansell has been solid and this has been a very good tournament for him, Danny is extremely strong and I've got him taking enough that Mickey can't even be rated to win one in four. At 3/1 and with the vig it's a clear no bet. Wade against Menzies I've got as too close to call. That might offer a tiny shred of value on the Ladbrokes price of 6/5 on Menzies, but I can't recommend it - James has an extreme amount of experience and a good track record in these sorts of extended leg play formats, so I think it's fair to give him a bit extra, and even 1% or 2% more drags us out of real betting opportunities. Where we are going though is 365, and 0.25u Smith 4/6 against Lukeman. Martin's looked very good, true, and Ross has not looked his best, but we trust in the deeper numbers which are calling this 70/30 in Ross's favour and not the 60/40 which the line indicates, that's more than enough to fire. Another 70/30 which I'm seeing which the market isn't seeing that way is Cross against Edhouse, yes there is reason to think that Ritchie is playing a fair bit better than historical numbers suggest, if down to confidence and nothing else, but this is a big enough number to go with, 0.25u Cross 8/11 in multiple places.

The luck of the draw

So, we come into the last two Pro Tour events. Everyone is scrambling for Minehead and, ultimately, the worlds. But here's the thing - you show up at a leisure centre in one of the less salubrious parts of the world, and you want to play darts. You're a random card holder. You could get Callum Goffin. You could get Luke Humphries. You just don't know. Over the course of the year, how much does the draw matter?

Well let's try to put some numbers to the bullshit. I've taken every single first round match on the Pro Tour so far, taken everybody in my database's scoring for the whole calendar year, looked at their first round opponent, merged one on to the other, and got an average. Who's had the easiest draws? Who's had the most difficult draws? I'll tell you.

Now obviously, players who are seeded will be weighted towards the "easy" end. That is obvious. You will expect to see big names in the lower part of the list. I only state this as I'm finding that some people are becoming thicker and thicker and can't draw obvious conclusions. So let's go through. Two caveats - for your opposing player's scoring average, which is the metric I'm going to use, I'm using the entirety of the data in my set from the day after the worlds ends. Just for more data. I'm also not going to list players who've played less than a quarter of the events so far, just so someone who's only played one or two events doesn't become a comical outlier. I'm going to list everyone now in ascending order of difficulty. Let's go.

89.2-89.4 - Cullen

89.4-89.6 - Joyce, Humphries

89.6-89.8 - Chisnall, R Smith, Bunting, Littler

89.8-90.0 - Pietreczko, Anderson, Clemens, M Smith, Cross, Searle, Clayton, Rock

90.0-90.2 - Heta, Dolan, van Barneveld, Burnett, Gilding, Goffin, van Veen, Wooshouse, Hughes

90.2-90.4 - Wright, van Gerwen, Hunt, de Decker, Landman, Campbell, Wade, Scutt, Doets, Wattimena, Edhouse, Dobey, Burton, Schindler, Killington, Gurney, Bellmont, Price

90.4-90.6 - Labre, White, Sparidaans, O'Connor, van den Bergh, Meikle, Vandenbogaerde, Lukeman, Henderson, de Sousa, Lennon, Soutar, van Duijvenbode

90.6-90.8 - Razma, Gotthardt, Noppert, Aspinall, Hood, Suljovic, de Zwaan, Hempel

90.8-91.0 - Rydz, Griffin, Menzies, Kenny, S Williams, Rupprecht, Reus, Ratajski, Sedlacek, Pilgrim, Claydon

91.0-91.2 - Szaganski, Hurrell, L Evans, Rodriguez, Bates, Zonneveld, Richardson, Geeraets, Rafferty, Brown, Kuivenhoven, Krcmar

91.2-91.4 - Borland, Beaton, Veenstra, Knops, Dennant, Gawlas, Wolters, Nentjes, Perez, van Trijp, Atkins, Lukasiak, Roelofs, van Peer, van der Wal, Baetens

91.4-91.6 - Nijman, Wenig, K Huybrechts, Plaisier, R Huybrechts, Crabtree, Usher, Taylor, R Evans, Tricole, Jansen, Monk, King, van der Voort, Grundy

91.6-91.8 - Klose, van Schie, Bennett, Slevin, Turetta, Mansell, Boulton, Krohne, Payne, Beveridge, Hall

And your top fuckees in terms of draws:

91.83 - Jurjen van der Velde

91.85 - Robert Owen

91.86 - Jeffrey de Graaf

91.88 - Lee Cocks, Simon Whitlock

91.91 - Adam Warner

91.95 - Martijn Dragt

92.05 - Jules van Dongen, Danny Lauby

92.18 - Christian Kist

92.19 - Jim Williams

92.24 - Rene Eidams

92.39 - Keane Barry

92.45 - Haupai Puha

92.57 - Aden Kirk

For the record, Kirk's 12 events saw him face Aspinall, Hall, Rock (twice), Heta, Kuivenhoven, Menzies, Wattimena, Burnett, King, Owen and Lennon. I've seen easier runs. Of those that have played basically every event, the worst in terms of draws has been Keane Barry, who's run into the following:

Dobey, Rock, Littler, Hall, van den Bergh, R Smith, Littler (again), Gurney, Dolan, Lennon, Sedlacek, Bunting, Crabtree, O'Connor, Bunting (again), Turetta, Goffin, Gotthardt, van Veen, Clayton, Roelofs, Cross, Menzies, King, Kenny, Beaton, Szaganski and Cocks. Brutal.

2024 Second/Third Division Darts results/tables page

Division 2:

Dave Chisnall 13.42

Gary Anderson 10.48

Joe Cullen 9.60

Damon Heta 9.55

Danny Noppert 9.51

Jonny Clayton 9.27

Ross Smith 8.02

Stephen Bunting 7.15

Chris Dobey 7.01

Kevin Doets 5.89

Division 3:

Martin Schindler 10.94

Josh Rock 9.51

Rowby John Rodriguez 9.50

Berry van Peer 9.48

Dimitri van den Bergh 9.40

Callan Rydz 9.23

Gian van Veen 8.69

Ricardo Pietreczko 8.25

Dylan Slevin 7.83

Keane Barry 7.17

PC1: No games

PC2: Kevin Doets 6-3 Ross Smith (2), Josh Rock 6-3 Keane Barry (3), Berry van Peer 6-5 Ricardo Pietreczko (3), Gian van Veen 6-3 Berry van Peer (3)

PC3: Callan Rydz 6-4 Josh Rock (3)

PC4: Damon Heta 8-4 Chris Dobey (2), Ricardo Pietreczko 6-2 Dylan Slevin (3), Berry van Peer 6-4 Josh Rock (3)

PC5: Stephen Bunting 6-0 Kevin Doets (2), Stephen Bunting 6-2 Danny Noppert (2), Stephen Bunting 7-5 Ross Smith (2), Ross Smith 6-3 Chris Dobey (2), Dimitri van den Bergh 6-4 Keane Barry (3), Ricardo Pietreczko 6-3 Dylan Slevin (3), Berry van Peer 6-5 Josh Rock (3)

PC6: Berry van Peer 6-2 Gian van Veen (3)

PC7: Ross Smith 6-5 Stephen Bunting (2), Chris Dobey 7-3 Ross Smith (2)

PC8: Chris Dobey 6-5 Stephen Bunting (2), Kevin Doets 6-5 Damon Heta (2), Danny Noppert 6-3 Kevin Doets (2), Gian van Veen 6-3 Josh Rock (3), Martin Schindler 6-2 Callan Rydz (3)

PC9: Kevin Doets 6-5 Gary Anderson (2)

PC10: No games

PC11: No games

PC12: Josh Rock 6-0 Dylan Slevin (3), Dimitri van den Bergh 6-3 Martin Schindler (3)

PC13: Ross Smith 6-4 Jonny Clayton (2), Ross Smith 6-5 Kevin Doets (2)

PC14: No games

PC15: Callan Rydz 6-5 Dimitri van den Bergh (3), Dylan Slevin 6-3 Martin Schindler (3)

PC16: No games

PC17: Joe Cullen 6-1 Gary Anderson (2)

PC18: Damon Heta 6-1 Danny Noppert (2)

PC19: Gian van Veen 6-4 Keane Barry (3)

PC20: Stephen Bunting 6-3 Chris Dobey (2)

PC21: Dave Chisnall 6-2 Stephen Bunting (2), Dave Chisnall 6-1 Jonny Clayton (2), Damon Heta 6-2 Kevin Doets (2)

PC22: Gary Anderson 6-3 Jonny Clayton (2), Berry van Peer 6-5 Dimitri van den Bergh (3)

PC23: Jonny Clayton 6-2 Gary Anderson (2), Dave Chisnall 8-4 Chris Dobey (2), Chris Dobey 6-5 Jonny Clayton (2)

PC24: Stephen Bunting 6-3 Danny Noppert (2), Dimitri van den Bergh 6-4 Rowby John Rodrigurz (3)

PC25: Gary Anderson 6-2 Joe Cullen (2), Chris Dobey 8-3 Stephen Bunting (2)

PC26: Danny Noppert 6-5 Damon Heta (2), Ricardo Pietreczko 6-3 Berry van Peer (3), Rowby John Rodriguez 6-0 Ricardo Pietreczko (3)

PC27: No games

PC28: Jonny Clayton 6-5 Dave Chisnall (2)

PC29:

PC30:

ET1: Danny Noppert 6-5 Chris Dobey (2)

ET2: Joe Cullen 6-3 Jonny Clayton (2)

ET3: No games

ET4: Gary Anderson 8-6 Ross Smith (2), Jonny Clayton 6-5 Chris Dobey (2), Ross Smith 6-5 Damon Heta (2), Martin Schindler 6-2 Gian van Veen (3)

ET5: Joe Cullen 7-5 Stephen Bunting (2), Joe Cullen 6-3 Dave Chisnall (2), Jonny Clayton 6-1 Chris Dobey (2), Martin Schindler 6-0 Ricardo Pietreczko (3), Josh Rock 6-5 Dimitri van den Bergh (3)

ET6: No games

ET7: Jonny Clayton 6-3 Dave Chisnall (2), Josh Rock 7-3 Martin Schindler (3), Martin Schindler 6-4 Dimitri van den Bergh (3)

ET8: Damon Heta 6-5 Stephen Bunting (2), Dave Chisnall 6-4 Kevin Doets (2), Dave Chisnall 7-1 Damon Heta (2), Dave Chisnall 8-6 Ross Smith (2), Damon Heta 6-5 Chris Dobey (2), Josh Rock 6-3 Dimitri van den Bergh (3)

ET9: Dave Chisnall 6-0 Joe Cullen (2)

ET10: Dave Chisnall 7-5 Chris Dobey (2), Chris Dobey 6-2 Kevin Doets (2)

ET11: Ross Smith 6-5 Stephen Bunting (2), Dave Chisnall 6-1 Jonny Clayton (2), Gian van Veen 6-4 Keane Barry (3)

ET12: Martin Schindler 7-2 Josh Rock (3), Callan Rydz 6-4 Gian van Veen (3)

ET13: Jonny Clayton 6-3 Stephen Bunting (2)

UK Open: Gary Anderson 10-5 Chris Dobey (2), Stephen Bunting 10-9 Kevin Doets (2), Jonny Clayton 10-8 Ross Smith (2)

Matchplay: Dimitri van den Bergh 10-6 Martin Schindler (3)

Grand Prix: Jonny Clayton 9-7 Ross Smith (2), Joe Cullen 7-4 Chris Dobey (2)

Euros: Gary Anderson 6-3 Stephen Bunting (2), Jonny Clayton 6-4 Chris Dobey (2), Danny Noppert 6-2 Joe Cullen (2)

Grand Slam:

PC Finals:

Worlds:

Euro aftermath

Well, that was some turn up for the books. Maybe if we were a bit more bold on tipping Jermaine, but oh well, with Ando losing in the quarters we'll call it a wash. Not a bad tournament and congrats to Ritchie for the huge bink. New FRH rankings:

1 Luke Humphries

2 Michael van Gerwen

3 Rob Cross

4 Dave Chisnall

5 Luke Littler

6 Michael Smith

7 Stephen Bunting

8 Damon Heta

9 Jonny Clayton

10 James Wade (UP 1)

11 Chris Dobey (DOWN 1)

12 Danny Noppert (UP 8)

13 Gerwyn Price (DOWN 1)

14 Ryan Searle (UP 1)

15 Dimitri van den Bergh (DOWN 2)

16 Peter Wright (DOWN 2)

17 Ross Smith (DOWN 1)

18 Mike de Decker

19 Josh Rock (DOWN 2)

20 Gary Anderson (NEW)

Schindler drops out but is within 10k, so plenty of opportunity to claw his way back in. Ritchie jumps up to #23, but has over 20k to gain before he'd be in the top 20. Jermaine is up to 25th, while Woodhouse creeps into the top 30.

I suppose the big news is the "return" of the World Masters. This is a very weird one. For one, the tournament concept sounds awesome. But didn't we have a World Masters literally a couple of weeks ago? Do they announce Wesley Plaisier as the defending champion? What does the WDF have to say about it, given it is surely their IP? It's a good announcement, but it asks more questions that it answers. God knows what is going on. We'll see in the coming days I guess.

Final couple of Pro Tours this week. It's a huge week for so many players on the boundaries of qualifying, I guess the biggest name is de Sousa, I think others will look at the run in in more detail, if I can do something tomorrow I will do, but don't count on it.

Euro quarters

Looking awfully like it'll be a Humphries/Anderson final, which'd be fine, but can anyone upset the apple cart?

Dirk/Luke - Woodhouse appears to have a bit more than the market suggests. Dirk shouldn't be anywhere near the 8/15 he is in most places, as I'm getting Luke at just a shade over 40% winning chances. That said, we can't actually get better than 6/4 on Luke, so meh.

Ritchie/Gary - Ando's generally 2/7, but this could easily be a lot shorter - the projections I have are 1/5 as a fair line. Do I want to push a big odds on number? I probably should, but I won't.

Luke/Jermaine - Wattimena is really, really good. Not Luke good, obviously, but I'm projecting a one in three shot. The exchanges are offering 5/1. I'm not going to officially recommend a play, but it seems like a fun flier to be going on with.

Ricardo/Danny - Feels pretty close to a Noppert play. I'm looking at 70/30, market is putting Danny at as long as 8/13 (at least on 365). I'm not sure I would want to bet much shorter than that, and I don't think it's unreasonable to think Pietreczko is a bit better than projections based on long data, but this just looks like standard undervaluing of Noppert as always.

Probably not back before the semis.