Matchplay quarters - not getting better

That result was a blow. Probably worth talking about both losses - the Aspinall one I think I can put down to being my fault, and if I had spent all the time in the world reading every single preview that indicated he is injured (but clearly not injured enough to not play, or to put in a sub par first round performance), then maybe I cut it back to a no bet. As for Smith, that's just a weird one which we can put down to randomness - both players' figures were commensurate of how they have played all season (indeed, Smith's figures went down after yesterday's game, while Dobey's performance last night was within a fiftieth of a point per turn of his larger sample), that I'll just put down to unfortunate missed doubles in the early stages which put Chris a bit too far behind to pull it back. This puts things as probably the worst tournament I've had to date, at least in the Dart Connect era, but we'll just put it behind us and down to experience and try to rebuild in the quarters, which will see no new major winner guaranteed.

Smith/Wade - Ross looked extremely strong in his win over Price, hitting four twelve or better dart legs and only winning two which went past fifteen darts, while Wade we've touched on a bit above, got off to a very good start but then just did what he needed to do from there. This looks like a good play on Ross, as I see him as having a touch more than a three in four chance, and with the odds offered, that's more than enough edge. 0.25u Smith 1/2

Humphries/van den Bergh - Luke was equally good in the second round, only having the one leg drift beyond fifteen darts and while Stephen was a bit off his best, he wasn't really given a chance. Dimitri also looked pretty solid in having eight of eleven legs sewn up in fifteen darts and keeping Clayton at bay before pulling away with a strong run towards the end. This looks like a strong favourite spot for Luke as expected, it looks bang on 80/20 for me, and Dimitri is 4/1, so we won't be playing this one.

Smith/Cross - Michael looked ok but not spectacular, getting an early lead but winning less than half his legs in fifteen darts or better - while Rob looked like a true title contender, hitting nine of eleven legs in that speed, five of which were in four visits. Cross appears a solid favourite here - I've got this as a bit more than 70/30, which even if Smith is playing a touch better than historical numbers, which might be the case but might not, we can still go with it, 0.25u Cross 7/10

van Gerwen/Gilding - Finally we have what doesn't look like an overly interesting game on paper, van Gerwen looking pretty decent against Cullen who made a good effort to keep it close after a bad first session. Gilding looked maybe the best he has done for a long time in getting a big lead over Ratajski and then seeing it home with a solid four leg run, which is the sort of level he'd need to display again if he wants to be competitive in this one, where my projections give him somewhere in the 20% to 25% range, slightly more towards the bottom of that. 9/2 is maybe being a tad harsh, but it's not enough to try to take the underdog shot.

Let's hope we can claw some of the losses back! 

Matchplay round 2 - ouch

Think it's fair to say that yesterday did not go as planned - can't do a massive amount against how well Smith played from leg 10 onwards, but Ando should have been 4-0 up and had a dart for 5-0, rather than 3-2, then just couldn't really score. That's obviously a big loss, but it's good to know that I wasn't the only one who was quite this bullish on Anderson and it's a bet I would do again 100% of the time. Littler losing as well compounded things, but that one was at least moderately close so not quite as fussed about it. All in all it was a pretty chalky round one with just four seeds dropping out, some of whom we thought might (Wright), others that we thought needed to turn up for sure given their opponents (Noppert, Heta), then someone who we thought was relatively safe but just didn't show up at all in Chisnall. Last sixteen, let's go:

Clayton/van den Bergh - Jonny looked pretty solid in his win, not spectacular but just not letting many legs drift past fifteen darts and scoring over 99 on the legs Barney won, who wasn't exactly playing badly himself. Dimitri was a bit more up and down - got the nine, but was fortunate to nick a couple of very dodgy legs as well as being the beneficiary of a couple of legs where Schindler either didn't score, or didn't hit doubles. Or both. Overall scoring is pretty close between the two - I've got Dimitri as outscoring Jonny, but is more inconsistent, so happy to drop a 65% projection down to probably below 60%, maybe down to 55% given how there is plenty of evidence at this stage that Clayton is in a bit of form. That said, he's the underdog in the market, which thinks it should be 55/45 the other way. That's more than enough for me to play - 0.25u van den Bergh 6/5

Humphries/Bunting - Luke as expected had few problems dispatching Pietreczko, who to his credit played a lot better than what he has done of late, just ending up with an awkward draw, against almost anyone else he might have been able to get into a position to ask more questions. Bunting was one of two players who needed overtime to get through, we thought Joyce would make it tough for him, and he definitely did, Stephen perhaps getting a few legs where he benefitted from weak scoring by Ryan which he held in over 15, nick any of those and we could be talking about a different game here. I'm getting this at between 70% and 75% for Humphries - the market has it towards the top of that range, with Luke not available at 1/3 and Bunting shorter than 3/1, there is a very small consistency thing that might draw things a point or two in Bunting's favour, but with the relative level of performances in the opener I'm absolutely fine with calling this a no play.

Aspinall/Wade - Nathan was generally pretty good against Woodhouse, who may be ruing missed opportunities where he let Aspinall win easy legs, mainly in the first leg of each of the two mini sessions. Grab those and it's 10-8 the other way. Or just score in the final leg and we get to overtime and ask further questions. Either would work. Wade was steady against what was frankly a below par Noppert, 10-5 may be flattering but Wade got breaks in three of the first four Noppert throws without needing to hit a fifteen to get them, which is frankly making things way too easy for the other guy (Wade also got a seven visit hold early on). I've got this as maybe around 60/40 in Aspinall's favour after accounting for inconsistency a tad (which you'd expect against Wade), which makes it all the more surprising that the market has James as the narrow favourite. 0.25u Aspinall evs

Price/Smith - Gerwyn made pretty short work of Daryl Gurney, certainly finishing very nicely after the second break when the match was still somewhat in the balance. Smith meanwhile looked excellent in handling Josh Rock, only dropping the four legs and winning all but one leg in fifteen or less. This is one where maybe both are a touch underrated - Price maybe on account of having a quiet season, while I still think it's taking its time for the public to appreciate just how good Ross is. Still, Price is a bit better, and over this length of match it translates to Smith having pretty much just a one in three shot - which, with Price at 8/15, is more or less in line with how the market sees it, the market maybe giving Ross slightly more of a chance than how I see it, but not enough for me to even start to think about taking the former world champion.

Ratajski/Gilding - Krzysztof allowed everyone to get off for the football just in time with a dominant 10-2 win over Dave Chisnall, who really didn't show up and it didn't requite Ratajski to do a huge deal in terms of quality (only half his legs won being in less than fifteen darts) to get that scoreline - Chizzy barely averaging 80 in the ten legs Ratajski won. Gilding was a similarly comfortable winner over Peter Wright, he did concede five legs but was a tad better in the ones he won. Ratajski is as expected projecting as the winner - I've got it up towards 70/30 - so fractionally more favoured towards the Pole than the 1/2 market price suggests. Maybe if some money starts to come in on Gilding then we can start to look at it, but I'm finding that doubtful as a possibility.

Smith/Dobey - Talked about the Smith match in the preamble so won't repeat myself. Chris was the last man through against Edhouse, looking reasonable enough in the legs he won, but only one of the seven legs that Ritchie won was in under sixteen darts, and that was the four visit kill he took to go 5-3 up, so that's something that Dobey will need to tighten up on. Should come as no surprise that we're looking at laying Smith again - Chris' numbers are simply a lot better than Michael's, a clear two points per turn ahead and he even has a very small consistency advantage, and that all leads to a projection where Dobey has between a 60% and 65% chance of winning. The market has it at around 60% to Smith. 0.5u Dobey 13/10, it is not quite the level of edge that we had in the first round, and maybe there's some Smith playing better on TV and Chris not being quite at his best going on here, but this is still a big enough advantage to go with the half unit play.

van Gerwen/Cullen - Michael looked close to his best against Littler, with four four visit kills and a huge amount of dominance in the middle stages, say between legs four and thirteen, that was extremely good play. Cullen didn't look too bad compared to how he has been either, but that was with a much lower bar to clear, and Dolan wasn't exactly putting up a huge amount of resistance in that one. Cullen's actually showing enough to have more than a 35% chance according to projections, although I'll draw that back from being nearly closer to 40% to safely below just based on how well MvG played and some consistency issues. That still makes Cullen possibly worth considering at 5/2, but I'd really need to be confident that everything we've seen in 2024 from Joe is misleading, and I simply can't do that.

Cross/Searle - Rob needed a deciding leg and to dodge multiple match darts from van Veen, who from 8-4 put up an obscene level of play to force the match to overtime in the first place. It's just as well that Rob looked very, very good, otherwise we wouldn't be in this place discussing this match in the first place. Ryan also looked extremely good against Damon Heta, four legs won in twelve or better, only two drifting past fifteen darts, after a slow first couple of legs he was basically unplayable. This is one where Rob is better, but he's not that much better, giving Searle solidly more than a one in three spot with the projection for Cross being slightly nearer to 65% than 60%. Market has Rob at 8/13, which I guess is fine.

So three plays - we fire moderately big against Smith again, then going with a couple of around even money plays that I didn't necessarily expect to be making, but will trust in the numbers. Back Wednesday with the quarters.

Matchplay round 1 preview

Draw was done a bit ago - bit of a shame that Wade and Gilding held on, nothing against James or Andrew but seeing someone new like Doets or Menzies would have been a fair bit more interesting. Still, the draw has thrown up a lot of real interesting matches, so let's go through them in draw order.

Humphries v Pietreczko - Not going to lie, while I was working out who was running the best and worst for this I was struggling to find the 32nd player in the field. It then became apparent to me just how bad Ricardo's form is, such was the huge distance he was behind the 31st player in scoring. It's huge - the graph of his rolling average, to use a Blackpool landmark, looks something like the first three seconds of the Big One after it's got to the top. There's lots of good games in this tournament - this isn't one of them. Humphries is so far ahead I don't even have Pietreczko as having a 5% chance. As such, the price we're getting is worth a big play - 1u Humphries 1/7

Bunting v Joyce - Another player in decent form, Bunting is very much a top ten player in terms of quality right now. That said, Ryan, making his return here after a bit of a gap, is not that far behind him. The projection is showing him as just shy of 45% - there's a little bit of a tiny consistency issue in play, s maybe draw that down to splitting the difference between 40% and 45%. 7/4 as such is fairly close, we're not touching Bunting in this one which looks like a perfect storm of possibly overrated against surely underrated.

Clayton v van Barneveld - Clayton managed to bink a Pro Tour so may be showing some signs of getting back to some semblance of form, with his numbers having crept up back to 91 or so per turn, which isn't bad, but it's behind Barney, although not by a great deal. Clayton does actually project ever so slightly better, and is trending upwards, but RvB does have a consistency advantage, so I'd probably put this one as too close to call. Barney at 13/10 or there abouts looks like the slightly better play, but it's not a particularly good play, so we won't make it. 

van den Bergh v Schindler - Dimitri's seemingly done little all year apart from win a major, whereas it seems like Martin is at the back end of lower ranked tournaments every other week, and has of course finally manager to win one. Both players are marred with wild inconsistency figures, but Schindler's are generally better, with DvdB only really coming close around the time of that UK Open win. Numbers are putting Schindler at around a 55% to 60% advantage, which is more or less exactly where the 8/11 number in the market thinks as well, so no play here.

Price v Gurney - Gerwyn's deceptively under the radar right now, still for me very much in that elite tier of players that should be among the favourites to win any tournament he enters, but it feels like that's not the case in terms of perception. That's probably a good thing, and a bad thing for Gurney, for who it feels like the 12-18 months where it looked like he was getting back towards his best have gone, and that his numbers have dropped off somewhat - the overall figure is at a pretty average 90, and the trend is very much downward. Should not be a hard one to call, the projection is showing Price at having a fair line of 1/7, and he's nowhere near that. That's very exploitable so 0.5u Price 4/11, almost tempted with a full unit.

Smith v Rock - Ross is in a real good spot right now, winning one of the last two Pro Tours, reaching the last Euro final, and is one of less than a dozen players whose overall numbers are above 93 so he's very much in that top tier right now. Rock however is only fractionally behind, and is coming off the confidence he'll have by making the breakthrough at the European Tour level this season, so this one should be one of the picks of the round. I'm seeing Smith as better, but at 55/45 it's neither here nor there, the bookies have both odds on so the very tiny value would be on Ross's side - but we don't push very tiny value.

Aspinall v Woodhouse - Nathan's the defending champion here, but has had a really quiet 2024, and while the statistics are fine, they are not really that much better than Woodhouse's, the debutant continuing a push up towards the top 32 in the world, the rankings not quite reflecting the level of play, but we'll just give it time. Getting a win here would be very helpful, and it's definitely on - Nathan is the better player but it is only just, and his projection does not even rate to be 55%. Much like the Bunting game, this is very much one where we are not touching the seed, but with Luke being at 13/8, there is already enough recognition that he's decent that it's not quite a play.

Noppert v Wade - Danny is one of a few players who it feels like has had a quiet 2024, although he does have a Pro Tour win over Humphries, and his numbers in the sample size I am using right now are very much top ten, so he's playing very well. Wade's the last man into the field, still playing OK, but not really at Noppert's level with numbers a couple of points per turn below the former UK Open champion's. This is a game that feels like it's between two with fairly similar styles, and one where I can't even give Wade a one in three chance of claiming the upset. Noppert is priced a bit righter than that, and I think if the odds were a bit longer (the spread companies are the only ones where it's close), we could go with a small stab - 4/6 or maybe 8/13 at a push would be what I need and it's not quite there.

van Gerwen v Littler - This is obviously the showpiece match of the round, and one where the number 2 seed could be in trouble. Littler is not quite the number 2 in the world in terms of numbers, but he's only one off, while van Gerwen is at the lowest number I've seen him probably since I've had my database running, barely holding a top ten position. As such, Littler is projecting as a very large favourite - he projects nearer to 75% than 70%, and I cannot recall ever seeing MvG project so low, at least not while I've been running the data. There is a little bit of an inconsistency thing going on and Luke was pretty average in the last Pro Tour events, so if I draw it down to 70% it's still enough to play - 0.25u Littler 8/13

Cullen v Dolan - We've talked a fair bit about how Joe's not been having the greatest of times, but would you believe it if I said that his scoring numbers were worse than Dolan's? Well, they are, and it's by a clear point complete with Cullen having greater inconsistency. The rolling averages show Brendan maybe having a bit of a tough last couple of months, so maybe there are some straws for Cullen fans to clutch at, but in general the two players are very even, and this projects as a coinflip. The market also has neither player odds against. Which is sad.

Chisnall v Ratajski - Dave has gone and got himself another Pro Tour and another Euro Tour already this season, and is probably one of the names I'd put in a list of most likely new major winners (well there's a fucking obvious number one), so this is not the kindest draw for Ratajski, who's still alright but has maybe faded a bit in 2024 with numbers that are a bit below Dave's. That said, they are at least close enough to give him fairly close to a 40% chance of winning - but we clearly can't take the 6/4 that is being offered.

Wright v Gilding - Now we have a bit of a stinker, at least in terms of quality, with neither player scoring 90 per turn in the sample I'm looking at, Peter being clearly the weakest seed as of right now, while Andrew was one of the last players to make the field and only Pietreczko has worse numbers that did make it right now. Having said that, in terms of tension, this might be alright - in terms of projections it's one of the closest I've seen in the tournament, with Snakebite only just edging ahead 51/49. The market's got it a bit more one sided than that, but not so far that we would want to think about taking Gilding in a bet. 11/8 I might go for it small, 6/4 would be even nicer. Seems like one where it'd be reasonable to think we get money in on the name player, so keep an eye on it.

Smith v Anderson - A great match up of former world champions. Gary's performing like one - the only player other than Humphries to be scoring over 96 a turn. Michael isn't, scoring nearer to 92 than 93 and barely cracking the top 20 in that metric. As such, it's a bit odd that the market has things so close - I've got Gary projecting at closer to 80% than 70%, such is the difference between the players in terms of levels. You don't see this kind of edge very often so I'm going the full unit, 1u Anderson 4/5

Dobey v Edhouse - Chris is at the stage in terms of numbers where he's clearly a top ten player, but needs to get results like a very deep major run or a Euro Tour win in order to progress there. This isn't the worst start he could get, Ritchie has had a very consistent run of good Pro Tour and European Tour results to get here for a debut, but he is quite some way off Dobey's standards, and I'm not even projecting him to win this one more than one in every four trials. As such, Dobey at 4/9 is fairly close to a play, feels like another one where there's a bit of a disconnect between how well someone is playing and the market perception of it.

Cross v van Veen - Rob's seeded six here, and that feels like a fair number as to where he stands right now, as I actually have him sixth in scoring. Therefore there's not many players who are better than him - van Veen might have been close to that eight months ago, and he is still playing very good stuff which has allowed him to qualify for here, but he's a little bit off Rob and this looks like a 70/30 game on paper. The market has things a little bit kinder for Gian, but with Cross at 1/2 it's not by much and we can't really think about taking the favourite.

Heta v Searle - Finally we have another game that feels like it should be very close. Damon is still putting up good enough numbers to be in the top 16, and is actually scoring better than van Gerwen to underline that point, but Ryan's within a point, so while Heta is favoured, it's not by a great deal, rating a touch over 55%, which if it was a little bit more I'd look to play, with neither being odds against and Damon being 10/11. A few more points would be needed though.

So four plays, three of them being bigger than the normal quarter unit that I'd look at, they're all on favourites. Will probably post again not before the round is complete on Monday.

Creating pathways for worldwide players

As is often the case after the World Cup, or any other event which features international players from outside the 128 for that matter, we often get posts like we got from Lendel on Sunday, namely questioning how we can assist players such as An Sheng Lu and Max Dalla Rosa work towards the Pro Tour. That's a fair question, but I think for the two players in question it works very much differently. For Max (let's just give the Italian team big props for a moment, it was only 2-3 years ago where most of us were questioning why the hell they were even in the tournament and France weren't, now they were a couple of visits away from the semi final), I think the infrastructure is basically there. Being in Europe helps a lot. You have a lot of the WDF events you can play. If you're on the younger side, you have the Development Tour, everyone has access to the Challenge Tour. Yes, for the latter, you'll need to stump up for Q-School, but if you're not at a stage where you're able to do that, then this post isn't really for you. If the money's an issue, find a group of eight players locally, each chuck in a hundred euros, have a winner takes all for it and use the money to cover the bulk of the costs - if you can't win that then you're not really in a spot to be looking at Q-School seriously.

For someone more distant however, it's a heck of a lot trickier. Just getting to where the bulk of the tournaments are played is going to incur much higher expenses, which is going to be hard to overcome, never mind the fact that if you were to want to attempt to play the tour, you're going to have to relocate a huge way around the world, and that's if you don't get messed around with things like visa issues, which is why I've got a lot of respect for the likes of Heta, Campbell, Perez, Puha and others who have given it a go to various degrees. For those who aspire to be the next of these players, I think some assistance should be given to having a gateway into the higher levels.

First, I think someone's got to be doing a good job on their local circuit. For these, I'm just going to consider the DPA, Asian and CDC tours - there's others, but either the standard still seems too distant, or they're local enough (e.g. SDC) that expenses aren't an issue. If you're not doing a good enough job at these levels, then it's kind of hard to justify putting effort into helping someone reach the next level. What I think we should do is to say to each of the top five players on that circuit that we will guarantee you two Pro Tour entries for the next season.

This does two things - firstly, it gives someone a couple of shots at the highest level of play, and if you're able to bink a win, that is probably at a minimum clearing the cost of your flights - which you ought to be able to cover anyway from what you have won on your regional tour, but having two chances to clear a lot of your expenses is important. Secondly, dates can be arranged a fair deal in advance. These were all done in September at the latest - and the PDC calendar for the next year is typically known about a month after that. On a quick search I couldn't find the exact dates for last year, but 2022's calendar was known in October 2021. That's going to give a lot of notice for booking reasonably priced flights/hotels as opposed to scrambling at short notice, and will also give a lot of time to arrange a visa if needed, and to look into other events - I'm sure the sorts of players at this level would be more than welcome onto the Modus events, if someone on the younger side was to have got there for this season, maybe they target events 3/4, 9/10, 15/16 or 27/28, which are extremely close to Development Tour weekends. Or maybe they just look when there is a larger WDF open event and go from there. Or pick the early season, when they could do UK Open qualifiers.

Now naturally this would take away spots from the Challenge Tour top up list. But on average, we're only talking one spot per event (5 players * 3 tours * 2 entries), and it's pretty rare, if it ever happens, that we don't have at least a couple of drop outs, so whoever's right at the top of the CT list is not going to miss out. Yes, someone will fall out, but it's not as if there is a divine right to get onto the Pro Tour if you're, say, ninth on the Challenge Tour rankings. There is also the remote possibility that enough of the 128 take their entry that you have more than 128 players in an event - fine, if that does happen, someone's unlucky and has to play a prelim, it's not a big deal. I would say that the PDC if they were to implement such a system as this that they're within their rights to try to spread out the entries as evenly as they can so that there's no more than a couple of players through this method in each Pro Tour, which would limit the chances of this happening, but I just list it as something that could happen.

Finally, I wouldn't suggest this is open to everyone on the respective regional tour. I'd exclude players who have previously held a tour card from being eligible for this - a Jeff Smith or Danny Baggish does not need the chance to test themselves at the next level, as they've already been there and done that. I'd limit the amount of times that someone could utilise this avenue as well - maybe to two or three shots. If you've finished high enough on your regional circuit that often and have had that number of opportunities to see if you're capable of and willing to take the next step, you've got enough information on whether you think you can make it at the Pro Tour level and commit to it - so now you have to do so, and give someone else the chance to test the waters. Lastly, I'd probably put some sort of upper age limit on this - the whole kind of point is to see if someone can be capable of being a trailblazer for their country, and for more than a short period of time. If someone was to get on the tour, but then is looking at starting to rail the schedule back and wind down their career, you would think why have you bothered. If someone is older, then they can always do the Dave Cameron or Leonard Gates route and use the seniors circuit as an additional stop while over here.

It's something to think about. Opportunities outside the main PDC circuit have probably never been better, I think this'd be a decent way of combining those with a taste of where you need to be at to make it at the top level.

Leverkusen done

One up one down in the quarters. I guess we take that - while we could say that we had match darts in both, we also conceded match darts in both, so let's not be greedy, that could have ended up worse than it did. Congrats to Chizzy on the win, commiserations to Ross on the final defeat, a win at this level is coming, but briefly for now, the new FRH rankings:

1 Luke Humphries

2 Michael van Gerwen

3 Michael Smith

4 Rob Cross

5 Dave Chisnall (UP 3)

6 Damon Heta

7 Gerwyn Price (DOWN 2)

8 Nathan Aspinall (DOWN 1)

9 Luke Littler (UP 2)

10 Peter Wright

11 Jonny Clayton (DOWN 2)

12 Stephen Bunting

13 Dimitri van den Bergh

14 Chris Dobey

15 Danny Noppert

16 Josh Rock (UP 1)

17 Ryan Searle (UP 2)

18 Gary Anderson

19 Joe Cullen (DOWN 3)

20 Ross Smith

Some interesting moves there. Chisnall is now in the top 5, which is probably about the peak of what you can do without a major bink or a world final, but Heta's only a PC final away from him. Price slides down to 7, which seems remarkable given he is not playing badly in the slightest. Littler hits the top 10 for the first time despite not having registered points for a month, while Wright just holds on to a top 10 spot for now by a fraction over the absent Clayton from this weekend. Ross Smith holds the last spot in the top 20 after his final, while Schindi is getting close to the top 20, van Veen is into the top 30, Doets is up to 45, and Owen Bates is solidifying a top 90 spot. Andy Baetens is also already into the top 100.

Just two events to go until the Matchplay. I think Woodhouse has just about done enough this weekend to solidify a spot, so the closest thing is that it's 2 from 3 out of Gilding, Doets and Wade (in that order), but Dirk, Rydz and de Decker are within striking distance, but after that it's basically bink or done, so it may be a bit of a damp squib of a Matchplay chasedown. We'll see shortly.

Leverkusen last 8

That went remarkably well - 5/5, clawed back all the losses from Friday and actually leaves us up slightly for the tournament. Into the quarters and we have:

Bunting/Heta - Feels like Bunting's absolutely on fire and Damon's just been OK, but this actually projects straight in the middle. Heta is the marginal betting dog, and I don't hate it if you take 5/4, but I'd want a tad more to recommend a play, especially after Stephen's performance this afternoon.

Searle/Chisnall - Another one I'm seeing split right down the middle. Can't pick a winner. Searle's slightly odds against but even less odds against than Heta is so nothing doing here.

Schindler/Smith - Can go with this one though, 0.25u Schindler 23/20. Schindler projects at over 60% and is the underdog, this is a very easy pick.

Smith/van Veen - Kind of similar to the last one, 0.25u Smith 4/5, except we're a bit worse in terms of price offered, but that's countered by Ross being that bit more of a favourite compared to Schindler.

Leverkusen last 16

Well that was a day of ups and downs, Searle and Dobey coming through tight games to put us in a good spot, then Cross had probably the worst match I can remember him playing to put us back where started. Fairly chalky day with the majority of the seeds going through, I'm just going to do very quick thoughts on the last sixteen.

Bates/Bunting - no bet, Bunting being priced shorter than 1/3 is pretty much bang on, could be a tick shorter but no big deal.

Heta/Dobey - no bet, looks right again, Dobey's about a 55/45 favourite and he's 5/6.

Chisnall/Doets - 0.25u Chisnall 4/7, seems a strange one that it's this close. Kevin's OK but Chizzy projects near to 80%. Much nearer to going half a unit than not betting this one.

van Gerwen/Searle - 0.1u Searle 7/5, looks like a sliver of value, Searle's actually projecting a couple of percent higher than van Gerwen right now, although due to consistency Michael has the slightly higher average. Call it a flip and Betfred give us just about enough odds to take a small stab.

van Duijvenbode/Schindler - 0.25u Schindler 4/5, Dirk's not looked too bad this weekend but this is projecting nearer to 65% than 60% for Martin, so 4/5 looks pretty tasty.

Smith/Wright - Might be a tiny, tiny bit of value on Wright here, he's just north of 2/1 and we're getting him above 35%, if it was an equivalent player I might say a tenth of a unit for the hell of it but I just don't feel confident in Peter's ability to get wins over big players right now.

Rock/Smith - 0.1u Smith 6/5, similar to the Searle one except here we have Ross a tiny bit above 55% and the consistency is less of an issue, so the smaller price seems fine here.

van Barneveld/van Veen - 0.1u van Veen 10/11, not really sure why this one is so close, we've got Gian as enough of a favourite that he should be nearer 8/11 than 10/11. Sure Barney just beat Humphries but I don't think that should count for this much.

So we've got a couple of normal plays and some small plays around even money, let's see what we can do. Should be back for the quarters.

Leverkusen day 2

What a weird day - mediocre scoring, missed doubles a plenty, some insane checkouts (if you've not seen leg 11 of Pratnemer/Troppmann, do that now before continuing to read this post) and a contender for miscount of the season with Ratajski completely fucking up a 143 out for reasons only he can know. That did for one of our bets, Hughes lost the other (the Kurz bet was voided) when he just couldn't score but somehow hung around. So not the start we wanted, but we go again in the last 32.

van Veen/Baetens - Andy wasn't great yesterday, will probably need to step up his game against Gian, and this looks like a typical 60/40 game. Andy's actually a touch longer than that, but with the relative performance yesterday that seems reasonable, not that there was enough edge even if he'd played a blinder.

Bunting/Troppmann - Kevin got through a real tussle yesterday, levels were not good however and it's hard to see how he's going to keep this remotely close. Heck, this could be a 6-0, and at a price of around 6/1, why not?

Heta/Taylor - Another early start for Dom, who looked decent enough against Szaganski, might not have shown enough to give any additional confidence but he's good enough at this stage to nick this one in three times. The market's already there though with him priced at 7/4.

Searle/Gurney - Feels like this could have been a last sixteen seed match not that long ago, but it is what it is, Daryl didn't drop a leg against Kantele, Marko missing a couple of doubles but Daryl otherwise not being threatened. Ryan is projecting significantly better - 70/30, and while there's a little bit of a consistency thing, I don't think it's enough to shift it so that we don't get a bet at the price offered. 0.25u Searle 4/6

Dobey/de Graaf - Jeffrey looked pretty much par for the course in a 6-4 win over Gilding, which really hurt the latter's Matchplay chances but he's still OK for now, but he should be outclassed here. Dobey's projecting nearer 80% than 75%, so 0.25u Dobey 2/5

Chisnall/Woodhouse - Luke put in an alright performance, at least after a little bit of a slow start, which might have done for de Decker's Matchplay chances and secured his own. Will need to improve in an all-Harrows match with Chizzy, but he's got a decent chance with the projection of 60/40 being tighter than I thought it'd be. He's already at 11/8 though which seems harsh on Dave, but I guess it's fair.

Smith/Rydz - Callan got a bye so the one thing I really wanted, i.e. a recent read, we don't get. Ross is clearly the better player, projects to win two in three, the market has those thoughts as well, so we move on quickly.

Pietreczko/Doets - Kevin was on pretty early against Blum, made a bit hard work of it but got through, hopefully that's just a bit of rust that's now been shaken off. Ricardo isn't a bad seed to come up against, and I cannot separate the two of them. The market's thinking Doets here, but 13/10 isn't quite enough to fire on Pietreczko. But it's close.

Noppert/Bates - Owen got one of the shocks yesterday with a win over Joe Cullen, not looking too bad at all and comes into a similar feeling sort of opponent in Noppert, but this is definitely a tougher one and Danny is up near 80% in the projections. 2/7 is listed and that looks just about perfect to me.

Cross/Smith - Michael needed every leg to get past Wade, but he did which has opened up the Matchplay for a lot of people on the fringes, just needs them to step through. This one isn't as tight as I thought it would be, with Rob projecting a shade over 60%, so I think there's enough on Coralbrokes to go with it, 0.25u Cross 17/20, Smith's game was good but it wasn't anything hugely better than what we'd expect so no concerns there.

Price/van Duijvenbode - Dirk got past a really up and down Gabriel Clemens, who had a red hot start to the game then just lost scoring and doubling while Dirk did his thing and rolled off five straight legs to take it. Price is a tough one and it's a statement of relative levels that Dirk is not even at 30% for this one. 5/2 on the Aubergenius is pretty darned accurate.

van Gerwen/Slevin - Dylan won through what was frankly not a pretty match, and if that level continues this one could be over very, very quickly - Slevin is projecting at south of 15%, so the 1/6 you can get on Michael is fair. Heck, could be another 6-0. 8/1 is kind of tempting...

Schindler/Sedlacek - Karel was one of the standout players with a fine mid match run, couple of small blips against Dennant but this was somewhat close to his best. Schindler's a tough cookie to crack though and Sedlacek isn't even at one in three for this, pricing of 4/9 on the home nation favourite looking extremely reasonable.

Humphries/van Barneveld - Raymond looked extremely solid, but was still made to work by Ratajski and needed missed match darts and a counting catastrophy to get over the line, if that did go 5-3 I don't think he comes back from there. He's got a puncher's chance but that's it, Luke's so much better the projection starts with an 8. 2/7 might be a small understatement of how much better he is right now.

Wright/Edhouse - Ritchie just keeps going on doing his thing, had little trouble with Dueckers in a 6-0 win but was pretty darned sloppy in doing so. Will need to tighten things up significantly against Wright and it does feel like a game where he knew he was going to win, so I'm happy to call this a blip and will return to normal service today, which would put this game at a pure flip. That's just where things are right now. Ritchie is actually the tiny odds on favourite. How times change.

Rock/van den Bergh - Dimi's last on again after a routine win over Ryan Meikle, who started slowly and, one good fifth leg aside, didn't up the pace to where he could handle the UK Open champion. He's not without chances, this one rates close, a 55/45 sort of game but very much in Rock's favour, he is projecting as a small favourite so it looks like everything's in order here.

So just the three bets in this one, be back later for the last sixteen.

Leverkusen bets, now featuring actual bets

Yeah, that title yesterday was a tad misleading, but let's actually go this time:

Szaganski/Taylor - Actually closer than I thought it would be, was thinking 8/13 on Dom would be value but it's projecting with him just over a 60/40 shot, so no bet it is.

Sedlacek/Dennant - Similarly on the money. Karel's better, but he's not that much better, it's projecting basically bang on 60/40, it's a 4/6 line, so we move on.

Hughes/Slevin - Now here we've got a bit of a play, the market can barely separate them with neither odds against, but I'm seeing Jamie as a couple of points better in every department, which is translating to nearer 65% than 60% chances. Easy play as such, 0.25u Hughes 10/11

Blum/Doets - Not got any recent data on Nico at all, and looking at the qualifier he didn't hit the 80's in averages once. Kevin should have zero problems here and a best price of 1/8 reflects that. Might even be value, scary to say.

Edhouse/Dueckers - Another in form player against someone we don't have much on. I do at least have seven legs on Jan, and it wasn't pretty. Dueckers' quali was at least a bit better than Nico's was, but still nothing that should trouble Ritchie, but here at least you can see some sort of out.

de Graaf/Gilding - Market can't really separate these. I've got Gilding as slightly better, but it's not even 55/45, so with the bookies having him as the 10/11 side in another one where neither is odds against, we're not touching the game.

Baetens/Rafferty - Ought to be competitive. Another one where we've got a favourite, but it's not an enormous deal, Andy floating around that 60% to 65% midpoint. That'd translate to around 8/13, he's a fraction shorter than that, but nowhere near enough where we can start looking at Nathan as any sort of value play.

Kantele/Gurney - Hard to really gauge where Marko is at, we have some data but it's not a huge amount of data, and the majority of it is at SDC level. 1/6 on Gurney feels like it might be slightly unkind, but this doesn't feel like 2023 Marko where he was winning everything at his respective game. If only the World Cup could have given us some sort of stage tell (not that doubles tells you anything of use at all really).

Pratnemer/Troppmann - Now this is one just on pure gut reads. Benjamin looked really good in his quali, 90 average every single round bar the final where it just looked like he forgot how to hit doubles in the latter stages. Kevin was steady but less spectacular in the qualifier (should note that Pratnemer's was all the way back in early April), but in terms of legs in the database he's much better than Pratnemer, although neither have more than ten, that being from that impressive 6-4 reverse against van Veen in Kiel. The market can't split the two, if Ben was just average in the qual then I'd have no hesitation in going with Troppmann at 10/11, but it's a sign that he's playing alright and he is known to be a good player at best.

Bates/Cullen - Line looks about right to me. Joe's clearly a better player, projecting a tad above 70/30, 4/9 is near enough to ignore the game.

Kurz/Rydz - Don't actually have any data in the database (at least not recently enough) on Niko, quali was OK, flashing in places, although mostly when he needed it against the likes of LML and Horvat. Callan could be similarly up and down. Anything could happen here, but I'll go with the home nation stab, 0.1u Kurz 5/2 as the combination of Rydz not showing up or Niko playing a blinder feels like it's not an unrealistic thing to happen a third of the time.

van Barneveld/Ratajski - Good solid data on both, and it's actually projecting Ratajski to be closer to 65% than 60%, which surprised me given Barney's seemingly had a good start to the year. The market's got this as another one where neither's odds against, so 0.25u Ratajski 10/11

Smith/Wade - Super lol first round game this. Wade's pushing up towards 2/1 but isn't quite there, that feels just about spot on to me, I'm seeing him with more than a one in three shot, but not much more. Is actually a big added pressure game for James which doesn't help and moving things towards Michael a tick as a result isn't unfair.

de Decker/Woodhouse - Another tight game with implications, I'm seeing Mike having a very small advantage, the market agrees, we move on.

Clemens/van Duijvenbode - Yet more games that the odds setters are saying are too close to call. Sadly I tend to agree with that assessment, maybe Clemens is slightly better but it's no more than calling him 10/11 as a fair line - which is more or less where he is.

Meikle/van den Bergh - Ryan's improving from a bad spot, but this isn't a kind draw. The market may be slightly slow to catch up on Meikle getting better though - I've got him as a bit more than a one in three shot, while he's just the right side of 2/1 if you want to punt. I wouldn't hate it, but I'd probably need getting up to 5/2 before I really went with it, and he's only better than 2/1 in a couple of places with most bookies having things around the 7/4, 15/8 sort of mark. Easy enough no play for now but maybe name money comes in on Dimi late and we can take a flier.

Long time no see? Leverkusen thoughts/bets

Alright, the hiatus is done, and it is basically go time for people wanting to get into the Matchplay. With just the two PC events after this, it's pretty much do something here or go home. Let's blast through thoughts in a little bit of a different way, I'm just going to go with gut feelings and what I've thought from looking at the players previously, just throw it out there, then come back with actual picks in the morning. Vamos.

Szaganski/Taylor - I have to love how the PDC refers to him as "D Taylor" in the second round draw. As if we're thinking that Phil made a comeback, or that Scott's qualified out of nowhere OH WAIT HE CAN'T NOW, THANKS PDC. Anyway, Dom's seemingly the better player. Radek has the Pro Tour win, but it's kind of feeling like a tad of an outlier, while Taylor's quietly getting better and better. Radek seems a decent sized dog here.

Sedlacek/Dennant - Interesting one. We know a fair bit about both, Karel's been up and down and probably has a higher peak game, but feels a tad off it for now, while Matthew has maybe not made a fantastic start after getting a card after all these years, not saying it's bad but maybe there could have been a bit more. Got to lean the Czech, if only for more stage experience, but may be tight.

Hughes/Slevin - Think both of these were late call ups after a swathe of withdrawals. Not heard a huge amount from either for maybe a year now, Jamie's kind of regressed to just a guy who is there, while Dylan's hype train which was pretty damn large a bit more than a year ago appears to be cancelled. Fair opportunity for both, could go either way.

Blum/Doets - Nico is a name I've seen for some time, but not for a bit. Hard to say where he's at. Kevin ought to be pretty comfortable here, still playing well and still in the Blackpool equation, he certainly can't complain with the draw.

Edhouse/Dueckers - Ritchie seems pretty darned safe for Blackpool at this stage, and can't complain with this draw against Jan, who I think we saw earlier in the season but I'm guessing was just fodder for someone in the opening round, if he'd won a game I'd probably have remembered it. Ought to be routine for Edhouse this.

de Graaf/Gilding - This one ought to be alright, Jeffrey's continuing to grow back to where he was at at his peak on all the circuits (still playing SDC don't forget), while Goldfinger is kind of just hanging on to some degree, looking alright in spots but just not feeling like a consistent top 32 player. Might be a sneaky best game of the day.

Baetens/Rafferty - That said, this one might be alright as well. Andy's not made a deep run yet, but has not looked out of place at the PDC level in the slightest, and it may just be a matter of putting in the reps and waiting for something to click. Similarly, it feels like Nathan is becoming more and more at home at the senior level, and may also be on the cusp of pushing through. Still got to favour the WDF champ, but could be a competitive fun watch.

Kantele/Gurney - On the other hand, this feels like it might be a bit of a damp squib. Marko had a decent 2023, but 2024 has been a bit subdued, not that he's ever really been an explosive player, as such Daryl, who's been pretty solid for some time now, ought to have a routine victory.

Pratnemer/Troppmann - Now this is peak Euro Tour. Benjamin's a name I primarily know through coming through the Eastern Euro quali for the worlds probably 5+ years ago at this stage. Fuck knows where he's at. Kevin's a domestic qualifier who we saw once earlier this year I want to say, and I have no clue where he's at. So anything can happen. This is the game you want to open the evening session.

Kurz/Rydz - This one feels like it should be fun to watch, but chaotic to call. Nico might have passed up on the best chance he had to really get up in the rankings already, but this isn't the first time we've seen him this year so could be improving, while Callan has been the archetypal feast or famine player for maybe a decade at this stage, dating back to when he somehow missed out on getting a card for years. Rydz is better, but this is an awful game to feel confident about.

Bates/Cullen - Owen's not really made a huge impression since getting on the tour, he's been at this level once or twice before but it feels like he's just getting used to the pro stage in some respects. Joe's not done a great deal, doesn't feel like he's anywhere near his best game, but usually shows up when I bet against him. Ought to be Cullen, but who knows.

van Barneveld/Ratajski - Let me point out how stupid this is as a first round game here. Absurd. This feels like a pure flip to me.

Smith/Wade - Copy the above, except Smith should win, and given Wade's tenuous hold on a Matchplay spot as of right now, this is the bastard of all bastard draws.

de Decker/Woodhouse - I want to say we have seen this one before already. This looks super evenly matched - two players on the periphery of that top 32 battle on various rankings, both can be really good, both can also look shit, Woody's looking in for Blackpool while Mike's looking out, it's one that appears real close on paper but could end up getting nervy. And nervy darts is peak darts.

Clemens/van Duijvenbode - Let us continue with this stupid run of first round games. Both are actually out of the Matchplay right now, and if Wade wins his opening game it'll be by a lot. The players feel like they're evenly matched, they just need to avoid running into a tough second round draw whoever wins, they don't want anything like the defending champ... oh.

Meikle/van den Bergh - Ryan might be coming out of a horrific run of form, which is kind of important as he's one of those players who's in a battle to hold his card when it gets to the end of the year. Dimitri's clearly not the best draw that he could have got, and he's going to be an underdog, but there's certainly worse players he could have run into as opposed to the UK Open champion, and he's got the peak game to challenge DvdB. The Belgian probably should see this out, but can't take too many liberties in this one.

Bets in the morning.

Can't stop the rock

Long overdue first Euro Tour for Josh, coming through Jonny Clayton in a final at last. If only Menzies had have held that lead he had in the last sixteen, then maybe it's him coming through instead, and we'd make a nice pickup as opposed to just being on the right side of break even. Still, it's not a loss, so we'll look forward - the main tour goes on a little bit of a ranking hiatus until just before the Euros, with a couple of Pro Tours just in the lead up to that, and some World Series events that I won't bother looking at. A few silver ranked WDF events are in the offing as well, we've got some Challenge Tour events, annoyingly for some the same weekend as the England Open in the WDF, there's Asian Tour events from Mongolia (which looks to be timed right after WDF events there, so nice collaboration to allow more players to make the trip affordably I guess), there's also a Nordic/Baltic tour weekend going on. So we've got quite a bit of stuff going on, I don't know how much I'll post about it, maybe I put something up right before the Pro Tours along with some sort of Matchplay race analysis, we've only got four Pro Tours and one Euro Tour before the cutoff so it's getting tight. For now, new FRH rankings:

1 Luke Humphries

2 Michael van Gerwen

3 Michael Smith

4 Rob Cross

5 Gerwyn Price

6 Damon Heta (UP 1)

7 Nathan Aspinall (DOWN 1)

8 Dave Chisnall

9 Jonny Clayton (UP 1)

10 Peter Wright (DOWN 1)

11 Luke Littler

12 Stephen Bunting

13 Dimitri van den Bergh

14 Chris Dobey

15 Danny Noppert

16 Joe Cullen

17 Josh Rock (NEW)

18 Gary Anderson (DOWN 1)

19 Ryan Searle (DOWN 1)

20 Ross Smith (DOWN 1)

Nathan giving this one a miss didn't really matter as even if Heta had have taken it off as well, he'd have still been ahead. Clayton's final brings him up one above Wright, who's now within 4,000 points of dropping from the top 10, and with Littler's points all being front loaded, that might happen before the next update organically. Rock re-enters the top 20 and knocks James Wade out. Schinlder's semi puts him up to 22, but he's got a bit of a gap to Wade above and will need another deep run to really push to the top 20. Woodhouse making the quarters didn't really do a great deal, he's still just outside the top 32 and has a big cushion down to de Decker below him. Wattimena, Menzies and Edhouse all continue decent form and are pushing up in the 40's, while Jeffrey de Graaf is just outside the top 64.

As stated, probably won't have too much in terms of updates for the next couple of weeks so it's likely not worth checking the blog until we're in the run up to Leverkusen on the 21st.

Netherlands last 16

Only bet yesterday won, took a little bit of time for Searle to take control, but he did and that's all that mattered, seemed to be a weird mix of really quick games and ones that went deep, but that's neither here nor there, I'm going to do a quick power through round three.

Chisnall/Clayton - 0.25u Chisnall 8/13, Betfair have this available (in the sportsbook) amongst others, Chizzy really should be 1/2 as a fair price, that looks a good enough edge for me.

Searle/de Graaf - Ryan's much better. May be slightly better than the market line, which is offering a tad better than 1/3, I've got him a touch more than three in four, not quite enough to push though.

Noppert/Wattimena - Line seems fair. I've got it as 65/35, Danny's just the right side of 1/2, let's move on.

van Gerwen/Dobey - I kid you not, I did not look at the last sixteen draw when I made the notes I did on Chris in the previous post. I do think he's slightly better right now - 0.1u Dobey 11/8, it is only because of the location of the event that I don't consider going more and I do think that will be a factor given how historically elite Michael has been in Euro Tours in the Netherlands.

Edhouse/Woodhouse - Got to love a house derby, thinking Luke's a bit better, but not by much, call it 55/45, he's actually the underdog here, but while I can understand the logic I'm going to take the 365 price every day of the week for a small nibble, 0.1u Woodhouse 13/10

van den Bergh/Schindler - Dimi's looked alright this weekend, which is kind of annoying as Schindler is priced right on the margins of where we would fire a bet unless we could find a good reason not to bet on him. As Schindi did look alright himself I'll go for another narrow stab, 0.1u Schindler 4/5, with him projecting a fraction better than 60/40 I think we have enough, but would not be surprised if this is one that turns out wrong.

Price/van Veen - Pretty much a tale of opposites for how their round two games went, not sure how much that will be a factor but it can't really help Gian, who I see as a tad under a one in three shot. Market has him at 7/4, so a bit better than a one in three shot, it is on home soil which my model makes no attempts to look at and is reliant on me to take these intangibles into account. Fine to pass this one.

Rock/Menzies - Menzies is just better at this stage. Just need to look at the Woodhouse game, it's the same projection and the same price, so we go with the same thing, 0.1u Menzies 13/10

So, surprisingly active given the relative lack of bets in the first two rounds. Granted, most are small plays and we're pushing small edges, but those are better than no edges. Severely doubt that I'll be able to get anything before the quarters with Leeds/Southampton going on. Should be back post event for some analysis.

Netherlands day 2

1 up 1 down yesterday, fortunately the up one got us a fair bit more than the down one lost us (pretty nice game by Taylor in fairness) so a little bit of profit was generated. Sixteen more games today:

Bunting/de Graaf - Fairly competent game by Jeffrey yesterday, but nothing special, and will need to up his game somewhat to get close to Stephen, who's projecting as winning three in four, with the market having it ever so slightly even more in his favour. Certainly not enough to bet at 2/7, and we're not remotely interested in JdG at 10/3.

Gurney/Woodhouse - Luke made heavy work of Ryan Meikle in a game that wasn't pretty, needing to come from 4-1 down, but it's an important win. The model can't separate him and Daryl, Gurney has a little bit of a consistency edge but it's not major, so I'm calling this pretty much a flip, Woodhouse at 13/10 is not the price I'm interested in on yesterday's showing.

Heta/Edhouse - Ritchie got past the interesting action of Brejcha yesterday eventually, one real duff leg and never really got through the gears, so hopefully that was a case of just doing enough as he comes up against Damon, who it feels as if has been a tad quiet in 2024, while still producing very good numbers. Almost good enough that we want to bet - I've got it at 65/35, the market has it 4/6, I'll give Edhouse enough credit over the last couple of months to say he's been a touch better than that, which brings it into the no bet range.

Chisnall/Zonneveld - Niels did not perform particularly well against Puha but got the deciding leg win, just about, will need to be much, much improved today against Chizzy, but he's generally been alright and has approaching a one in three shot and the crowds have certainly been helping the Dutch players. Market more or less agrees with that assessment with Zonneveld at 9/4, toning his numbers down a notch on yesterday where no legs were won (by him at least) in fifteen or better appears reasonable enough.

Clayton/van Velzen - Big win for Marvin, creeping past Kist from 5-4 down despite also not getting a single leg won in fifteen or better. Clayton is not a bad seed to come up against right now, but I think Clayton will be there in six visits on throw or five against more than often enough here. No real data to work with, 10/3 on Marvin might be slightly harsh, but nothing was shown yesterday to give me confidence in that line.

Pietreczko/Wattimena - Jermaine got through a bit of a spicy one with Cullen in a last leg, and you've got to feel the fans will be on his side again here. I'm finding this one hard to call, Ricardo's been very hit and miss since winning his Euro Tour, and I've actually got Jermaine as the ever so slight favourite. 8/11 is a bit much, but Pietreczko is not good enough in this situation to make 13/10 a viable play.

Noppert/Gilding - Andrew was given a surprisingly good test by Damian Mol and needed a bit of luck to get over the line, but he did, and now faces a much harder opponent in Noppert here. Bit odd they couldn't work this into the evening session, but what have you, it's a solid closing two to the afternoon. Noppert looks to be about 65/35 to me, market has him just shorter than 1/2, so maybe favouring him a bit much, but we are playing in the Netherlands so I'll allow it.

Searle/Wade - Wade predictably had zero issues with the Finnish qualifier, winning 6-0 without ever really doing anything special, hopefully that's just keeping things in the tank for the much stronger opponent that is Searle, who I've got as projecting as a pretty big favourite here, just more than two in three, not quite 70%. Let's draw it back to pure two in three with a small consistency edge for Wade, at the best price it's enough for a first bet, 0.25u Searle 4/6

Dobey/Blom - Into the evening session and we have Dobey, probably one of the top ten players in the world right now if not better (would you be surprised to hear that since October, he's outscoring van Gerwen?), and he's up against one of the domestic qualifiers that came through in Blom, who it has to be said looked really good in his victory over Ryan Joyce. If he plays like that again, prices of more than 4/1 could end up looking rather silly - I just can't help but think that it's a wild outlier and/or it's taken a lot out of his play. I'll lay Dobey for a tiny fraction on the exchanges personally, but won't recommend anything.

Price/Mansell - Gerwyn's still continuing to manufacture really good numbers, and Mansell only dropped two legs against O'Connor, have seen better performances but he did what he needed to do. Price is projecting at near 80/20, Mickey will need to be a bit better than he was yesterday to get close to that sort of projection, the markets have it ever so slightly closer so maybe fractional value in Price in this one.

Rock/van Duijvenbode - We're still waiting for Josh to make a breakthrough at this level, his numbers of late aren't quite top ten, but are still top sixteen so it is not as if he has fallen off a cliff, and Dirk is going to be a very interesting opponent who looked very good in the legs he won against Rydz yesterday but a bit average in the ones he didn't. Appears moderately close - seeing Rock as about a 55/45 favourite, he's 8/11, so that looks to be a close enough line to correct for me.

van Gerwen/Doets - Michael could do with a nice run here to start gearing up for the Matchplay, as there are hints he could be being slightly left behind at the very top levels of the game, and he will get a derby against Kevin, who edged out a really inconsistent Mike de Decker 6-5 in a game where he showed the occasional flash but was primarily just cleaning up Mike's mistakes. That's not going to cut it against MvG, I'm seeing a projection in the high 70's, he is 1/4 so we're not going to touch this one.

Schindler/Dolan - Martin's back in the seeds here, and will face Dolan, who got into a 4-0 lead against a badly misfiring Owen Bates, without ever really doing anything himself. Brendan can, and should, play a lot better here, and will need to against an in form opponent who is so strong right now that Dolan is only projecting as a one in three chance. As such, Schindler looks acca safe at 4/7, but there's not the edge there to bet, unless you think Brendan cannot up his game from yesterday.

Wright/Menzies - Cameron got maybe the performance of yesterday, steamrollering van Barneveld with an obscene run to go 5-0 up and then claim it 6-1, and that sort of game is going to take Wright apart you would think - if Menzies can replicate it, of course. He does project as just over a 60/40 shot against Peter, the market appears to have adjusted and puts him at 8/11. Hopefully that's just a temporary adjustment to yesterday, otherwise the party might be over.

Smith/van den Bergh - Was able to get Dimi 6-5 just before the off yesterday, and was looking good until Clemens just couldn't score heavily enough to get us to a decider. Ross Smith is up next, another player putting up fantastic numbers and kind of going a bit unnoticed. I've got a projection right in the middle of 60% and 65%, oddschecker was showing 4/5 on the main page which was looking momentarily exciting, but that's long gone, 8/11 is fairly close to what you'd need but I think a tick more is required for it to be a play. DvdB did look good yesterday after all.

van Veen/Taylor - Here we've got Taylor, who goes from first on yesterday with a very strong showing against Jose de Sousa, to last on against van Veen, who is up into the seeds here for I want to say the first time, and will have a boisterous crowd at this stage on his side. Maybe he's not putting up quite as good numbers as he was doing late in 2023, but it's still enough to project a 65/35 edge here, Dom quietly doing well enough to keep it at that range. Gian is 8/13, so I think there might be a tiny edge, but certainly not enough to officially recommend.

So just the one play on Ryan Searle, but there's quite a few that are marginal, if your opinions are slightly more weighted one way or another than mine, maybe you can find some more punts to go with. Back tomorrow morning with the last sixteen.

Day 1 evening session

Harju/Wade - Teemu is a name I've seen around on the Nordic lists for a bit now, have a handful of legs of data on him which float around the high 70's per turn, which isn't really going to trouble someone like Wade in the slightest. I'm almost half tempted to play given the odds - 1/8 is widely available, which I don't think is that ridiculous at all.

Blom/Joyce - Moreno's the last of the qualifiers from yesterday to play, it's someone I've got 30-something legs on, and his numbers are pretty much bang on 80. That's not going to give Ryan any issues, 1/4 given current form doesn't seem too outlandish, although maybe Blom is a tad better than the data I have given yesterday. Great performance against Telnekes in the opener, again like Mol it's probably the case that he got his hardest game first, but unlike Mol, Moreno was consistently in the high 80's throughout the remainder. Think there's enough uncertainty that I can just avoid this one.

de Decker/Doets - Good game against two still fairly young players who are battling it out on the periphery of the Matchplay race, and you kind of feel it's a must win for both. This'd be one I'd pay to see, I was initially "wait, that can't be right" when I saw a projection giving Kevin less than a one in four chance, but while there is a little bit of a consistency issue, his numbers have dropped off alarmingly and he does appear to have quietly gone out of form. I'll use the consistency and give him the benefit of the doubt to not fire on Mike, we can only get 8/15 anyway which is alright but if I drag the actual projection down to, say, 70/30 (and I find it hard to say with a straight face that Doets would actually have less chances than that), it's not really what I'd need.

Cullen/Wattimena - Let's see if Joe can get another bit of a run going here, he's up against a home player in Jermaine which will always give that little bit extra, which might make a difference. I've got this tight, Joe's projecting 55/45 but Jermaine has enough of a consistency advantage that he actually has the higher points per turn in the sample. Nobody's offering significantly longer than evens on Wattimena, looks like a flip to me, so no real bets here.

Meikle/Woodhouse - Ryan's shown the odd flash over the past few weeks after having a real rough time of it, while Luke's looking to get the critical wins to get over the line and into Blackpool. This actually projects close - Meikle only being the slight dog, that said he has an enormous consistency number (bad), so I think I've got to bring him down a few points for that, it's the sort of number where you feel Luke's going to get a couple of free legs which could cost the match. At numbers approaching 7/4 I might have a small personal play for some funking value, but it seems dangerous to recommend as a general bet.

van Barneveld/Menzies - Raymond's looking like he's probably going to be safe for Blackpool following getting a tour title earlier in the year, but probably could do with a couple more wins here and there to make things completely sure, making the final day here would surely be enough, while Cameron's a little bit back and needs to go on a run somewhere to close down what will be a 10k gap after Wade (surely) wins earlier in the session. He absolutely is good enough to do so, Wright as a seed here is somewhat of an opening, and I'm seeing a projection in the low 60's. That's more than enough to bet at the price offered - 0.25u Menzies 10/11

Rydz/van Duijvenbode - God, this one is going to be hard to call, Callan's a tad all over the place and we still don't really know where Dirk is at. The market's having similar issues, giving Rydz the tiny edge, I've got Dirk as ever so slightly better, but this one could really be anywhere. Easy enough to avoid, I don't have the edge needed on Dirk even if I was confident in the numbers, which I'm not.

van den Bergh/Clemens - This is the third time we've seen this game on the Euro Tour this season, and Dimi's won the previous two in deciding legs. This intuitively feels close, I've got it as no more than 51/49 in the Belgian's favour, I guess it's that tight that the play is to see who wins the bull and bet 6-5 correct score on them?

So really little to add here. We'll keep betting Menzies until his form drops massively or he binks something it seems like.

Netherlands day 1

Apparently Littler did something in an exbo yesterday, but who cares about that, we're now at the midpoint of the Euro Tour so let's blast through day 1.

Taylor/de Sousa - This was one where on a first glance I was thinking "hmm, Dom should probably be the favourite here", and was disappointed to see that he actually was in the market. On further review however, Jose is actually projecting to win it - although Taylor has truly fantastic consistency stats while Jose's are, if not bad, below average. I'd then rate this as 50/50 and take JdS small, 0.1u de Sousa 13/10 with Hills.

Edhouse/Brejcha - Know very little about Jiri, can only really look to the quali, where he couldn't get better than 85 at all. Not the greatest standard but little to suggest he can cut it against Ritchie, 1/8 isn't really tempting either.

Razma/de Graaf - Fun one which we must have seen on the Nordic tour at some point surely? Rates to be pretty tight, maybe Razma's slightly better but not by much, market also slightly favours him so nothing to see here.

Kist/van Velzen - Two players from yesterday's quali collide, we know where Kist is at (or de we?), Marvin's a name I've seen in despatches but don't really know a great deal about, but just looking at the quali he might have been playing slightly better than Christian. Market has Kist as a small favourite, with the relative experience difference at this level I think that's fair enough.

Dolan/Bates - Brendan's in a pretty darned tight race to get into the World Cup, and this isn't a bad spot to pick up some crucial ranking money. Owen's alright, but Dolan's just that bit better and this rates as just under a two in three spot for him - the market likes Brendan even more than that, but 5/2 isn't really offering the edge needed to go with Bates here, although it's at least close.

O'Connor/Mansell - Another fun match up here, feels like Willie's been quiet for a while, while Mickey's also been quiet, but quietly good for the past year or so, and playing well enough that he is only a fractional underdog. If anything I thought it'd be the other way around, but it isn't. Mansell's 11/10 in the market se we're in general agreement.

Zonneveld/Puha - Haupai hasn't really done a great deal of note since winning his card, although let's be fair, it is a big switch and a fair step up, but Niels isn't a bad player in the slightest and looks much better here, probably calling this just over three in four. 4/9 on Coralbrokes is probably worth considering, but Haupai has a fair consistency advantage (he is only a tenth of a point per turn worse on losing legs than winning ones, compared to a database-wide five) so I think there's enough thought that Puha might be slightly underrated that I won't recommend the play.

Gilding/Mol - Damian's back after an underwhelming couple of years on the tour, had a great first game in the quali but was bang average in the remainder (although that opening match might have been the toughest opponent he got drawn against). 4/11 on Andrew may be a touch of an overstatement, but I didn't really see enough from Mol yesterday to feel slightly confident in taking an underdog flier here.

I'll post up the evening session shortly, just want to get the morning out there for now.

Post-Kiel FRH update

Looks like that was another final for the ages, congrats to Rob, but I'll just drop in a quick FRH rankings update and be done with tonight:

1 Luke Humphries

2 Michael van Gerwen

3 Michael Smith

4 Rob Cross

5 Gerwyn Price

6 Nathan Aspinall

7 Damon Heta

8 Dave Chisnall

9 Peter Wright

10 Jonny Clayton

11 Luke Littler (UP 3)

12 Stephen Bunting

13 Dimitri van den Bergh (DOWN 2)

14 Chris Dobey (DOWN 1)

15 Danny Noppert (UP 2)

16 Joe Cullen

17 Gary Anderson (DOWN 2)

18 Ryan Searle

19 Ross Smith (UP 1)

20 James Wade (DOWN 1)

Last update was from before Austria, so that explains Littler moving up. Looking forward, we've got a break of a week or two before we head to the Netherlands, and we're getting closer and closer to the Matchplay cutoff. Frankly, I could do with this little bit of downtime, but one thing I did post on X earlier today was a updated 180 in 180 in visual format. Question for everyone - is van Gerwen one of the best five players in the world right now?

Quarter final projections

Check for bets in about an hour:

van Gerwen 38/62 Humphries

Noppert 48/52 de Decker

Edhouse 27/73 Cross

Searle 74/26 Razma

Edit - will add 0.1u de Decker 6/4, that seems more than enough of a price to take the small stab, just small given how Danny has been looking good. Considered Cross given how the price is the right side of 1/2 but maybe being excessively cautious given Edhouse's current form

Quick day 3 bets

A big part of the danger of betting against elite level players is that you run into them playing a game where there's nothing you can do. Granted, Nijman probably wasn't at his best, but it's hard to see what he could have done against that level of display from van Gerwen. Still, it's only a minimal loss, let's see what we can do to recover from here, and it's him first up.

van Gerwen/Gilding - Might be the case that van Gerwen is a touch overrated, and that Gilding is a tad underrated. 7/2 is a pretty big number for what is still a fairly recent major champion against anyone. It's really close, I'm seeing Andrew as having a little bit over 30% - I really should play this one, I'm just not that convinced he's playing quite well enough very recently to realise what the larger form numbers should say.

Humphries/Smith - This we can bet though, 0.1u Smith 23/10 on Betfred, anything better than 2/1 looks good. Ross is quietly putting up devastating numbers, and is for me a top ten player in the world just looking at raw statistics. I'm seeing this in the neighbourhood of 40% chances, nearly 10% more than what the line's suggesting. Only going small, if only because there's always that danger that Luke says "nope, not today" and puts in a level of performance that's unplayable, but Ross is severely undervalued here.

Roetzsch/Noppert - Still lacking enough data on Franz for a projection to be reliable. 4/1 might be a tad too long, but Danny looked excellent yesterday so I can't see that being anything more than marginal value.

Heta/de Decker - This one's actually rating fairly close for me. Heta's only outscoring de Decker by about a point, and most of that is consistency, which might arguably be enough to flip a 52/48 in favour of Mike (which is what the projection shows) the other way in reality, but with the odds available, it's still more than enough chances to go with another small play, 0.1u de Decker 13/8

Edhouse/Pietreczko - Market might now be overadjusting for Ritchie's recent level of play right now. Yes, I do project him as a favourite and anything other than that would be a surprise, but it's only just. It's not enough to start betting Ricardo at a pretty weak 7/5 price though.

Cross/Bunting - Market pretty much can't separate these two. Neither is odds against, Rob is the one that is odds on with Stephen at evens. That seems fair enough to me, I've got this as being in favour of Cross but only like 55/45, if that, so nothing of interest here.

Gurney/Searle - This is a pretty strange one - Ryan is priced as if he is only a marginal favourite, where as I'm seeing Daryl as only having a one in three chance. That seems a fair bit of a disparity in terms of chances - I could drag Searle down a couple of points due to consistency for sure, but he did look better today and the lines, even without considering vig, give him less than a 60% chance. We'll take that fairly comfortably, 0.25u Searle 8/11

Razma/Cullen - This one is an awkward one to read - Madars is still somewhat all over the place, just need to look at yesterday for the prime example, was bang average for the first six legs but then excellent for the last five, while Joe continues to look pretty ordinary in the scoring, basically having the numbers of a less consistent Martin Lukeman, but will get much better results than what those numbers show - but only some of the time. Razma would probably be the angle here, I'm seeing this as about 60/40 in favour of Cullen but that looks to be a bit wild in terms of how accurate that might be, as Madars is a touch longer than 2/1 in places that's probably worth a small stab, I'll probably have a private shot just to have some funking power, but won't officially recommend a play.

Should be back with quick projections right after the Cullen game, and then any quarter final plays at half time in the football I'd guess.

Quick day 2 bets

This is just going to be a yes/no/maybe rundown:

Yes:

0.1u Nijman 19/10 v van Gerwen - I think that's just about long enough that we can take a stab. He's had his signature win now, this is a complete freeroll and the numbers put him much closer to Michael than generally indicated.

Maybe:

van Duijvenbode > Gurney - Honestly I should be throwing out a small play here given we project that Dirk is just the favourite and we can get 11/8, but I still think he's lacking a real big performance since the injury issues.

Hilger > Pietreczko - He didn't look too bad yesterday and we can get pretty big odds against one of the weaker seeds. Hard to know if yesterday was just a real outlier though.

Humphries > Bialecki - Luke's just playing so, so well right now that it might be the case that 1/6 is worth a play. Sebastian can hit nice spots of form though, so I won't go with it.

No:

Rock/Roetzsch

Searle/Wattimena

Smith/Woodhouse

Heta/van Veen

Cullen/Wade

Cross/Kuivenhoven

Clayton/Edhouse

Noppert/van Barneveld

Wright/Gilding

Ratajski/de Decker

Bunting/Baetens

Chisnall/Razma

Frankly a lot of the no's are a tick off where I'd put the perfect line, so there may be extremely fractional value if you go off the numbers in the previous post and compare to the odds. Back probably tomorrow morning with the last sixteen.

Not an ideal day 1. Day 2 maybe?

OK, so de Sousa missed a match dart and Dimitri completely shat the bed, that's less than ideal, but let's just power through some quick raw number predictions, and I'll pick up bets in the morning:

Rock/Roetzsch - sample size issue

DvD/Gurney - 53/47

Searle/Wattimena - 71/29

Smith/Woodhouse - 68/32

Heta/van Veen - 52/48

Cullen/Wade - 51/49

Cross/Kuivenhoven - 76/24

Pietreczko/Hilger - sample size issue

Clayton/Edhouse - 47/53

Noppert/van Barneveld - 59/41

Wright/Gilding - 56/44

Humphries/Bialecki - sample size issue

van Gerwen/Nijman - 56/44

Ratajski/de Decker - 48/52

Bunting/Baetens - 67/33

Chisnall/Razma - 73/27

Kiel day 1

A little bit behind on updates, as we've had a couple of Pro Tours and a Development Tour weekend recently, not to mention fairly major WDF events in Denmark, but I'll catch up on the FRH rankings after the magnificently titled Baltic Sea Darts Open, and let's look at what games we have today. As an aside, looking at the dataset I'm using for these projections, the top three are Ando, Littler and Price, all separated by less than one twentieth of a point per turn. That's close!

Bialecki/de Sousa - Seems like it's been a bit since we've seen Bialecki mentioned, having been moderately quiet on the Development Tour, and not really having much of a sample size to speak of right now. Jose's also been quiet, but his scoring is still just above 90, and while Sebastian can be dangerous, I don't think he gets home anywhere near often enough for it not to be a good play on the Portuguese ace. 0.25u de Sousa 8/15

Kuivenhoven/Toonders - Maik's another one of those players who's been around for a while and is in that sort of category where if the cutoff for tour cards was 80, he'd probably never lose it, but it isn't, so he does, while Toonders is a pretty young German player who came through the domestic qualifier, and actually played the UK Open this year through the Dev Tour, where this year he's not been that impressive at all, same with the quali, pretty much an 80 average seems to be where he's at which isn't going to cut it against someone like Kuivenhoven. 1/4 isn't really tempting though, Maik's certainly no world beater and I'd need to be very sure Toonders is worse than what he's showing like to actually go with that.

Tricole/Gilding - Pretty simple one this. Thibault's OK, but Gilding is a lot better. This is showing as Tricole having maybe a one in four chance. It's priced nothing like that. 0.25u Gilding 4/6, could arguably go more.

Puha/Roetzsch - Haupai's on the tour now, but has maybe been a little bit quiet. That, or just not quite up to speed yet. Franz played the midweek events, but I think is showing a bit of a gap in terms of quality from looking pretty decent on the secondary tour to actually being a card holder level. Haupai being the right side of a 60/40 in the market feels intuitively correct, Roetzsch has his chances but isn't the better player.

Hilger/Dennant - Moritz is not a particularly familiar name to me, coming through the qualis with one mid 80 average but otherwise floating one side or the other of 80, which isn't going to trouble Dennant, who's made a steady start to Pro Tour life and scoring OK, and can't be displeased with this draw. It's another one like the Kuivenhoven game though where we have nowhere near enough certainty to go with Matt at his price (even shorter than Kuivenhoven), although it may transpire it was the correct play.

Dolan/Wattimena - Brendan won an event! Real nice. Was a little bit of a weird one in terms of who got deep, but hey, a win's a win, and will give great confidence coming in against Jermaine. This one feels like it should be moderately close, indeed Jermaine's doing enough that this projects as 60/40. Market has it marginally closer, it's not enough to fire on Dolan, but if you believe in such ethereal nonsense like "momentum", then it's not going to be a -EV bet at 8/11.

Woodhouse/Joyce - This ought to be a real fun game between two players ranked very close in the FRH rankings, Joyce has likely already done enough to get to Blackpool but Luke probably has a bit of work to do, and wins like this would help. Market can barely separate them, just shading Ryan as the marginal favourite, that seems fine, I'd probably have put him at 8/11 and not 5/6, but it's close enough that we don't want to go with it. Another one where if you maybe favour short term form you can push to a Joyce bet.

Wade/Zonneveld - James is currently outside the Matchplay quali spots. Read that again. A win here would put him back in, sure, but that's still kind of remarkable. Niels is no pushover though and is only priced as a real marginal underdog. Which is actually fair - I'm seeing this as no more than a 52/48 in favour of Wade. Pretty easy pass form a betting standpoint accordingly.

Razma/Dobey - Feels like Madars has had a slow start to the year, and he's currently outside of the worlds spots, albeit at a very early stage of the year. As such, Dobey's not the player he'd want to draw, with Chris projecting as a three in four favourite. The market has it around there, if not shorter - Coralbrokes have Dobey as much less of a favourite than most and there is a small arb available, but we're not punting on this one.

Troppmann/van Veen - Kevin's another qualifier, and didn't look too bad in the quali - typically 83 or 84 averages with very little variation. Unfortunately, he's running into Gian van Veen, who's good enough that him being double digits to one on is not completely absurd.

Gurney/van den Bergh - Another one of these sort of good "second tier" games that we're seeing a lot on Fridays with the new Euro Tour rules, with Daryl actually being priced as a tiny favourite in this clash of major champions. I'm really not sure that is correct. Dimitri's projecting as a near 60/40 favourite in my stats, there is a fair bit of inconsistency at play, so we really don't want to see him take any legs off, but I think at odds against we need to go with it, 0.25u van den Bergh 11/10

van Barneveld/Larsson - Barney's got a favourable draw here, but certainly not a gimmie against Larsson, who as part of a really resurgent Swedish darts scene has a fair bit of experience behind him at this stage and certainly has the potential to ask Raymond some questions. A 3/1 price feels like it's about right though, if it was more I could certainly have seen a small nibble as being reasonable.

Baetens/Clemens - This is kind of a good test for Andy, against an established player in a potentially tricky environment, but against a player who maybe isn't in the best of form. Clemens is still doing enough to project on the right side of the 60/40, and that's just about reflected in the odds - the market has it a bit tighter, which I guess in context is fine, but come through this and give Bunting a good game and maybe there'll be more belief in Andy.

Edhouse/Aspinall - Ritchie didn't add to any Euro Tour qualifications midweek, but could well get reserve call ups, so for now will need to make the most of chances to sure up Euro qualification, where he's not looking too bad but may need a bit more before the end of the season. Aspinall's a bastard draw though, with Nathan projecting at 70/30 - the market has it closer, which in the context of Ritchie's form is fine, but 4/7 is kind of close to the sort of odds we'd need to bet the favourite. Certainly wouldn't be touching Edhouse at 13/8.

Schindler/de Decker - This one ought to be alright, Schindler is playing extremely well right now, but Mike's been doing just about enough to have decent chances, a bit between 40% and 45% is what I'm seeing, maybe tone it down to the lower end based on Martin's excellent short data form. 17/10 on Mike doesn't look a horrible bet, but with Schindler in such red hot form (and being at home, which always helps), I think I'd want north of 2/1 before I'd start seriously considering the Belgian here.

Littler/Nijman - What a game to finish, and a real test for Wessel, who maybe has slightly more of a chance than the market's thinking. That says 3/1, I'm thinking he's got enough in his locker that this is more of a 70/30 game - that's not enough to do the dangerous thing of backing against Luke at this point in time.

So we've got three plays - two on possibly declining older talents but still with a good performance in them, and one on our most recent major champion. Should be back later this evening with round two, although it may be a give projections and then real quick bet post in the morning sort of thing.

Austria quarters

Two good wins there, Rock lost though despite having very good situations in legs 8/9 to go 5-4 up, oh well. Very quickly on the quarters - the first two games are priced very close to evens, Littler's at about 70% chances in the market and van Gerwen 65%. That points to these plays:

0.25u van Veen 10/11, Cullen's had an alright tournament, but Gian's possibly been better, and projects about 62%, or 10% more than the line implies. Even if you think that I'm undervaluing Cullen, I don't see how it can be by so much that this isn't a bad play.

0.1u Smith 15/8, their winning averages in the sample I am using are separated by less than a tenth of a point. Smith's about a point and a half below on losing average, but whichever way you look at it, this one is a lot closer than the market suggests and while the projections say it's a flip, if you move van Gerwen up 5% or even 10% on account of thinking I'm overrating Ross, it's still a bet.

Schindler and Bunting I can't separate so line is alright. Littler I've got smack bang in the middle of 70% and 75%, so 2/5 looks fair enough. 

Austria round 3

That was a tad frustrating. 1-3 for the day, Wright over Lauby (just) worked, but the other three didn't, although I don't think in retrospect any of them were bad plays. Nijman got all his legs in 15 or less and averaged 99 in the remainder, just a case of Noppert playing well. van Duijvenbode averaged 98 in the legs he lost, just a case of Edhouse playing well, while Labanauskas was like Nijman, getting three legs in five visits, a solid 96 average in the remainder, just can't really do much when Joe is getting four legs in under twelve. I'd take my chances with those again, but we'll have to wait for another tournament, as today we hit the last sixteen.

Chisnall v Cullen - Mentioned Joe above, Dave had some sloppy legs that he lost but the ones he won were pretty much flawless with all of them in 15 or less, I think that's a good enough to at least consider the 8/11 that Coralbrokes are offering, 4/6 I can pretty much leave, as I'm seeing Chizzy at a bit closer to 65% than 60%. With Joe looking alright, I can pass, but don't blame anyone for taking a shot here.

Edhouse v van Veen - Mentioned Ritchie above, another good display, while Gian had a hard fought match with Ryan Searle with both looking OK but neither on real top form, here I think we can play though, 0.25u van Veen 5/6, the difference being I've got Gian a touch over 65% and the price is stronger. Ritchie's on good form but we generally go with greater body of work and it's hard to see how form makes this even slightly -EV.

Gurney/Bunting - Daryl was a little bit of a surprising winner against Cross but put up a good display for sure, while Bunting also looked good but was forced all the way by Richard Veenstra, where if he didn't completely lose his scoring in the last leg we could be talking about another game. The market has this as Bunting just over 60%, I think that's pretty much spot on.

Clayton/Schindler - Jonny was a bit up and down against Dobey, but was able to get it done relatively comfortably, but nowhere near as comfortably as Schindler was able to whitewash Ricardo Pietreczko. 0.25u Schindler 8/13, Clayton's been a bit better of late for sure but the large data is putting Martin at nearer to 75% than 70%. And he's not exactly playing badly right now himself when compared to bigger samples.

Littler/Ratajski - Blistering finish from Luke to win the last four legs all in four visits as the last game, while Ratajski as the first game wasn't at his best but also got through for just the loss of a couple of legs against Dom Taylor. We generally think Ratajski is undervalued, but it's not by enough here, a shade over 3/1 when we've not even got him at 30% to win the game is nowhere near enough to consider going against Littler.

Rock/Noppert - Josh was another player to have a great last 32 game, first leg was a bit scruffy from both but otherwise it was very tidy. Danny we mentioned also had a good game, but should come into this as a small underdog with Josh having a touch above a 55% chance, so the market putting Noppert as the favourite is a tad confusing. 0.25u Rock 21/20 on Coralbrokes, evens is also fine.

Klose/Smith - Daniel took advantage of a pretty meh Gilding to win 6-2, while Ross was another player to hit four twelve dart kills in a deciding win over Barney, two of those coming back to back from 5-4 down to do it when it counts. Seems a pretty straightforward one here, Klose only really having about a one in four shot, neither side offers value at the odds offered.

van Gerwen/Wright - Michael did a professional job over de Zwaan just losing the one leg, while Wright certainly wasn't at his best but got through against Lauby. This is a redo from this week's Premier League, and it's hard to see past the same result, although with Peter having a touch more than a one in three shout, we really should be taking a small stab on Snakebite with some places touching 3/1. I'm kind of finding it hard to say do it, but let's leave it as don't put MvG in an acca, as the price you can get on him definitely doesn't appear value.

Austria round two

Going to have to be really quick here. Yesterday was super unfortunate where the thing we thought might happen 15-20% of the time did happen, a perfect storm of Joyce not scoring at his best, missing with three clear at double to force a decider with the darts, and Lauby hitting multiple three figure checkouts. Schindler clawed back some of it, but that does undo some of the good work in the last few tournaments. Let's see if we can get back on track today.

Ratajski/Taylor - Dom's pretty good, but may already be at the spot where he's a bit overrated? Or Krzysztof is still underrated? If we could get even slightly better than 4/6 on Ratajski, I'd go with it, and wouldn't blame you if you just went with it anyway.

Noppert/Nijman - 0.1u Nijman 8/5. Kid is really good. Probably actually projects to win more than Noppert does. Only small because I still feel Wessel has yet to make a "statement" win, but this could be it.

van Duijvenbode/Edhouse - Redo, boring. Ritchie's form is very good, but Dirk is still the better player. 0.1u van Duijvenbode 20/21

Bunting/Veenstra - Veenstra is slightly better than what the line suggests. But only slightly. Fair would be 7/4 as opposed to 2/1 so edge isn't quite there.

Searle/van Veen - Correctly priced tight. Correctly priced with Ryan having the small edge.

Cullen/Labanauskas - 0.1u Labanauskas 11/4, Joe doesn't seem to be in the right place given recent comments, Darius projects as winning more than one in three, we've got a great price, so let's take the stab.

Cross/Gurney - Looks like a pretty standard better player wins two out of three times line. As such this is really close to a play on Rob with 8/13 available in one place.

Chisnall/Dolan - The line looks alright on this one as well, which is odd seeing how I'd have expected to get 6/4 on Brendan despite Dolan actually projecting just over 40%.

Pietreczko/Schindler - Schindi continues to be underrated. Even as a 2/1 on favourite against a seed. I mean it's not enough to fire, but having a fraction over a 70% chance, it's kind of close to it.

Klose/Gilding - How the fuck does Daniel Klose get in here? That is a bit of a weird ruling, but whatever, line actually looks alright, maybe Daniel could actually be a tick or two shorter but it's not enough for a bet.

Smith/van Barneveld - Line seems fine here again. Ross is good enough to have a 60-65% chance against the multiple world champion, as such maybe it could even be shaded even more in his favour, but only just.

Rock/van den Bergh - Another good line. Dimi's doing enough that he's only a 45/55 dog, Josh is 4/5, let's move on.

van Gerwen/de Zwaan - Another redo from a few weeks ago. 4/1's about the right price though.

Wright/Lauby - Wow, that line on Coralbrokes is really short. I have to think that will be palped, regardless of how bad Peter is playing. I remain unconvinced by Danny, 0.25u Wright 8/15, he should win this more than three in four.

Clayton/Dobey - We fired on this one last week at 8/13. Now we can only get 8/15. That's still undervaluing Dobey, but it's close enough to correct that with Jonny maybe showing a bit more last week that we can pass on it.

Heta/Littler - What a game to finish, but another one where the line looks alright, Luke projects just over two in three and is 4/9.

So four bets, we go back to the laying Lauby well, a couple of other real close ones. Let's go.