Dobey/Clayton - It's perhaps a surprise with his level of play, which is up with the world's elite just on a numbers basis, that Dobey is still yet to win one of these (indeed, he still only has one final and that was five years ago), but two semi finals this year and a decent number of final day appearances see Chris creep into the top half of the leaderboard. Jonny's picked up his game after a rough start to the year, turning things round roughly when he reached his one final at the Euro Tour level, but beyond that his successes here have been somewhat limited. Chris is actually only projecting at around the 60/40 mark, which seems surprising, I would have guessed this'd be a 2-1 sort of game. If anything the market has things even closer, but not enough to give the edge that I would want to go with a Dobey bet.
Cross/Wade - Rob picked up his second Euro Tour title this season with a notable final win over Luke Humphries, after being the one player who until last season seemed the most surprising without a Euro Tour win on the whole circuit, being unfortunate not to add a second in a spicy final which saw Littler claim his first win. James I think is probably in the best place he's been for several years, but has had an extremely quiet season at Euro Tour level, only actually making the final day once all year, relying on showing up and claiming first or second round money and doing so frequently, playing all the events seeing him qualify with some room to spare. Wade's actually doing enough that, while I see him as an underdog, it's only around 55/45, but as Rob's priced at 4/5 it's another clear no bet proposition.
Pietreczko/Heta - Ricardo's had a rough as hell year with bad form, injuries (one causing the other?) and what not, but his bink at the end of last season giving him generally the cash to be seeded all year, he got enough wins to make the top half of the table, aided by a surprise final where he ran Dave Chisnall fairly close. Heta is another player on the fringes of the top ten, but in terms of European results he's not really looked likely to add to his one title (also in the last event of the season, albeit two years ago compared to Ricardo's one) with just the three final session showings. The German's picked his game up a bit but is still only around a one in three shot, Damon's actually priced a tad shorter than 4/9, which is fair enough and everything is within margins of error, so continuing to keep money in pocket.
Wright/Wattimena - Peter has been much improved over the latter stages of the season, where he was able to get one of the more surprising Euro Tour binks over Littler to see him creep into the top ten, he didn't add a great deal of significance after that, but it was enough. Jermaine is having an outstanding year, playing probably as well as he has done since he was on the fringes of the top sixteen, if not ever, reaching two early quarter finals as well as the last one, and year long he's outscoring a lot of well known players - including Wright, who he projects to beat 60% of the time. The sample I'm using is now recent enough that a good percentage of it is from when Peter's been playing better, but maybe that projection is a bit of an overestimate on Jermaine. It won't alter my decision to bet, but it will temper the sizing, 0.1u Wattimena 11/10
Littler/Gilding - What's not been written about Luke these past twelve months isn't really worth writing, all you need to know is two binks, including in his debut, seeing him comfortably qualify as the third seed. That means Andrew only just made it, and again it's a case of just showing up, losing half the time, losing to the seed most of the other time, but just abusing the new quali system to get the money needed. This might be the most one sided game of the first round, although Luke still only projects to win three times out of four. The market loves him even more than that, but going 4/1 on Gilding just seems so wrong.
Humphries/Aspinall - The world number one added another two Euro Tour titles this year, dropping just the one leg in each final, against Huybrechts this last weekend that'd be a not unreasonable call, against van Gerwen early in the year, maybe a bit more so. Another final was added in between and he's the top seed in this half of the draw. Nathan just about got home to be here, having a chunk of events where he didn't play for well publicised reasons, and only the one run to the business session, qualification was still somewhat in doubt in Prague and he will have been delighted to get a domestic qualifier to seal the deal. This isn't necessarily the kindest draw for Luke, but he's so good that he projects in the 60% to 65% region - probably lean higher due to consistency, but that does ask the question whether we should bet on Nathan if we think he's fully healthy. If he's 100%, then an available 12/5 would be well worth a look, but that's still a bit of an unknown, so I won't go with it.
Rock/de Decker - Josh finally got the breakthrough at this level, avenging a prior loss to Clayton in the final in the Netherlands, and while he's done alright outside of that, you do wonder if there wasn't some money left on the table. Mike's the hottest name in the sport right now having got a major title seemingly from nowhere, but has merely an alright record this season on the Euro Tour with just a couple of quarters to his name - one last weekend of course. This for me projects as close to even as you can have it - I've got Josh fractionally ahead, but form/confidence intangibles makes me want to call it a pure 50/50 shot. Mike is actually priced as the favourite, but it's short odds on and we can't get better than 11/10 on Rock, and more than one tick in the right direction would be needed there.
Be back Friday evening for round two.
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