The quarter final games

Happy new year to all readers, it's been a relatively quiet night for me, if only that I sat in the same pub all night getting drunk on the quiet side of the facility, so let's be real quick on the quarters:

Dobey/Price - Wafer thin game. Really, really tight. Can't see it as more than 51/49 in terms of Dobey over reasonable samples. More reasonable samples do favour Chris, but there really isn't much here other than to say this should be the pick of the quarters and let's enjoy it.

MvG/Rydz - Now here it's a bit different. This is pretty much floating at 3-1 in favour of van Gerwen. This is fairly consistent across all samples, and bear in mind that all those samples will include Callan's admittedly great play in this tournament. I'm going to tone my bet sizing down fractionally as a result, but only just, this is a big difference in quality of opponent and a huge difference in terms of what it'd do for the player in question.

Wright/Bunting - Another one where we've got a player who is offering all sorts of red flags in terms of trying to get a read, Wright appears to be both ridiculously ill but hugely outperforming his historical stats both at the same time, and it's hard to say what to trust. The answer is probably neither, and fortunately the standard projections are telling us that it is a clear no bet (although, oddly, the pointer is more in favour of Wright within that no bet window) so we can just leave the questions entirely.

Littler/Aspinall - Kind of the same really. Luke is a huge favourite, a price of about 1/5 doesn't really give us the edge, Nathan may be playing better than the historical stats state, and that's not unreasonable to think, but we can just ignore this one as well as the line looks in the right ballpark.

So pretty just back van Gerwen from where I'm sat.

The Monday games

Or, as it's so late, today's games:

Doets/Dobey - Kevin got away with one against Ratajski, going down 2-0 offering nothing then being reliant on Krzysztof butchering a stack of match darts, while Chris got through a good game with Rock, where he was just that little bit better. Naturally the projections are loving Chris hugely as they are in every Doets game, if Kevin continues to godmode his way through this tournament then I'll guess we just get stung again, but that's just a risk I'm going to take.

Owen/Rydz - Someone we didn't think would get to the quarter finals is going to get to the quarter finals, but enough about Peter Wright, Robert got through a pretty nip and tuck game before he got the key break against Ricky Evans, while Callan continues to roll back the years playing at near peak form with another great win, this time over Dimitri. Callan's projections are ahead of Owen's for longer spells, for most recent form it does swing hugely in his favour, but it's not quite enough to make us think Owen isn't undervalued, although it will be for just the tiniest of tiny stabs.

Pietreczko/Aspinall - Ricardo looked pretty solid in eliminating Scott Williams, while Nathan was nowhere near as good as a 4-0 scoreline against Andrew Gilding suggests he actually might have been. The line in this one looks pretty good, I'm not seeing any edge whatsoever either way, Nathan's a favourite but not by much, with Ricardo playing like shit in the early stages (where Nathan was strongly favoured), maybe you can make a case for the German, but that was when Aspinall wasn't playing great either so call that a wash.

Bunting/Woodhouse - Stephen was very solid in a relatively routine win over Madars Razma, while Woodhouse had to overcome a nine and a huge deficit against Damon Heta to get over the line. Stephen is favoured here and correctly so, looking pretty solid in all samples but a few percent better in the more recent ones, it all relates to Luke having maybe just more than a one in four shot which more or less takes the game out of gambling interest.

van Gerwen/de Graaf - Michael was given a surprisingly tough time by Brendan Dolan, while Jeffrey got through Paolo Nebrida in a little bit of a gift of a game. Surely de Graaf's run comes to an end here, 1.2 I don't think is fully representing the edge MvG has in this one, it's not a big edge but it's enough for me to have a small play.

Littler/Joyce - For the second time in two games Luke was made to work, and for twice in two games he should have been 2-0 down in sets, but meh, he got through Ian White, while Ryan needed to go through an extremely tough and good quality game with Ryan Searle which went all seven sets. Think the market is ever, ever so slightly underrating Joyce here, but it's the sort of thing where the margins of error I build into the model say it's only worth a couple of nickels on Ryan so yeah, move on.

Should be back on NYE for the quarters.

The Sunday games

de Graaf/Nebrida - Kind of hard to call this one, given the relative lack of data on Paolo, but Jeffrey was given a far tougher than anticipated test by Sweeting before stunning Gary Anderson, while Nebrida dodged all the bullets against Jim Williams before despatching a very disappointing Ross Smith. Paolo doesn't have enough recent data (indeed it's probably all from this tournament and nothing else) to give a reliable three month trend spot, but the longer data are both at 69% (nice) for de Graaf, which doesn't indicate any real secure value, although Jeffrey is probably overvalued a tad.

Doets/Ratajski - Kevin fairly easily got rid of van Leuven before causing one of the bigger upsets to date in eliminating Michael Smith, while Krzysztof was involved in a high quality game against Toylo but one where it didn't seem like he was in a huge amount of danger. The market seems to be overreacting to Kevin having one good game, Ratajski is just too consistently good and this might be one of the strongest edges we have to date in this event.

van den Bergh/Rydz - Dimitri didn't end up having too much trouble defeating Dylan Slevin, while Callan looked fantastic in his first round game, then didn't look quite as good against Schindler but still won 3-0 anyway. This feels like a standard no bet game, I'm thinking Dimitri is better, but it's only around 55/45 or there or there abouts, and as the market is only just shading things in the Belgian's favour, we can avoid this one.

Evans/Owen - Final last 32 game and it's between two players nobody thought would be here, at least not both of them, Ricky getting through two 3-2 slugfests against Mathers and Chisnall, while Owen was not made to work quite so hard against Zonneveld and Clemens. This is a weird one - both sets of longer data can't really separate the players, but the most recent sample size, which although not the largest, is enough to be used, does favour Robert and does favour him strongly in consistency, making the overall number 55/45 and with Ricky being favoured the other way, makes Stack Attack a decent play in my eyes.

Clayton/Price - Now we kick into the real business end, with two World Cup teammates facing off having both been tested in last set deciders. An easy one to avoid this for me, Price is projecting a touch better than 60/40 for me, which given the lines is right in the middle of the no bet territory, it is influenced a tad by the full year data which doesn't really help Jonny, but I'm not sure it swings things enough to consider taking a shot on the Ferret.

Humphries/Wright - I think this one can be avoided from a betting standpoint entirely. I was on Peter against Wattimena, but when I saw his complete lack of interest in the walk on, supposedly due to illness (which miraculously first got known about 10 minutes before the game as usual), I took the option to cash out for break even. Oops, but as we really can't get an accurate read on where Wright's game is actually at, I'm not even going to suggest anything for this one.

The Saturday games

Joyce/Searle - Should be a good one this, Joyce came through two 3-1 wins against Labanauskas and Noppert that both seemed to play a bit closer than the scoreline suggests, while Searle had one of the more comfortable second round wins in taking out Matt Campbell. Searle's better, but Joyce has shown enough consistently throughout the year to be in with more than a fighting chance, showing at over 40% in all three different samples, creeping up a little bit over the last 3+ months. Unfortunately the market is more or less in agreement with that assessment.

Williams/Pietreczko - Match up between two unseeded players just in or on the fringes of the top 32, so kind of an important one for UK Open purposes at a very minimum. Scott came through one of the better round one games against Niko Springer, as well as a scrappy one in terms of scoring against Cross, both by a three sets to one margin. Ricardo on the other hand got through a fairly comfortable opener against Zong before getting home against van Veen which may have been more comfortable than a 3-1 end result indicates. I've got this one fairly tightly - Scott over an average of my projection lengths is just a shade under 55/45 for me, but that is heavily influenced by the full year sample, which takes into account when Ricardo was playing a fair bit worse than he likely is now, so if you do think it's a true coinflip then there's a tiny bit of value on the German here.

Aspinall/Gilding - Now we get two seeds, both winning 3-1, Nathan playing a bit worse statistically by Andrew but definitely being dragged down a bit more by his opponent, Gates playing significantly worse than Lukeman did. Looking at the numbers, Gilding may be a tad undervalued, he's currently floating in between 2.5 and 3 on the exchanges, and while I think Nathan is the favourite, it's not by a huge amount, just a bit more than 55%, so I think you can justify going with Andrew in this one.

Dobey/Rock - Another seed v seed matchup and one of the more anticipated games of this round, Rock didn't drop a set against Griffin but played worse than Dobey, who was taken to four sets by Merkx but looked better regardless of the game being closer. This one seems genuinely too close to call, I've got Dobey better but it's only by a percentage or two, the market has things a little bit wider so there could be the tiniest bit of value on Josh here.

van Gerwen/Dolan - Two players with real easy first round games against Hurrell and Lee respectively, neither dropping a set nor looking in any real trouble. This is one that could get ugly quickly, year long makes this about 80/20 in van Gerwen's favour, which is not quite as much as the market thinks he's a favourite, but an average of sample sizes makes it more like 90/10, such is Brendan's current form, and hints to van Gerwen actually being a value play.

Littler/White - Luke made hard work of Meikle early on, losing a set and going close to losing the first two, but looked phenomenal after that, while Ian got a first round bye and then ground his way through a tough match with Ritchie Edhouse. This one is looking even more one sided than the previous game - White is longer than 20/1, but as I have him at about a one in twenty shot, that's fine by me.

The Friday games

Heta/Woodhouse - This one's moderately interesting, Damon was made to work by Scutt in the opening round, while Luke got a pretty trivial opening round win against Ilagan, before putting aside an under par Mike de Decker, only having lost the one set to this stage. The market is solidly favouring Heta, but maybe not enough, he's getting better relatively speaking against Woodhouse as we get more form based but looks around three in four at the very worst.

Clayton/Gurney - Two players back into action fairly quickly, with both coming through 3-2 victories in sets and under varying levels of danger as to whether they'd get through their opening games, Clayton arguably more so, and Gurney I think played a tad better in the first game. Weird spot for a projection, Jonny I think is a touch undervalued, although the most bullish sets for Gurney are both the full data set and the shortest term one, and the edge certainly isn't huge.

Bunting/Razma - Stephen probably wasn't at his best in the opening game, but it was still enough to get through a dangerous opponent in Gotthardt, while Razma got a pair of 3-1 wins, Kist looking really good early before falling off while Dirk was just not on it at all. Market seems to have the assessment round about right, Madars has a chance but it's only around one in four.

Price/Cullen - Gerwyn had relatively little trouble handling Keane Barry, while Joe put together his best game in quite some time to shock Wessel Nijman. The market is for me overreacting way, way too much to Joe having one good match - I find it hard to reconcile a line just the wrong side of 1.5 with a win chance (where here I'm averaging separate sample sizes, so these will sample his good game every time) of over 80% for Price. If Joe fucks me over again good luck to him.

Wattimena/Wright - Jermaine has come through two very swift wins over Stefan Bellmont and James Wade, and continues to look the best he has ever done, while Wright averaged several points lower than Plaisier but was able to scrape home with the win. This may look ridiculous, but Wright seems a lot closer than what the market suggests. I've got him around 40% on longer sample sizes, and then from September onwards he actually projects as a favourite around the other way (and around the other size the other way) - albeit with a fairly big consistency differential. The eye test says it's mad, but well north of 2/1 seems just wrong.

Humphries/Kenny - Not a huge deal to see here, Luke was not tested in his game and barely needed to get out of neutral to get a win, while Nick's dropped just the one set but doesn't look like producing anywhere near the numbers he'll need to be competitive in this one. Nick may be ever so slightly undervalued, but prices in the low double digits are not what is needed to have confidence in any sort of edge in causing the upset of all time.

64 down, 31 to go - a round 1/2 overview

I'm going to leave it until later to post any sort of actual round 3 specific thoughts, or projections, I will probably end up being bored tomorrow and work through the 27th games then, failing that Boxing Day means no trains and while I can likely get our game on at the pub, there's still bags of time to work with. As for how the punting's been going, while I've stopped giving match specific "tips" (I'll still give insights and you can use them as you will), I think considering the madness that is 14 seeds going out, especially compared to two years ago when it was just three, where I'm at is not too bad, and if Hempel had have gotten over the line against Gurney, I'd actually be in the black, which considering the number of times I've had:

a) a player hit god mode level darts against them (Michael Smith, Nijman twice)

b) a player fail to turn up or miss a bunch of doubles (Jim Williams, Gary Anderson, Christian Kist after the nine)

c) some combination of the above

Isn't the worst position. I'm playing a lot more aggressively with a lot more maths behind the sizings of bets, and it was working pretty well until absolute shockers with Smith, Ando and Nijman all losing. They just do their job and the bankroll would have increased by 40-50% in just two rounds. Did get some nice profits, Merkx over Burton was by far the best, but the wins by Gotthardt, Hurrell and Pietreczko (last night) all gave a nice steady profit, along with steady smaller improvements, either by hitting odds against fliers (White, Gilding, heck Meikle the second time gave me some value, make it 2-0 as he should and while he probably still loses, it does ask a lot more questions) or odds on players who should have been more odds on (Tricole, Plaisier, Wattimena the first time, Price, Searle, Ratajski, Rock). But enough about what I've done, here's some thoughts that might influence what you do:

Weird spot for Humphries to be in. Tricole offered nothing, and it's hard to see Kenny putting up much resistance, but then it's a hell of a big jump up in form to Jermaine in round four (assuming he beats Wright which I don't think is as foregone a conclusion as the market thinks). Would hate for him to be a tad, if not complacent, maybe not up to full speed on account of not having to be. Because against Jermaine, he will be. Kenny's had a nice cameo but his opponents have disappointed, Plaisier was also a bit disappointing, barely scraping through round one and missing a big chance against Wright, Bellmont could easily have won if he'd got a different draw elsewhere. lolwade as usual.

Bunting was so-so, but will give some credit to Kai who's looked so much better this year. Razma coming through another undisclosed health issue game against Dirk was meh and I don't think he's showing enough, Heta was given a very good game while Woodhouse didn't have the greatest game statistically, but dumping out an in form major champion is not to be overlooked. I think the two seeds should clash and that ought to be a good close one as any 8v9 match up ought to be. Kist just falling apart after hitting the nine darter was so sad to see, Robb doesn't look like he's got any better in the last twelve months, if anything he's got worse and it's hard to see how he can improve his game without taking a big risk to play better players more often. Ilagan looked poor.

This quarter's opened up so nicely for Littler. White I think will be happy enough just to have got through to this round, then while either Joyce or Searle won't be a walkover (particularly Searle who I've got to give the edge to), it's still a game he should be comfortable in and I think he'd have preferred either of those to Noppert. Labanauskas had maybe the best game he's had in a couple of years (although still lost), Sherrock looked alright in places, and incredibly sad that Sosing wasn't able to play, and while I believe he's fine given postings on X, that Sky seemingly haven't said anything to that effect (without going into specifics obviously) is a bit out of order I think..

Fourth eighth is a mess. Cross has gone, van Veen has gone, so maybe we're in a position where Aspinall, if fully healthy (did not look brilliant against Gates, but that could have just been the opponent), can get something going? Gilding was fine but I can't see him living with a peak Aspinall. Neither can Williams or Pietreczko. Kumar finally getting a set was pretty cool, Zong looked about where we've seen him before but is another one where I don't see how he gets better. Springer's game with Williams was good and he's going to be a solid addition to the tour, Menzies was clearly disappointing but in the circumstances we can allow it.

Didn't think Smith would get that far, but I did think he'd get by Doets, but Kevin played very good stuff, apart from that one World Series game, maybe the best he's played for 18 months. Do that again and he can keep it close with Ratajski, who was made to work by a decent Toylo. Dobey and Rock will meet as expected, pretty disappointed that Sedlacek couldn't get through as I think that'd have been a much closer game than Griffin gave Rock. Noa might have been the best player in the first round, at least relative to expectations.

Then we have the only section with all the seeds. Clayton and Gurney can count themselves pretty fortunate, Jonny especially, but Daryl's numbers looked pretty good against a Hempel throwing near his best. Price took care of Barry as easily as we thought he would, while Cullen played his best game in recent memory, before going off on a weird post-match tirade that frankly asked more questions than his darts might have answered. Very disappointing from Wessel, who made it hard work against a much improved Carolissen. Goto showed some flashes, Huybrechts didn't seem too bad, just Keane doing things at the right time. Similar with de Zwaan really.

van Gerwen's had all his Christmasses come at the same time. For both Smith and Ando to go out, against players who were playing fine, if not better than expected, but certainly not at levels where you would expect the seeds to lose if they showed up, is a huge, huge fillip and I can't see Dolan being able to pressure. That said, we said that about Dolan twelve months ago more than once. Jim missing all those darts for the match (and for the first set let's not forget) was disappointing, Sweeting showed some game and was certainly a lot better than anticipated, and if he'd gone 2-0 up, who knows. Jim Long disappointed, Landman if anything was more disappointing.

Fuck knows where this Ricky Evans game has come from. Only just scraping over the line against Mathers, Chizzy should have walked it, but lost, that comical miscount clearly didn't help, but that's one he will want to have back. Owen's doing a good job but may have jumped the gun with the "save my tour card bitches", as he very much has not. He's only got one right now if we're working on the assumption Beaton resigns his card, and if he loses and de Graaf wins, he's called it too early. Zonneveld and Clemens weren't awful to be fair. Willie could maybe have done more but Dylan played just about the better game, Grbavac looked comfortable on the stage but the average was clearly assisted by Callan Rydz finding his best game from nowhere, which fell off a bit against Schindler, but it was still enough, and at these sorts of levels there's no reason he can't get through to MvG.

Check back over the next couple of days for round three posts. I'll aim to get the first day of round three thoughts out tomorrow, but no guarantees.

Ratajski, Veenstra, Toylo

Krzysztof Ratajski (#34 FRH, 91.85 (#25), 466-430 (52.01%, #48))

Richard Veenstra (#49 FRH, 89.34 (#51), 385-371 (50.93%, #56))

Alexis Toylo (#166 FRH, 84.31 (#89), 136-111 (55.06%, #24))

Pretty quiet year for Krzysztof, but still one in which he's holding his own in the top 32, although it doesn't look like he'll get back to the top 16 levels he was at two or three years ago, it doesn't look like he's going anywhere immediately. Ratajski finished just outside the top 20 in Pro Tour averages, and while he wouldn't be able to make a final this season, it was a season of solid accumulation, peaking with a couple of semi finals and a couple of quarter finals, so still showing the ability to threaten a deep run here ant there. The European Tour wasn't quite so great, as Krzysztof had his worst season in more than half a decade, only making the final day on two occasions as he's dropped down the rankings causing him to enter at the first round stage. TV wasn't terrible, with a win at the UK Open over Adam Gawlas, only to lose to Mervyn King at the next stage, and he got a key Matchplay win over Chizzy before ending a distant second best to Andrew Gilding. He's dropped far enough down that he then didn't qualify for the Grand Prix, nor did he make the Euros or the Slam, while the PC Finals was about par for the course with a win over Razma but losing a decider to Damon Heta. It's steady, but results are kind of needed fairly soon one way or another.

Richard's had a bit of a quieter 2024 after making a big impression in 2023, but still makes it here pretty comfortably after a solid season. On the floor, Veenstra made just the single quarter final, but made a fair few board finals, doing enough throughout the year to comfortably qualify for Minehead, albeit not with the highest seed he could get, resulting in running into Mike de Decker in the opening round. That would be one of two TV appearances for Veenstra, just about getting a bye to round three of the UK Open, where Richard defeated Owen Roelofs to get into the bag with the big boys, where he'd coincidentally get Mike de Decker as well and drop out. The Euro Tour wasn't too bad, Veenstra qualifying for six events, and he would generally lose to the seed - just having the one first round loss, but countering that with one passage to the third round when he beat Dave Chisnall in Riesa. That was nearly enough to make a European Championship debut, but not quite. Everything's solidly in the top 64, which is where most of us thought he would be, but will need a little bit more to push up to the top 32.

Finally we have Toylo, who will make a debut after an excellent Asian Tour season which saw the Philippines player top the table by a fairly comfortable margin, ending up in the top five (after adding some minimum participation criteria) in the averages, booking his spot here for a first go. On that Asian Tour, Alexis won the first two events of the season, and continued a red hot start by getting up to five total titles (and two more finals) in the first half of the season. He wasn't able to do a huge amount in the second half, missing one of the weekends, but enough points were in the bag to claim the overall title. This got him into the Asian Championship as the top seed, where he'd advance through the groups, but fall to Lee Lok Yin at the quarter final stages. This form allowed him to make a World Cup debut, but that would end in disappointment with a very one sided winner takes all game against Belgium in the group stages. Another great find from the area, let's see what he can do on the biggest stage of all.

It's a good season for Alexis, but Veenstra looks like he'll be a bit too classy, with Toylo only projecting around 20% to win the game. Ratajski is that little bit better again, but not overwhelmingly, with the Dutchman having more than a one in three shot. It's not 40% though.

Rock, Sedlacek, Griffin

Josh Rock (#16 FRH, 93.30 (#12), 599-499 (54.55%, #27))

Karel Sedlacek (#63 FRH, 90.77 (#36), 352-339 (50.94%, #55))

Rhys Griffin (#101 FRH, 86.32 (#78), 188-243 (43.62%, #90))

Solid year of progression for Josh. While he's maybe not at the level a lot of us thought he'd be at by now 24 months ago when the hype level was at its peak, it's not been a bad year and there has been some decent forward momentum generated. The big one was a first breakthrough at European Tour level, winning the title in the Netherlands with wins over van Duijvenbode, Menzies, Price, Schindler and Clayton, and he'd do a generally good job in that tour, not making too many errors and pushing through to four further final sessions outside of that win. At the lower level of the Pro Tour, Rock added a further four finals, turning two of them into wins, and with two of those finals coming in the last three events, it's a pointer that he's rounding into form at the right time nicely. I suppose the big disappointment has been the lack of progression on the TV stage - he did get an expected UK Open win against Patrick Geeraets but would lose to Rob Cross in the fifth round, but everything else has been a case of first round exits - Ross Smith at the Matchplay isn't unwinnable, Ryan Joyce at the Grand Prix is certainly winnable, Mike de Decker at the Euros isn't an absurd ask, in fairness his Grand Slam group draw was very tough so we can forgive that one, and while he got through a round of the Players Championship Finals as expected against Ricky Evans, he'd not win a leg against Jermaine Wattimena in the next round. He's seeded 18 here, he's a bit better than that in terms of levels, but it's going to be hard to push the rankings up further without a decent TV run somewhere.

Karel looks like he may have just done enough to retain his tour card after a mediocre 2023 season where he didn't make the worlds last year, but this year has been a fair bit better with steady floor play which is reflected in a decent scoring rate, and the occasional good result. On the floor, Sedlacek did enough to make it here as well as make the Players Championship Finals - a top 40 average is not bad at all, and he had a couple of decent runs, with a quarter final early in the season (albeit not facing the toughest opponents) and then a best run of a semi final in August, but again not facing anyone really tricky until the last sixteen, where Joyce then Clemens is not trivial but certainly not the hardest combination to get through. It was mainly steady accumulation that got him to Minehead, with more first round wins than losses and getting to the board final or better on ten occasions. At Minehead he'd run into Ryan Joyce who'd win 6-4, and earlier in the season at the same venue Sedlacek would lose his first game to Robert Owen at the UK Open. The only other TV was the World Cup, where with Adam Gawlas, Czechia would finally make some inroads, coming through an interesting group of Iceland and Bahrain, only to narrowly lose to Sweden in the last sixteen. The European Tour added the odd bit of extra cash, but it was just the three appearances, with one first round and two second round losses. Still, it's a better year, and assuming he does hold his card then there's plenty to build on in 2025.

Rhys Griffin will make a debut here after winning his tour card as one of the last points qualifiers at Q-School. To say it's been a tough debut season would not be unfair - Rhys was well out of the top 100 averages at Pro Tour level, and would suffer more than 20 first round defeats on the floor. He did win his board once in July, and has got the odd notable win, including a couple over Dirk van Duijvenbode, but it was nowhere near the production needed to get anywhere near Minehead. At the UK Open he would squeeze past a Riley's qualifier in the first round, but then lose out to Leonard Gates in round two. The European Tour was a total loss, with him not qualifying for a single event, but seemingly out of nowhere he did get through the tour card holder qualifier for the World Series finals to gain some stage experience, although it was only brief, losing out 6-4 to Jeff Smith in the opening round. He's still relatively young, having played Development Tour this decade, but it looks like at least for now the Pro Tour level is a bit above him unfortunately.

Hard to look past Sedlacek in round one. He's got the advantage in pretty much every metric you could care to mention, and I can't see how Griffin has much more than a one in four chance over a match length he's probably never played before. In round two, it should be Rock's game to lose, having about a two in three chance, maybe a bit more (assuming Karel wins), but with the TV results maybe at the back of his mind, maybe Sedlacek can show up as we know he can and ask some serious questions of Rocky.

van den Bergh, O'Connor, Slevin

Dimitri van den Bergh (#17 FRH, 90.39 (#38), 413-417 (49.76%, #65))

Willie O'Connor (#52 FRH, 91.63 (#30), 379-340 (52.71%, #37))

Dylan Slevin (#71 FRH, 87.34 (#73), 234-282 (45.35%, #87))

Looking at those three stats, we may be forgiven for thinking that this has been a bad year for Dimitri, outside of the top 32 in scoring for those in the tournament, losing more legs than he's won in the database. It's just come in a year where he's won a major title, such is the silliness that darts can throw up at times. We'll come to that last - on the floor, Dimitri's been kind of ordinary - his Pro Tour ranking is barely top 50, on the floor his averages aren't even that high, and he had a streak of six straight first round exits in the first half of the season, including to some pretty average players who he should be beating. Of course, he ended that streak with one of his two board wins of the season - naturally given a bit of a feast or famine season, that one was turned into a bink, although a fortunate one given the toughest opponents he faced in that one were a pre-going nuts Mike de Decker and Martin Schindler. His European Tour results were equally unimpressive, getting into all of them through the new system (albeit with one withdrawal), but only getting past a seed once (and then immediately losing in the third round) with a current streak of five first round losses. So it's just been TV, where outside of the obvious, van den Bergh has been getting results that match his ranking - a quarter run at the Matchplay (where he hit a nine) was bettered by a semi final run at the Grand Prix, but in both of these I think it's fair to say he dodged the truly elite talent with maybe his most impressive win in those events being over Dave Chisnall. He missed the Euros, did get out of his Grand Slam group, which again wasn't the hardest and he immediately lost to Wattimena in the knockout stages, and Ross Smith annihilated him in the opening round of the Players Championship Finals. But hey. Brendan Dolan. Vincent van der Voort. Jonny Clayton. Martin Lukeman. Damon Heta. Luke Humphries. Win. Win. Win. Win. Win. Win and that will be a second major title thank you very much. Argue what you like about that path to the semis, you've still got to have some level of play to handle the world number one in a final, and Dimitri did. Just about.

Willie is here for an eighth straight appearance, always floating between pushing towards the top 32 but never quite getting there, and falling down towards the top 64 but never doing so badly that his tour card is in danger. This year, he was the 17th of 32 Pro Tour qualifiers, so slap bang in the middle. Doesn't feel like we've talked about him much at all, so let's see. TV was limited to very short appearances at Minehead twice, not winning a leg against Suljovic in March and only managing the three legs against Zonneveld last month, so not much to go on there. He had just a couple of Euro Tour appearances - first in Riesa he beat Mervyn King and was perhaps a bit unfortunate to not beat Ross Smith, then in the Netherlands he was heavily beaten by Mickey Mansell, while in the only other televised appearance of the World Cup, he'd go out at the group stages for a second straight year as he and Keane Barry couldn't handle the unlikely Chinese Taipei duo. So it's all about the floor, here Willie's stats are solid - just outside the top 32 in averages, only eight first round defeats, four board wins and eight further board finals, peaking at the right time with a semi final in the last event of the season (ironically losing to Rock, who he beat to win his board the day before), and just scanning through the match list he has quite a good array of people he's managed to beat, there's a lot of notable names there and I'm not going to try to name them all, just to say he didn't finish in the top 32 in the floor prize money table for no reason, he's been playing good stuff. Just have to hope it converts to the stage really.

Dylan's had another season where he's kind of been hanging around and not really progressing after garnering a lot of expectations immediately prior to, and immediately after winning. his tour card nearly two years ago. It looks like he should just hold it, but if he wants to keep it after 2025 he's going to need to up his game after a mediocre season which needed a PDPA qualifier bail out, something he managed to do with wins over Jitse van der Wal, Berry van Peer and then Martijn Dragt to book a second appearance here, twelve months after losing to Florian Hempel in the opening round. The floor has been a massive struggle for Slevin - he got his solitary board win in event six, with a fairly fortunate draw, not playing anyone who has qualified for the worlds until he lost to Karel Sedlacek in the last sixteen, but that would be his only board win all season - heck, it'd be one of only two board finals full stop. He has just sixteen wins on the floor all season, only five of which have been against players who qualified for the world championship. The Euro Tour was a little better - qualifying for three isn't too bad given the new qualifying system, and he did pick up a couple of wins over Jamie Hughes and Steve Beaton, although it should be noted that if everyone who originally qualified for the events turned up, Dylan wouldn't have been at any of them. He did just about beat Arron Monk at the UK Open, prior to a loss to Luke Woodhouse, and has shown that he's still decent for his age - easy to forget he's only just turned 22, he was in the top ten in averages on the Development Tour, but found it a bit hard to convert that into wins, with one quarter final, one semi final and then one final where he lost to van Veen, with too many tournaments stalling within the prize money but the early stages thereof. Perhaps his best showing of the season was in the world youth, where after getting through his group he beat Dominik Gruellich and then Wessel Nijman in a huge upset, before van Veen was a bit too strong in the semi final.

Dylan's numbers aren't so bad that he's not without a chance, he projects around one in three against O'Connor, but factor in a little bit of an adjustment for consistency, and then maybe a bit more for pure confidence, and it might drift down closer to one in four, either way it's going to be a hard task for Slevin against someone with the stage experience Willie has. Then in round two, I think it's going to be fairly close - Dimitri's projecting about 60/40, but there's an equally big consistency issue in this one so it could end up being very tight.

Gurney, Hempel, de Zwaan

Daryl Gurney (#23 FRH, 90.91 (#34), 677-563 (54.60%, #26))

Florian Hempel (#53 FRH, 89.44 (#49), 334-326 (50.61%, #61))

Jeffrey de Zwaan (#83 FRH, 88.17 (#69), 225-266 (45.82%, #84))

Seems like it's been a quiet year for Daryl, who's hanging on in the top 32 and still just about playing top 32 level darts, there or there abouts. On the floor, Gurney had a fairly respectable season, winning his board on more than ten occasions, and peaking with a mid season final, losing a deciding leg to Alan Soutar in that final in June, making a further three semi finals and two quarters, running into Chris Dobey in those events a disproportionate amount of the time. In Europe, Daryl was in and out of the seeded players, playing all the events and having some good runs, hitting a semi final in Hildesheim, having a fairly easy path right up until he faced Luke Littler, and two more quarters in Hungary and Switzerland, either beating the number 1 seed or whoever beat the number 1 seed prior to two losses to Ryan Searle. The TV hasn't been quite as kind as he's struggled somewhat for results, with the odd exception. He drew Ross Smith and Gerwyn Price in the UK Open and Matchplay and lost both of those, which is fair enough, would stun Michael van Gerwen in Leicester then, with the draw somewhat wide open, disappointingly lose to Joe Cullen, avenge that loss to Price at the Euros before losing to van Duijvenbode, then after failing to qualify for the Grand Slam (which he's not been at for five years now, surprisingly), he got a bit of a run going at Minehead, beating an out of sorts Peter Wright and then Michael Smith, before Connor Scutt was far too good for what Daryl was able to do. Gurney had a couple of cameos in unranked TV events, but the story's generally been better on floor than on stage, and maybe lacking in results compared to how he's playing.

Florian is another who it seems has been having a quiet year, making what is a fourth straight appearance at a venue which has generally been kind to him having got into the field as one of the last quarter of Pro Tour qualifiers. Stage appearances have been very limited for Hempel this year - only playing in the two Minehead events, getting one win at both, in the UK Open it was Mario Vandenbogaerde he beat before losing to Gian van Veen, then in the Players Championship Finals, he got a solid win over Jonny Clayton before dropping off a bit against Dirk van Duijvenbode. European Tour events were also limited, just making the two events (one as an alternate) and only getting the one win over Callan Rydz, one of his losses actually coming against potential second round opponent Gurney. It was mainly the floor where he did most of his work - ending in the top 50 in averages, Hempel was solid in not losing early on (only 11 first round losses), but only picked up the two board wins, turning one into a semi final beating a pretty good line up including Clayton, Searle and Chisnall, so it was pretty much an entire season of picking up a grand or fifteen hundred quid on regular occasions to get him to Minehead and get him here, and if you can keep doing that you're pretty much a top 64 player and will keep on keeping your card for as long as you can do it - which is exactly what Florian has done.

Jeffrey was a huge name in the sport around the late 10's when he was threatening to become the next huge big thing and reaching the semi finals of the Matchplay, but his career has stalled somewhat of late, to the point where he needed to regain his card in 2023 and, if he doesn't get past these two players (as a bare minimum), will need to do the same again following a mediocre 2023 where, a good UK Open run aside, he was getting mediocre results, and it's been much the same this year, not making this event automatically but returning after a stellar display in the PDPA qualifier, where after a sluggish opening game Jeffrey averaged 99 against van der Velde, nearly 105 against Krcmar and then 98 against Paul Krohne, arguably the best we've seen him play in half a decade. If he can do that sort of thing here, and we know that his ceiling is at that sort of level, he'll be alright, but he's just not been showing it consistently. The only TV showing was the UK Open, where he would beat van der Velde (again) prior to losing to Patrick Geeraets, and it's not like he was on the stage much on the European Tour either, making just a pair of appearances where he did at least get to the seeds both times, but the seed was van Gerwen both times. This leaves the huge bulk of data being from the floor - here his numbers have not been great, only scraping into the top 100 in averages, and the results haven't been great either - losing in the first round as often as not, and only winning his board on a singular occasion, leaving him over five grand short of making the Players Championship Finals. Yes, he's had some bad draws, but looking at who's knocked him out there's plenty of average or frankly worse players doing that. We know the peak, we just need to see it more often, and given he's still only 28, there is still plenty of time for him to get back there.

The first round is fascinating. Florian's been doing the better numbers all year, but that PDPA qualifier showing makes me think this one could well turn out to be closer than the two in three chances that Hempel is projecting at with season long stats. Hempel and Gurney actually project pretty close to each other (although Hempel is more inconsistent), while a Gurney/JdZ second round match projects similar to the first round, although with the same provisos, doubling down on that given that if Jeffrey does get through, it's likely going to give a second data point to say we should look at current form fairly strongly rather than seasonal statistics.

Clayton, Mansell, Goto

Jonny Clayton (#11 FRH, 91.68 (#28), 708-570 (55.40%, #22))

Mickey Mansell (#40 FRH, 90.15 (#41), 318-362 (46.76%, #82))

Tomoya Goto (#111 FRH, 85.26 (#82), 93-84 (52.54%, #40))

Jonny remains in the top eight in the world, at least for now, defending quarter final money here (and then final money in the Matchplay in a few months) might make this look like a bit of a false ranking, and while he's turned form around to a decent degree in the second half of the season, early in 2024 he was looking quite some way off his best and frankly ordinary at times. Jonny took until July to get anything really notable going on the floor, generally reaching the board final in fairness, but in events 13/14 he would push on to a first quarter final of the season, then get what would be his sole win of the season, maybe being slightly fortunate in terms of draws (the only other seed here he played on that day was Martin Schindler) but having to come through some of the tougher wildcards such as Menzies and Plaisier to claim that title. The back half of the tour was better, getting a few quarters and finishing off with another final to end the season, playing his best match of the day in the final against Josh Rock but losing the deciding leg. Clayton did also make a Euro Tour final in the Netherlands, as the last seed he beat Chisnall, Searle and van Gerwen before losing to Rock again, but outside of a quarter final to start and finish the tour, Jonny couldn't get a great deal going with more than half the events seeing him not make the final day. TV was probably about as much as we can realistically expect at this stage - he scraped through two rounds of the UK Open against Tim Wolters (er) and Ross Smith (that's OK) before going out to eventual winner van den Bergh, who'd also beat him at Blackpool after a win against Barney, while his best run of the season came in Leicester, making the quarters with a win over Ritchie Edhouse and another one over Smith before the seedings threw him at Luke Humphries. Luke would beat him again in Dortmund in round two, he didn't make the Grand Slam, while he might want a first round Minehead defeat last month to Florian Hempel back. Things are trending better than they were, but he's not a top 8 player any more and, now in his fifties, may not get back there and an exit from the top 16 tier may be more likely through the bottom than back up towards the top.

Mickey is here for a ninth occasion, and he's not had the greatest of times, but he's at least made round two the last few times he's been here after a real rough spell of defeats. Mansell crept in through the Pro Tour rankings, the floor being really disappointing, at least in terms of results. He was just outside the top 50 in averages, but just the two board wins - one in the first event where he went out to Nick Kenny, and one with three to go against Danny Noppert, both in deciding legs, would leave him without the cash to reach the Players Championship Finals, no big lumps in a single event not being helped by an eight tournament streak of first round defeats mid season. So to get here, he'd need the Euro Tour, and he did just enough. Making three events in Sindelfingen, Rosmalen and Hildesheim, he'd win his first game each time (Wright, O'Connor and a HNQ) then lose to the seed each time (Heta, Price and Dobey). This obviously left him short of the Euros, and well short of the Matchplay and Grand Prix, so that only left two things. The UK Open was fine, beating Ian White then losing to Chris Dobey is probably standard, but he did qualify for the Grand Slam through the wildcards, and boy did he take that one to the hoop, getting wins over Wade and Rowby to get out of a group that also featured Luke Humphries, then coming through knockout games against Danny Noppert and then a deciding leg thriller with Cameron Menzies to reach a first (singles) major semi final. There, he was able to stay in touch with Martin Lukeman for much of the event, but fall just short in a 16-12 reverse. Still, despite that, it must give him new confidence in his stage game, we've know he can do it on the floor on occasions, he is a Pro Tour winner after all, but who knows for this one now?

Tomoya is another player making a second appearance here having made his debut last season, and twelve months ago it was a pretty successful debut, knocking out Ian White 3-1 before losing to Ryan Searle by the same scoreline with a respectable display, and he'll look to try to replicate that this time around. Goto has qualified through the PDJ method - a ten tournament national series of events that led into a final eliminator for a worlds spot, as opposed to going through the points table which would have seen Seigo Asada qualify. Instead, Goto, who finished fifth in that tour's averages but outside of the top ten in the rankings with just the one win, binked that finals day, with a lot of the better known names either not being there, or being knocked out before Tomoya could face them, with Asada losing the other semi final, and the top two seeds in his half of the draw going out before the quarter finals. Still, you can only beat what's in front of you and Tomoya did. Goto oddly did better on the Asian Tour, getting one title late in the season against Lourence Ilagan, and adding another three finals along the way. Oddly, Goto finished top of the averages if you exclude players who played less than a dozen matches, so he must have been doing something right, even if it didn't turn into results as often as he would have liked.

This bit of the draw is somewhat open. Goto's a clear dog to Mansell, but he's a live dog at least, projections giving him maybe 30% year long, but there is a fair bit of a consistency differential and most of the numbers came after Mansell had his big run (heck, that might have been the last game he played), so pushing it down to one in four doesn't seem that unreasonable. Mansell against Clayton projects perhaps closer - Jonny being the better player, but year long again it's giving Mickey maybe 40% chances, but if we strip down to the last six months or so (i.e. remove when Clayton was playing well below his best) and look at more recent form, Mickey drops to around a one in three shot. One that's good in that either match could go either way without it being an astounding upset.

Edhouse, White, Sosing

Ritchie Edhouse (#22 FRH, 90.07 (#42), 604-516 (53.93%, #33))

Ian White (#58 FRH, 89.01 (#54), 323-315 (50.63%, #60))

Sandro Sosing (#130 FRH, 84.43 (#88), 77-86 (47.24%, #80))

What a year it's been for Ritchie Edhouse, with what must have been one of the most unlikely major wins for some time when he was able to claim the European Championship, launching himself into the seeding positions here as he looks to reach the last 32 of this tournament for the first time. We'll start with the highlight - he set out a marker with a demolition job of Gian van Veen, averaging just shy of 110, before holding his never in a decider against Michael Smith, getting twice the legs that Gary Anderson did in the quarters, winning by a similar scoreline against Luke Woodhouse to reach the final, where he faced what looked to be a spent Jermaine Wattimena, who couldn't maintain the level of play he had in previous rounds, allowing Ritchie to win 11-3 and get a first major. It's been a year of progression on TV outside of that though, with first appearances in the Matchplay and Grand Prix, albeit he would lose to Chris Dobey and Jonny Clayton in the opening rounds, while he did get through the group stage of the Grand Slam, navigating a difficult looking group without defeat, only to lose to Rob Cross at the last sixteen stage. The Minehead events were hit and miss, losing his first game at the UK Open to Boris Krcmar, but he did win his opener last month before hitting Luke Littler in round two which is probably the best he could do. Making all the events indicates floor results are OK - on the floor he matched last season's tally of two Pro Tour semi finals, and he'd also make a pair of European Tour quarter finals as part of a five tournament spell where he made the final day on every occasion. While his numbers are not stratospheric, although in any given match they can be, Ritchie's always had a knack of getting the best out of the level of play he has, and with him now having the ability to handle longer matches, he might be able to get something going here (and by something, I mean a win and then losing to Littler probably).

Ian comes back for a thirteenth PDC worlds, and he'll be hoping it's not unlucky like the twelfth where he went out in round one to Tomoya Goto. Ian ended up around two thirds of the way down the Pro Tour qualification list, a bit down on last season, but enough to make it here and keep the tour card safe by a comfortable margin. On the floor, Ian has been more or less where is ranking suggests he should be - good enough that he's winning his opening game more often than not, but not doing enough on a consistent basis to get back anywhere near the top 32, with just four board victories all season, one of which he was able to convert into a quarter final, but nothing more than that. The European Tour didn't offer much assistance, he made Sindelfingen as an alternate and won just a single leg against Chris Dobey, while he was again an alternate in Switzerland, getting another tough draw in Michael Smith, nearly getting over the line but coming out the wrong side of a 6-5 scoreline. TV has been basically non-existent and barely more than the minimum, losing his first UK Open game to Mickey Mansell, but he did at least make the Players Championship Finals, and got a huge shock win over Michael van Gerwen by 6-1, rolling back the years to his Euro Tour winning days and levels with a 102 average - only to drop that by 25+ points in the next round and not win a single leg against Mike de Decker. That shows that the game is there, it's just not there consistently enough and often enough these days to be much more than someone making up the top 64 numbers, and now into his mid-50's I think he may be at the peak of his ranking going forward right now.

Sandro is back here making a second appearance, having made a debut twelve months ago where it looked like he struggled to show his best game, averaging a mediocre 75 in a straight sets defeat to Lee Evans. Sosing has qualified through the Asian Championshp - in that event he got to the semi finals pretty comfortably, dodging more or less all the top names, then edged out Lee Lok Yin to reach a final against Lourence Ilagan. He'd won his Ally Pally spot by that stage - the top two made it, but with a Grand Slam spot on the line, Ilagan's experience showed as Sosing missed doubles in both the first two legs, and could do nothing more than get three straight holds of throw as Lourence won 7-3. Sosing played what looked like the full Asian Tour - ending up outside the top 20 in averages (although if you exclude part timers, you can arguably say he's top 16) with an overall mark of 82, but converted enough of his chances into results to finish a respectable seventh on the money table. In the course of that tour, Sandro picked up one title with wins at the business end over the Japanese pair of Azemoto and Goto, and would add a further final later in the season where he came up short against Man Lok Leung. With the strength of players in his home country, he was never in consideration for the World Cup, so that's about all we have on him.

Ian should be fine in round one, the projections are actually fairly close but that does not take into account Sosing's wild inconsistency, he's among the weaker of the Asian qualifiers and I doubt he has the scoring often enough to prevent White from advancing. Year long, Edhouse is doing a bit more than Ian in terms of numbers, and the projections put him at a bit more than 60/40 - but with his best form obviously coming in the last few months, I wouldn't blame anyone who's going to call this a 2-1 sort of game.

Cullen, Nijman, Carolissen

Joe Cullen (#25 FRH, 88.68 (#57), 407-434 (48.39%, #75))

Wessel Nijman (#41 FRH, 93.66 (#10), 680-514 (56.95%, #8))

Cameron Carolissen (#167 FRH, no data)

What on earth has been going on with Joe this season? We're a year removed from a season where he made two major semi finals, and two years from when he very nearly won the Premier League, but in 2024 he's not even looked like a top 32 quality of player, and ignoring the standard of play, it's worrisome that he's made weird media comments about the locations of tournaments, leaving it open as to just how engaged he is with the game right now. On the floor, Cullen barely scrapes into the top 100 (!) of Pro Tour averages, with one final to his credit but only a single board win beyond that, going out in the first round in more than half the events, frankly to people he should easily be beating most of the time. The European Tour was similarly indifferent, getting to one final in Austria where he did play alright with wins over Chisnall, van Veen and Bunting, but how he got four legs in the final given the gulf in averages between himself and Littler, I'm not sure. Joe didn't make a single final session apart from that one, and only made the third round three times, twice beating seeds on the weaker end of the scale and once where he was the seed himself. Cullen's had his moments on TV, not at Minehead where he lost his first game to Michael Smith early and Dave Chisnall late (only just sneaking into the PC finals field in the first place), but elsewhere he got a fortunate draw at the Matchplay and got the win over Brendan Dolan, while at the Grand Prix he did beat Chris Dobey to be fair, following up with a win over Daryl Gurney to reach the quarters where he would fall to Dimitri van den Bergh. The only remaining tournaments were the Euros, where he played poorly in defeat to Danny Noppert, and the Grand Slam where he didn't qualify, losing to Jeffrey de Zwaan. He's currently outside of the Matchplay positions so needs something to spark a turnaround, and fast.

The opposite can be said of Wessel Nijman, who has had a spectacular season, having won a card for this year through 2023's Development Tour. His time away from the game has been well documented and we won't revisit it, but he's made up for lost time in 2024 in some fashion, placing himself as probably the single player in the first round seeds won't want to face. Sticking with the Dev Tour first, he won that by a country mile, finishing nearly ten grand ahead of second place, getting seven tournament victories which in a single season is incredible. The only weird thing is that he didn't do more in the world youth - losing to Dylan Slevin in the knockout stages. On the senior circuit, Nijman first threatened a breakthrough with a floor final run in July, losing to Littler there but beating the likes of van Veen, Heta and Anderson along the way, before going one better in October, claiming a first senior title over Stephen Bunting, getting the scalps of Ando (again), Searle and Ratajski in that one. After that win he won his board on four out of six events and is looking a lock to make big major debuts in 2025. On the Euro Tour, Wessel made four events, never losing his opening match and making a best run in Hungary to the quarter finals, nothing spectacular yet, but his Pro Tour rank should get him into everything in '25 (heck, he's close to being seeded), so with the amount of opportunities he should get going forward, you have to think if he can maintain his level of play, a final (or a bink) at that level is coming. TV's been slower progress to be fair, at the UK Open he got a couple of wins over Niels Zonneveld and a qualifier before losing out to Mike de Decker, while a one sided defeat to another Belgian in Kim Huybrechts came as a shock at the Players Championship Finals. Nijman winning the Dev Tour did get him into the Slam, where he was dealt a shocker of a group, losing all three matches but averaging over 105 in every single one. The kid is a legitimate danger to go very deep here.

Cameron will make his return here after a four year absence, back in 2021 he got a first round bye due to people having colds, but would win a set in the second round to Danny Noppert, averaging a relatively respectable 82 in that one. He won the African qualifier to get here, getting a last leg win in Nairobi against a decent Kenyan opponent and a partisan crowd, dodging a match dart in the process. He averaged 85 there in that final, but was a bit weaker in the earlier rounds of the qualifier, albeit against worse opponents. Cameron's one of the players for which data is severely limited - there is some sort of PDC-recognised African tour, when I say tour it was pretty much all in South Africa, there Cameron won two and made the final of another three of the total of six events which were played, enough to finish top of the table (just about) as another South African player won three of the events, but seemingly did less in the ones he didn't win. Averages there would again peak at around the mid 80's, but frequently he wasn't even getting that. He did play in the World Cup in what must have been the first year with no Devon Petersen, and perhaps surprisingly South Africa would nick a victory over Switzerland, but fall well short against Northern Ireland.

The first round may be the most one sided of the whole event. Carolissen has done well to get here and at least has the advantage of it not being a debut, but Nijman might well not lose a leg here, such is the level he's playing at. Then against Cullen, his year long percentage looks to be quite good - more than three in four year long, which gets better and better as you go to more form based stats. I doubt even Gilding was this much of a seed vs non seed underdog last season. Wessel's just playing that well, and Joe frankly isn't.

Cross, Williams, Springer

Rob Cross (#4 FRH, 93.48 (#11), 564-456 (55.29%, #23))

Scott Williams (#39 FRH, 89.61 (#47), 451-431 (51.13%, #54))

Niko Springer (#141 FRH, 88.91 (#56), 115-92 (55.56%, #20))

It'll always surprise me just how little respect Rob has given the level of play he's been able to put up on a consistent basis, pretty much since before he became a world champion. But that is what it is, and this year has been OK, all things considered. Rob managed four televised quarter finals this season, which seems alright given I don't think he's a top four player right now - maybe the UK Open could have gone better, he beat who he should have done to reach the quarter there with only Josh Rock being a real challenger, but would lose to Ricky Evans at that point, the Matchplay saw a couple of solid wins over van Veen and Searle before losing to Michael Smith, he was able to break a personal duck at the Grand Prix with wins over Luke Littler and Martin Schindler prior to a narrow loss to Ryan Joyce, then at the Grand Slam, he came second in his group, got past Ritchie Edhouse but then lost to Martin Lukeman - so maybe there could have been a bit more, particularly if we consider first round losses in the other TV events (although one of those was to Littler, so fair enough). Rob was able to have a solid European Tour season, winning his second event in his career notably beating Stephen Bunting as well as Luke Humphries in the final, picking up a final and semi final on the tour as well, but the Pro Tour was not great. Cross did miss several events, but would fail to make a quarter final all season - winning his board on six occasions, but not getting past that point, which explains why he barely made the Players Championship Finals, where he ran into Luke Littler. The numbers and performances are in that kind of bracket where it's not amongst the world's best, but just behind that where he can beat whoever if he's on his game.

Scott had a magnificent tournament this time last year, but I think it's fair to say he's not really kicked on from that semi final out of nowhere, not being able to secure a top 32 position but still making it here fairly comfortably. His floor record has been more or less par for the course - doing his best work in the early part of the season, getting his two quarter finals in the first ten events, along with one of his other board wins, which he was able to do three times - one straight after in event 11, but the other was on a fairly dry spell later in the season where he wasn't having a huge amount of big failures, but wasn't able to get a great deal started either. On the Euro Tour, he wasn't in that group of players that were getting invites so needed to go through the now much harder qualifiers, and only got there three times. That said, he did do some good work in those, getting through the first round every time and pushing through to round three twice, with a win over Ratajski in Sindelfingen and Dobey in Hungary. That wasn't enough to get him into the Euros, and he didn't get into the Slam either, and his UK Open run ended after one game with a loss to Ricky Evans, but the probable highlight of the year was in the Players Championship Finals, where he had a surprise quarter final run - getting narrow wins over Gian van Veen, Kim Huybrechts and Jeffrey de Graaf, but Ross Smith would be way too good at the last eight. Maybe not the best season, but certainly not the worst.

Niko will make his debut as the latest off the German production line, and he will make the step up to the main tour having finished second on the Challenge Tour, well behind Wessel Nijman but doing more than everyone else to book his tour card and his Ally Pally spot. Springer's been a name we've known for a while with occasional flashes on the European Tour, but this year has been a big step up, at least on the Dev Tour where he made five finals, converting three into wins, beating Gian van Veen and Wessel Nijman in two of the finals, and only being stopped by eventual overall tour winner Nijman in the two he lost. Niko had the third highest average on the whole tour (again, behind Nijman and van Veen), indicating his relative level of play against his peers, so it's going to be interesting to see what he will be able to do at the next level. He also played a fair chunk of the Challenge Tour - not doing an enormous amount, failing to get past the last 32 at any stage, but it was generally needing a solid player to stop him - David Evans, Scutt, Spellman, Unterbuchner, van Schie, Harrysson, Hopp - not exactly a bad list of names. Springer's fortunate in that he has way more chances than most as an affiliate to get on the European Tour, and he was able to do so twice - in Sindelfingen, ironically he drew Scott Williams and lost 6-1, while in Hildesheim he gave Peter Wright a decent game but ended up going down 6-4, while Keane Barry would stop his world youth aspirations at the last sixteen stage.

I think Niko's going to be a very strong player in the future, but this may be a tad early for him. That said, the numbers are close enough year long that Scott is projecting the wrong side of 60/40 from the Williams standpoint, so the young German ace is more than capable of pulling of the upset in this one. Neither player seems particularly close to Rob in terms of talent, but Scott has enough game in him to maybe nick the game a bit more than one time in four, and we've seen that he has course and distance here, so it's not one that Cross is going to take lightly, whoever he ends up drawing.

Searle, Suljovic, Campbell

Ryan Searle (#18 FRH, 92.95 (#14), 705-533 (56.95%, #9))

Mensur Suljovic (#59 FRH, 88.27 (#65), 329-338 (49.33%, #70))

Matt Campbell (#61 FRH, 88.20 (#68), 222-256 (46.44%, #83))

Ryan's pretty much had a season of standing still, not really making the breakthroughs and progress that plenty of us know he's capable of, but certainly not having a bad season by any stretch of the imagination. The floor results have been very good - starting with back to back finals where he would only lose to Luke Littler and Gary Anderson, before reversing that Anderson in event 3 to make it five years on the bounce where he's won a floor title. Searle would continue with steady play, reaching one further final in mid season where Damon Heta was pretty much unplayable, and finish strong with two semi finals in the last three events, seeing him accumulate the fourth most money on the Pro Tour in 2024. His European Tour form was also extremely solid - he is still yet to make the breakthrough at this level, but had by far his best season to date, with six quarter finals, a semi final and then a first final in Switzerland, although that is one he will definitely want back given he was 7-4 up against Schindler only to lose the last four legs of that final. This gave Ryan good seedings for the relevant tournaments - #4 at Minehead only to lose in the first round to Jeffrey de Graaf, and #8 in Dortmund, where he would comfortably defeat Barney but then go out to Luke Woodhouse in round two. His other TV performances were somewhat underwhelming, losing a deciding leg to Graham Usher in the UK Open, getting a good win over Damon Heta in Blackpool only to run into an inspired Rob Cross, then he would take Aspinall all the way to a deciding leg at the Grand Prix but not get over the line. The scoring is at a top sixteen level, and the amount of legs he's won is better still, there's just not been the key win that he's been looking for in 2024. Maybe it comes here?

Mensur is making a sixteenth appearance, back here after being one of the highest profile names to miss out last year, which put him in that pot of players who are on a one year tour card but missed the worlds who would be logically in danger of losing their card. Those fears have been dismissed with a solid enough season, while I don't think he's mathematically safe, it'd take a strange set of results for him not to remain on the tour for 2025. This has pretty much entirely come down to getting better results on the floor than his averages might suggest - only being in the top 100 of raw averages by less than half a point, but ending up in the third quarter of Players Championship Finals qualifiers. Suljovic was able to accumulate five lost board finals before a quarter final run in August, and was able to finish strong with just the two first round defeats in the last ten events, taking two of the last three events to a last sixteen and a second quarter final of the season. This'd be enough to get him to Minehead as mentioned, but he would go down in the opening game to Wesley Plaisier. The European Tour was almost a total loss, only qualifying for Hildesheim (as an alternate) where he did knock out Dimitri prior to a 6-4 loss to Martin Schindler. Mensur threatened to get a bit of a run going at the UK Open with a big win over Willie O'Connor before a huge upset over Michael van Gerwen, but Dave Chisnall was a bit too strong in the last 32. It would be the World Cup where Suljovic had his best run of the year, reaching a second final with Rowby, coming through an admittedly easy group then eliminating Taipei, Croatia and Belgium before losing to England in the final. While that's not ranked, it did give him a spot in the Grand Slam - he didn't win a game in what was a tough group, but the money earned may end up being absolutely critical.

Matt is making a sixth straight appearance, not having the greatest set of results prior to last year where he fnially got a bit of a run going, eliminating Lourence Ilagan and James Wade in deciding sets before running into the freight train that was Luke Littler. 2024 has been a fair disappointment though, as he didn't make a single European Tour event, and narrowly missed the Players Championship Finals - this despite a run to a final. In that floor event, he defeated Pilgrim and Ross Smith, then the Dutch line up of Plaisier, van Veen, Veenstra and Noppert, with several of those wins coming in deciding legs, but would come up short against Dimitri in a forgettable final. The problem came in the rest of the season - while that result gave him ten grand of ranking money, the remainder of the season saw him win only eleven grand, with fifteen first round exits, which you can call twenty if you include the events he missed, and he couldn't progress beyond a board final all year apart from that one off. Matt would lose to Nick Kenny in his only singles TV event all year, while in the World Cup with Dave Cameron, Canada would finish second in the group stages behind Croatia. All this left Matt outside of all Ally Pally qualification methods - while he did win the North American championship, PDC rules meant he couldn't use the qualification spot that comes with it due to his tour card status, so he needed the PDPA qualifier, where he beat Mario Vandenbogaerde, Andy Baetens and then Mervyn King to qualify, coming from 5-2 down to win 7-6 in that final match up. He's always seemed to play better on stage compared to the floor, and with his floor form this season, you can see this continuing into the worlds, if only by default as opposed to for the right reasons.

This first round game is relatively tight. Suljovic has been playing the better stuff, but the numbers look relatively similar. Mensur projects in the 60% to 65% range, which I guess is more down to Matt being inconsistent rather than Suljovic being a substantially better player. Ryan should be relatively comfortable whoever he plays, it is not the best draw he could have got, but it's certainly not the worst, and he projects around the 70/30 mark if he was to face Suljovic.

Gilding, Lukeman, Kumar

Andrew Gilding (#27 FRH, 89.94 (#43), 512-488 (51.20%, #53))

Martin Lukeman (#36 FRH, 90.93 (#33), 496-458 (51.99%, #49))

Nitin Kumar (#165 FRH, 82.00 (#93), 35-42 (45.45%, #86))

It's possible this may be the last time we see Andrew as one of the seeded players here, with his UK Open win due to fall off the rankings in just a few months time, but the results he's been able to get suggest he's still around that level of maybe inside, but at worst just outside, the top 32. This year, TV's been alright - he didn't make the Grand Prix so may need to do more on the floor going forward if we are to see him as frequently as we did, and he didn't get through the Grand Slam qualifier, but everything else has been pretty much fine. His UK Open title defence would end at the second hurdle, he got past Josh Payne fine, but then ran into Peter Wright having one of his better games of the season. Then Andrew would have a best ever run at the Matchplay to the quarter final stages, avenging that loss to Wright and eliminating Krzysztof Ratajski, before van Gerwen pulled away from him in the second half of the match, Gilding having led 8-7 at the third break but only getting two legs after that. The last sixteen would be where he'd get to in the other events, the European Championship being very weird where he beat Luke Littler but then lost to Ricardo Pietreczko, while in the return to Minehead he'd knock out Kevin Doets and Dave Chisnall before being a distant second best to Ross Smith. Gilding's been in most of the Euro Tour events, but missed the last one so probably won't be a guaranteed player going forward, and only got through the first round just over half the time, with just the two runs into the last sixteen, while on the floor, a late semi final certainly helps things (without it, he'd not be in the 2025 Matchplay as he is provisionally right now), but a return of a couple of quarter finals and one other board win is not ideal for someone wanting to stick in the top 32, although he was picking up money consistently with very few first round defeats. There's still a good game in there, but I don't think his very best game is there any more, and how long he can hold on for is a difficult question to answer.

Martin Lukeman returns for a third straight year, and will be looking to get past the second round where he lost in the previous two years to Damon Heta and Martin Schindler. There were some questions as to whether Martin might drop down the rankings, his European Tour final would not stick around on his record for long in 2024, but any remote fears of losing his card were answered in some style by reaching the final of the Grand Slam. There, having come through the wild card qualifier, Martin topped a group headlined by Rob Cross, would then beat Ross Smith to reach the quarters, deny Cross again in the quarter final stages, and come through a big pressure semi final with Mickey Mansell to book his spot there for 2025. Of course, he got obliterated by Littler in the final, but I don't think Lukeman will particularly care about that. Elsewhere, there's also been promising signs - he got a very good run going at the UK Open, beating Jermaine Wattimena in a high quality contest, Leonard Gates, Danny Noppert in another decider and Gary Anderson to reach the quarter finals, where he'd lose out to Dimitri van den Bergh. His only other TV appearance was a quick exit in the PC Finals to Connor Scutt, but on the floor, Martin's probably had his best season to date, with a very early semi final run, two further quarter finals, and a very good record of not making mistakes in the first round. He's not quite doing enough to get on the Euro Tour automatically, but is within striking distance if he can have a good start to 2025, but did play just shy of half the events, albeit with limited success, just getting two wins over Brendan Dolan and Callan Rydz. It's been a great 2024, and the draw is such that he can very easily get a best run here to give good momentum going into 2025.

Nitin will make his fourth appearance here, and is back after a three year absence, and is still looking for not only a first win, but also a first set, having previously been whitewashed by Jeffrey de Zwaan, Brendan Dolan and Ricky Evans. Kumar won the Indian qualifier - how exactly that worked, I'm not sure, there looked to be three events looking on Dart Connect so I assume there was some sort of points system, but Kumar winning all the events, including with a 90 average in two of the finals, makes the actual ins and outs of it academic. Those sorts of averages show that he is capable of putting together the sort of play that can win sets, so he'll just need to bring his best game. Outside of that qualifier, Nitin was in the Asian Championship, where he came through his group fairly comfortably only to lose to fellow international qualifier Lee Lok Yin 5-4 in the last sixteen, while on the Asian Tour as a whole, he averaged just over 80, but did have a few good runs, peaking with a final in Dubai where he lost to Paolo Nebrida, and he would make a couple of semi finals and three quarter finals outside of that, enough to finish a respectable twelfth on the Asian Tour order of merit. He also played in a couple of WDF events in Mongolia, winning one of them, but it's kind of hard to tell the standard that he would have faced in those tournaments.

Nitin has never been outright bad, in the previous worlds he's been at he's steadily got better, but this is kind of an awkward draw against one of the better Pro Tour players who's probably playing as well as he's ever done at this moment, so I'm thinking that Lukeman should be more or less a lock to advance, Nitin has the game to nick a set for sure, but it's a question of if he turns up or not. Gilding against Lukeman has the potential to be one of the closer games in round two - I've got Martin as a tiny favourite looking at year long stats, but maybe with his recent TV breakthrough and the confidence that will give him, it could be a little bit more of an edge for Smash. Certainly a match which should give the viewers value for money.

Schindler, Rydz, Grbavac

Martin Schindler (#21 FRH, 91.86 (#24), 590-492 (54.53%, #28))

Callan Rydz (#43 FRH, 90.59 (#37), 366-375 (49.39%, #68))

Romeo Grbavac (#139 FRH, 84.11 (#91), 23-44 (34.33%, #94))

Great season for Martin, who finally made the breakthrough to the senior level in some style, with the relatively rare Pro Tour title skip straight to European Tour level, even rarer in that he would be able to bink two of them in one year. Let's talk about those first, the opener was in Riesa, where, unseeded at the time, he beat a domestic qualifier, Cullen, Veenstra, Noppert, Dobey and multiple time winner at this venue Gerwyn Price to claim his first title. But things got better, as in Basel he doubled his tally, taking out Anton Ostlund, Bunting, Barney, Rock and then Ryan Searle in a tight decider that went all the way. Two semi finals and three quarter finals at this level capped a great European Tour year for Martin, ensuring he'd enter the European Championship as the number one seed, but while he'd average safely over 100, he went down to a resurgent Dirk van Duijvenbode in the opening round. This is kind of what's been happening on TV, it's not quite happening yet - at the UK Open he drew Littler in his second game after just beating Gerwyn Price, so wasn't given an easy draw in that one, at Blackpool a draw with Dimitri is one that it feels like should go either way but it didn't fall for Martin, at Leicester he got a kinder draw against Dolan, but Cross in round two would be a bit too good, then at the Slam he'd be one leg short of getting out of the group stages, before going on another little bit of a run at Minehead with wins over Dolan once more then Ryan Meikle before another Ryan, namely Joyce, prevented a best run at this event. On the floor it's been so-so, he did make one semi final and one quarter final, but that was it and he wasn't in the top half of the seeds for that Players Championship Finals, so an obvious area for improvement in 2025. All in all however, the highs more than outweigh the lows and he is truly established in the top 32 at this stage.

Someone looking to get back there is Callan Rydz, a quarter finalist here three years ago who looked to have all the potential in the world, but has seen his career stall somewhat as he has drifted outside the top 32 and not really looking like he's doing enough on a consistent basis to be able to get back there. The floor season started really well, with a quarter final and semi final in the first three events, beating the likes of Clayton, Rock and Littler in those two, with a lot of very good averages (he would finish just outside the top 32 for the year on that metric), but just could not maintain the consistent runs, getting a further two quarter finals in the season mainly through draws rather than great play and not winning a board outside of that. Callan was one of the main beneficiaries of the new Euro Tour system, getting himself into nine of them, but losing in the opening round six times, always losing to a card holder but certainly not one of the bigger names that'd enter at that stage. One run was however to the semi finals, and it would be in the second one Schindler won, beating Dolan, van Veen, Menzies and Wade, but would only win the single leg in a semi final against Searle. Callan's not really done anything on TV of note, dropping from being in the Grand Prix spots last year to just being in more or less the bare minimum of the two Minehead events, where he'd go 0-2, playing fairly well in the UK Open but losing a winnable tie 6-5 against Benjamin Drue Reus, and while he didn't play too badly later in the year either, he would only get the one leg against van Duijvenbode. If he can get things going, his game's great, it just happens much less often than we'd like these days.

If you ask the average fan who's not seen the draw who's in the field from Croatia, you'd probably see almost everyone say Boris Krcmar. But no, he's not there, but Romeo Grbavac is, making his debut in a season where he's kind of come from obscurity to being a moderately well known name. Grbavac won through one of the last qualifiers, the Eastern Europe qualifier, and had to beat some tough names to get there, including Alex Masek and the Polish pair of Kciuk and Bialecki, winning an all-Croat final relatively comfortably with a high 80's average. We have seen more than that from him though, he's not a complete random by any stretch. Romeo tried his hand at Q-School and got through stage one on the second day, but stage 2 was a bit too much of a step as he couldn't get beyond the last 32 at that level. It did however allow Grbavac to play the Challenge Tour, and here he started well - a quarter final and two last sixteen runs in the first weekend, it got him high enough to sneak into a couple of Pro Tours, losing to Hendo in one, but beating Rock before losing to Leighton Bennett in the other. Grbavac did get another last sixteen on the second CT weekend, but didn't add much more and he took the last couple of weekends off. Stage experience has been gained through the Euro Tour - he came through regional qualifiers three times, in Belgium in the first weekend he lost to Chris Dobey, then in back to back weekends in April he lost to Stephen Bunting and Wessel Nijman (6-5 in the latter case in fairness), so not exactly the kindest draws he could have got, while on a bigger stage he'd partner Krcmar in the World Cup, coming out of a group with Canada and Malaysia, then in the knockouts scoring a huge upset by eliminating Wales, nearly reaching a semi final as they then lost a deciding leg to eventual finalists Austria. Still relatively young at the age of 30, 2024's been an excellent learning experience.

The data I have on Romeo isn't non-existent but isn't really enough to trust projections, so I'll just say that I expect Callan to be relatively comfortable. Grbavac's numbers in the Pro Tour as a whole shouldn't be able to prevent Rydz from getting plenty of chances to claim legs, and the Croatian may be reliant on mistakes from the Riot, rather than being able to generate too much of his own. A Schindler/Rydz match in round two could be relatively interesting, I've got a projection for Callan as closer to 40% than to a one in three outsider, so while Martin's correctly the favourite, Rydz certainly has enough about him to not let the German have things all his own way.

Chisnall, Evans, Mathers

Dave Chisnall (#5 FRH, 92.39 (#18), 722-575 (55.67%, #19))

Ricky Evans (#47 FRH, 90.27 (#39), 326-322 (50.31%, #62))

Gordon Mathers (#171 FRH, 84.89 (#84), 86-77 (52.76%, #36))

It's been pretty much another year of the same old same old for Dave - currently number 1 in the Pro Tour rankings, what he's not done at levels below TV isn't worth doing, but despite a quarter final run this time last year, he's had another season where he's failed to get that televised title he's been looking at for years, and hasn't really been close, with the raw scoring figures being down on his rankings. As stated, the floor's been great - picking up a brace of titles on the Pro Tour, along with one more final, and he also got a brace of titles at European Tour level, getting two in three events in Leverkusen and Antwerp, which sandwiched his next best run of a semi final. Dave maybe had a few too many first round exits on the floor than he'd have liked, but generally speaking it's been very good accumulation, which shows in him having won more money than anyone off TV in 2024. On TV's been the problem however, where outside of the Masters he's not even made a quarter final, which someone ranked in the top 8 in the world really ought to be doing at least once. Some of it was bad draws - after easy passage to the last 16 in the UK Open he drew Littler, some of it was just poor performances, such as being blown away by Ratajski at Blackpool. There's some in the middle - last 16 at Leicester losing to Dimitri, a whitewash against Michael Smith in the European Championship, finishing bottom of the Edhouse, Scutt and Ross Smith group at the Grand Slam and then a deciding leg loss in round two of the PC Finals to Andrew Gilding all rank somewhere in the middle of those. If he'd done even something on TV, maybe we're talking about him as someone who may return to the Premier League, but it's hard to make the case unless he goes really deep here, and he's not in the worst section, with a quarter final not looking unrealistic. He just has to deliver now.

Ricky's numbers in 2024 have been pretty darned solid, but qualification for here was borderline, only just creeping into the field as the last man in prior to Taylor shenanigans. A popular figure, it looked like he might build on an alright run here last year where he knocked out Nathan Aspinall, as he made a TV-best run of a semi final in the UK Open early in the season, where coming from round three he defeated Lee Evans, Scott Williams, Mike de Decker, Luke Woodhouse and then Rob Cross, prior to being heavily routed by Luke Humphries. However, it wasn't really to be, at least not immediately as he couldn't really break through on the floor, getting three board final wins, before he would get maybe the best chance he'll ever have of winning a PDC title, with a final run in August, drawing an as yet not on fire Mike de Decker, but he'd pick up just a pair of legs as Mike claimed his first title. That might have severely knocked Ricky's confidence, as he has since gone on a 14 tournament floor run with just the one win in that spell. Some of the draws were tough, but that is a big losing streak. The Euro Tour saw just the singular appearance in Austria, and even that was as an alternate where he lost to Richard Veenstra, and while he did get back to Minehead, it was only as one of the last few players in where he lost to Josh Rock in the opening round. Where his game really is, it's hard to say, it's been up and down for sure.

Gordon will make a return here for his fourth appearance, a first since 2022 when he came in as a replacement player and lost in round one to Jason Heaver, having previously lost in opening games to Max Hopp and Seigo Asada. A former tour card holder, but now operating back in his homeland, Mathers finished fifth on the DPA tour (although second through fifth were incredibly tight), but gained his qualification back here through winning the Oceanic Masters, averaging steady 80's throughout and beating Harley Kemp in the final to book his Ally Pally spot. On that DPA circuit, Gordon finished just inside the top 10 in averages, and claimed two titles, defeating Brenton Lloyd and Brody Klinge respectively, but outside of that it was a bit of a struggle, frequently falling short at the quarter final stage, only taking one further tournament past that point. Mathers din't feature in either of the World Series events down under, and either hasn't been entering or hasn't been going deep in any of the WDF events with just one quarter final counting towards his ranking in that system.

The first round game could be an interesting one. Ricky has the far higher scoring and year long is projecting 80/20, but that losing streak is a huge concern, quick players are very often confidence and timing players, and if something is off, then Mathers has more than enough experience and game in him that he can hang around and really pose some questions of Rapid. Chizzy won't be hating this draw too much, getting one of the last Pro Tour players in and avoiding any of the real international landmines, he's only projecting 70/30 if he were to face Evans but it may play out wider than that, and we do have a few days between the games to look at it.

As a side note, I'm now through with previews for everything up to and including Wednesday, there is pretty much zero chance (especially with being at the football tomorrow) that I finish everything for the off, but I think we're well on pace to get all the previews up in time for all the respective first round games. We're about two thirds of the way through and will get some more done today for sure.

Smith, Williams, Nebrida

Ross Smith (#12 FRH, 93.07 (#13), 747-600 (55.46%, #21))

Jim Williams (#51 FRH, 91.13 (#32), 313-287 (52.17%, #44))

Paolo Nebrida (#126 FRH, 86.80 (#76), 100-79 (55.87%, #16))

It's been a good year for Smith. Very, very good year. For my money, established himself as clearly a top 16 player, the numbers are all there, the results are there, I just don't think he quite gets the credit he deserves on occasions. Let's go through what he's done - on the floor, he got another title, maybe making hard weather of it against Plaisier and only winning by the odd leg, but a win is a win, and he was to augment that with several other good runs including four semi final appearances, including three in a row earlier in the season, which is no mean feat. On the Euro Tour, Smith had by far his best season - having only had a singular semi final prior to 2024, he made huge inroads, reaching two finals, only losing by the odd break to Gary Anderson and Dave Chisnall in those finals, along with another two semi finals and just the four occasions where he was not able to be involved on the final day's proceedings. On telly, the UK Open could maybe have gone better, nicking an expected game against Gurney 10-8 but falling to Clayton in the next round by the same scoreline. He had his best run at the Matchplay to date by defeating Josh Rock and then Gerwyn Price prior to losing to James Wade, then it was Clayton again who did for him in Leicester having beaten Gian van Veen. He didn't play bad against Woodhouse in a game that looked like it played closer than the scoreline in Dortmund, then more disappointingly he was a distant second best at the Grand Slam against Lukeman in the last sixteen after coming through a very competitive group. That said, Smith would make his best major run outside of the one he binked at Minehead, where he reached a semi final beating van den Bergh, Plaisier, Gilding and Williams, and would not let Littler run riot in an 11-9 semi final defeat. One of the biggest power scorers in the game, I don't know why he seems undervalued.

Jim has maybe stepped back a little in 2024. Still trying to juggle work and darts, he's dropped a bit from someone who, if playing the whole tour, would have made the Matchplay etc, to someone who I get a sense is just coasting to holding a top 64 spot and not really pushing on to where he could be, which if personal circumstances dictate is fine, it just seems like a bit of a wasted talent. On the Pro Tour, Jim finished within the top 32 on the averages, but missed a handful of events and wasn't really able to make deep inroads into those that he did play, only losing in the first round eight times but only winning his board three times, never pushing forward to beyond the quarter final stages which, as a previous Pro Tour winner, might be disappointing. Jim wouldn't have appeared in the European Tour at all were it not for two appearances as replacements late in the season, in Hungary he defeated fellow alternate Alan Soutar before only just losing to Martin Schindler, while in Switzerland he narrowly lost to Karel Sedlacek. Jim's singles appearances were limited to Minehead but he did appear at the World Cup for a debut after Price withdrew late, and in a surprise Wales lost to Croatia in the first knockout round, then in those Minehead appearances, Williams disappointingly lost to Leonard Gates and then maybe unsurprisingly lost to Cameron Menzies, to leave him with a relatively disappointing season. Still, the numbers are fine, and we know from his BDO days and his previous win of a PDC title that he has a knack of winning, so let's see how he does.

Paolo is here for a third straight year, and a third appearance overall, having lost in his debut two years ago in a tight one to Danny Jansen, while last year he lost a similarly tight game to Simon Whitlock. Nebrida is back on account of finishing in third place on the Asian Tour, where he was able to win four titles throughout the course of the season, reach a further two finals, and outside of a small number of players who only played a couple of tournaments, finish with the second highest average on the entire tour, only behind Tomoya Goto. This would get him into the Asian Championship, where he got through the group with little worries, but would be surprisingly beaten in the last sixteen by some Malaysian player I don't know much about. Nebrida did get a call up to the Bahrain Darts Masters, where he pushed Michael Smith to a deciding leg, but other than that, it's hard to say where his game is at - the WDF doesn't seem to have any penetration in the Philippines, he's not even ranked in their system, so it's just the Asian Tour and that which we can judge him off, where we know what we always knew - he's alright, but he isn't spectacular.

Jim should be fine in round one. We have enough data on Paolo to be somewhat confident in a prediction and it's saying Williams 80/20, and I think most of us are agreed that Jim is better than his ranking suggests. Against Smith, then it's kind of the same, I think most of us agree Ross is better than his ranking suggests, so there is somewhat of a differential, but it's not gigantic, I'm projecting Williams (assuming he wins round one obv) to nick it one in three times, which I think the fan who knows how good the players are would not say is outlandish in the slightest.

van Duijvenbode, Razma, Kist

Dirk van Duijvenbode (#28 FRH, 92.30 (#20), 503-455 (52.51%, #41))

Madars Razma (#45 FRH, 88.98 (#55), 405-376 (51.86%, #51))

Christian Kist (#69 FRH, 88.28 (#64), 245-255 (52.13%, #45))

It's been a bit of a year of rebuilding for Dirk, but after injury issues which plagued the back end of 2023 and carried on somewhat into 2024, things are starting to look like they're heading back in the right direction. The floor season actually started pretty well - quickly making one quarter final, before reaching a final on the third set of events in Hildesheim, where he was just the odd break away from picking up a title against Dave Chisnall. The remainder of the floor season wasn't fantastic, as he did have nearly a dozen first round exits after that final, but a couple of semi finals have helped things along, and he is at least now in a provisional Matchplay spot, after he missed both that and the Grand Prix this year, as well as failing to qualify for the Grand Slam. The European Tour was a real disappointment, relatively speaking - his 2023 work (with three early Pro Tour wins and a Euro Tour final counting for a fair bit of the year) saw him seeded for many of the early events, and at least getting a free pass into most of the others, but it was almost always a second round exit for Dirk. He got a bit further in Leverkusen (round three) and Antwerp (a season's best of a quarter final), but balanced that out with two first round exits and a failure to qualify in the final three events. As stated, Dirk did miss many TV events, and got Luke Humphries in the first game of the UK Open which never helps, but it was on TV later in the year that showed signs he might be getting back to his best. Dortmund saw him reach a quarter final (having only just made the field as the last man in), beating top seed Martin Schindler and Daryl Gurney before getting solidly beaten by Luke Woodhouse, then he'd go one step further at the PC Finals, not having the hardest draw with Rydz, Hempel, Wattimena and Scutt in his way, but still games that he'd need to work to win, especially against the last couple in current form. Luke Humphries would be too much in the semi final, but Dirk was 7-5 up, just not being able to cope with a change of pace from Luke as it finished 11-8. Definitely the possibility that his ranking is understating his level of play, and that we might be getting back to the level where he gets the next logical step of a Euro Tour in 2025.

Madars remains Latvia's number one, but looks to have fallen off a bit from the peaks that he had in 2021-22, where he was making the tricky TV majors and getting close to a top 32 position. He's dropped a bit, but still finished solidly up the Pro Tour rankings and will make a sixth straight appearance, looking to build on a best of a third round achieved last year (when he was actually seeded, albeit the #32 seed). On the floor, Razma wasn't bad, with a peak of a semi final coming in Germany in one pairing where he also made a quarter final, and given the players that made the finals in those events (Soutar, Gurney, van den Bergh and Campbell), that might have been his best chance of getting a title, or at least adding to a list of finals he made. Two further quarter finals were added, one in September and one to finish the season, leaving him just outside the top 32 on that ranking table. He would add a semi final at European Tour level in Kiel, with three straight last leg deciders against Dobey, Chisnall and Cullen, a bit more of a comfortable win against Ryan Searle, before losing to eventual winner Rob Cross. Razma made four other events, three being first round defeats, but he did make one other final day in Switzerland, having beaten Damon Heta in a tense affair. TV was quiet, Latvia remain in the World Cup but could really do with finding a better second player, they did beat Denmark but both of those lost to France, while in the Minehead double header, Madars went 0-2, losing to Rowby early and Ratajski late. Pretty much just a year of staying where he's at it seems.

One player back on the rise however is Kist, who will be back on the Pro Tour after a bit of time away, finishing third in the Challenge Tour but picking up a qualifying spot here on account of Scutt and Plaisier qualifying by right. Kist took a bit of time to get going on that tour (although showed some signs early in the season in other events with a quarter final run in the Dutch Open, and a so-so showing in a first round UK Open defeat to Patrick Geeraets), but in the third weekend Kist would do the incredibly rare feat of binking two Challenge Tour events in the same day, a sixteen game winning streak. A third was nearly added the next day when he lost to Justin Hood in the semi final, and a third title was finally added in August, giving him more than enough prize money to win his tour card back. Affiliates kind of got fucked over with respect to the European Tour, but Kist did get through the one domestic qualifier he could play, only to lose 6-5 to Marvin van Velzen in the opening round. Having got that double header win, Kist was able to play a good chunk of the Pro Tour, getting into all of the second half and having some decent runs, including a board win where he drew Humphries in round one and a semi final in back to back events, and a quarter final later in the season. He did have half a chance of making Minehead coming into the final weekend, but went 0-2 when he didn't need a huge amount to sneak into the field. Still, he's back here for a second year, and let's hope the injury issues that really hurt him round about twelve months ago (and have plagued his career throughout) are behind him.

This first one seems moderately competitive, the overall numbers are really close and the projections are putting this right down the middle, I'd probably give Madars the slight edge just on account of having played more games against better opposition, but it's too tough to call. Dirk I think should be fine, he should win a bit more than two in three, and if form has picked up as I think it might have done, it may be pushing closer to three in four, so whoever he plays wouldn't be without a chance, but would be a clear underdog.