Metal fatigue

And by metal, I mean specifically tungsten. One of the big problems people have made out in relation to the Premier League is that we see the same games again and again. So let's quantify that. Here's a cross-table as to how many times we have seen each game take place just in the Premier League this season:

This might be a tad small, but it should give you the gist of things. The only games we have seen the bare minimum of times were the respective games between van Gerwen, Cross and Bunting, and this is despite van Gerwen withdrawing from one against Price. What is should highlight beyond anything is how many times this format has given us Littler against Humphries. It is, if we exclude the finals day, every other week.

Now, back in the old days of wrestling, a promotion would NEVER give away a match between their two top talents who they are pushing towards a pay per view major card matchup. Now clearly this is different - anyone that is paying for the subscription (at least in the UK) who has paid in for the Premier League is going to be getting the Matchplay as well. But this sort of thing just will naturally harm the potential draw rate. How on earth can they possibly try to do any sort of billing of their dream Luke on Luke violence final as "the final we've all been waiting for" when due to the ridiculous Premier League format, they have given this game away NINE TIMES already this season? It goes the same for more or less anything between these players - they are clearly not the top eight players in the world, but the PDC clearly see these players as at least marketable if not. Why should us, as keyboard warriors (sorry, punters), give a shit if we get Aspinall against van Gerwen in the Matchplay when you've given this to us six times already?

It gets worse when you expand to other televised events. Let's go through what we've seen from events we can see. I'm going to include the European Tour, as we can see all of those. I'm not going to include the Pro Tour, as while a lot of the games between these players will take place when there is a high probability of these coming against each other, it's not guaranteed and I'm pretty sure nobody is tracking it. So let's go through event by event.

World Masters - Nothing miraculously

UK Open - Bunting/Dobey

Bahrain - Littler/Price, Humphries/Aspinall, Humphries/Bunting, Price/Bunting, Dobey/Bunting

Dutch - Littler/van Gerwen, Littler/Bunting, Price/Cross, Cross/Bunting

Nordic - Littler/Aspinall, Humphries/Price, Aspinall/Bunting, Price/Cross, Dobey/Cross, Cross/Bunting

ET1 - No games

ET2 - Humphries/Aspinall, Price/van Gerwen

ET3 - Humphries/Bunting, Aspinall/Price, Aspinall/Bunting

ET4 - No games

ET5 - No games

ET6 - No games

ET7 - No games

ET8 - Aspinall/Dobey

So, a bunch of the additional games have come from the World Series events, and not so much from the Euro Tours - mainly because a lot of players in the PL have either not entered or withdrawn from the tournaments in question. What that does to the cross table is this:

It's not a huge change, but it tells us enough - apart from two matches, we have seen everyone who got to the PL finals day against anyone else in the PL at least four times already this season, barring two matchups.

So what can we do about it? The first thing would be a reversion to the previous PL format. Increase back to 10, and go to an actual league format - the strength in depth is there regardless of who you pick, the cut down to 8 after 9 weeks does add jeopardy which frankly is not there in the current format, and you only see every game twice, plus whoever plays each other in the finals night. You never go into an event thinking "well I saw these two last week". Only three weeks didn't see some sort of rematch from the previous week. Increase the field, limit the number of times people play each other, it increases variety. Secondly, they really need to go back to what they used to do probably nearly a decade ago now, and use toe World Series as kind of a proving ground for those players who are on the up, but who they might not quite see as Premier League ready. Looking at the line ups they have had so far, in Bahrain they had 7 PL players plus Wright (van Gerwen not there), all 8 in the Netherlands, and then 7 PL players plus Clayton in Copenhagen (again, van Gerwen not there). Now I guess for the Wright inclusion there may have been some pressure on the PDC to include certain players, and I don't hate the inclusion of Clayton given he's had a good season, but they are hardly the future of the sport. Why on earth are we not just having 3, 4, 5 of the Premier League line up and some real wild cards in there? Why are we not giving Josh Rock a shot? Gian van Veen? Wessel Nijman? Damon Heta? Martin Schindler? Mike de Decker? Granted, some of these may end up as jobbers to the stars in the relevant events, but why? Plenty of them have done enough, are playing well enough and are young enough that they may be on the cusp of going stratospheric if things go their way in the next six months. Wouldn't you want to see how they handle themselves on a huge stage against the best in the world?

World Cup madness

I see that they've made the group stage draw (but seemingly not the knockout draw) for the World Cup. I've instantly seen two wildly different takes on England's chances - they are, naturally, the favourites, and are priced in one place at 4/11. Now, yes, vig, but let's call that a 75% chance. In reality it's lower, but let's just round it off to that. Oche's said it should be 1/7 - i.e. that the chances of England not winning are half of what the bookies say. Lendel's said it should be evens - i.e. that the chances of England not winning are twice what the bookies say. That's quite the difference, but whose thoughts are more outlandish?

With no draw, it's hard to say, and it's even harder to know how to model doubles - we have no idea if Littler is running into his perfect format, or whether he hates it with a passion. The latter is possible, I hate hate hate playing pairs. I think the best thing we can do is to set bounds, and say that the best chance the better team has will be the chances of the better player for the better team (likely Littler, but it's close), and then swap the players to get the worst chance, and the winning shot will be somewhere in the middle. Let's assume it was done in draw order, whereby England, as the 1 seed, would get the 16 seed in round one, then 8, 4 and 2. This would give them Finland, Ireland, Northern Ireland and then Wales. Only the last two are fixed - they could end up getting much tougher teams in the first two rounds (although I think more teams seeded in the group stages are fielding nowhere near their strongest teams - but let's go with it.

vs Finland:

Littler v Kantele - 100%

Littler v Harju - 89%

Humphries v Kantele - 100%

Humphries v Harju - 86%

vs Ireland:

Littler v O'Connor - 80%

Littler v Barry - 94%

Humphries v O'Connor - 75%

Humphries v Barry - 92%

vs Northern Ireland:

Littler v Rock - 62%

Littler v Gurney - 86%

Humphries v Rock - 55%

Humphries v Gurney - 81%

vs Wales:

Littler v Price - 63%

Littler v Clayton - 73%

Humphries v Price - 54%

Humphries v Clayton - 66%

Now these numbers are quite, quite telling. Let's chuck the Finland numbers out as both Kantele and Harju are working on very limited data for the smallest sample, although if we do play split the difference, say England win 95% of the time and it's 1/20 in the pricing, it's probably not too far off, it's not worth mentioning. If we look against Ireland - Willie would be expected to beat either Luke somewhere between one in four and one in five times. Keane would not be as good, which is fine - no slight on Barry, but O'Connor is clearly the better player right now. The average of all those is 85%. That's clearly an indication that England are massively favoured, but not a lock. That drops to, say, a 1/6 pricing, pre vig. That immediately makes the 1/7 valuation Oche had look ridiculous, and we're not even at the semi final stage.

In the semis, we get a pair of opponents where one player is doing really well (fun fact - since March Rock has a higher points per turn in my database than Littler over a 50% larger sample), and the other player is certainly not playing badly, and may be a tad underrated. Add all those percentages together and split them and you get to 71%. That's more or less the 4/11 that the bookies (or at least the bookie was quoted) to win the whole tournament. Then we go to the final. No player is rated at less than a one in four chance to win a best of 19 against any other player in the match. That should be the deciding factor in telling you not to bet on England to win this event - they're too short. Way, way too short. Wales ought to be no more than 2/1 to win the final - and this is a known pair which has binked this event twice, so understands the tournament, and are known to be playing well as of right now, with (since March) Price being second only behind Humphries in scoring, and Clayton being over 93 per turn which is clearly enough to be considered at an elite level and he has a Euro Tour bink of late. Combine, say, a 1% chance to lose the opening game, a 10% chance to lose the quarter, a 25% chance to lose the semi and a 30% chance to lose the final, all of which are likely underestimates of England's chances to lose, and you get them at being odds against to win the tournament.

I'm clearly making some simplifications. But in such a unique format, you have to make these sorts of adjustments. I'm going off the data I have. Are England favourites to win? Absolutely. Should we bet England to win? Absolutely not. We should probably do the opposite.

Matchplay getting closer

Aspinall managed to bink another Euro Tour, looks like he was fortunate to do so, probably will throw up even more opportunities to lay him in the future, looking at post worlds data he's not even in the top 20 in scoring, but we're going to need to wait a fair bit to try to exploit that, with over a month's wait before we have any ranked events that we can realistically bet on (yeah, the odd line might pop up for Players Championship events, but it's not realistic to react to those in time given they're all midweek and drawn on the fly with work commitments). New FRH rankings are as follows:

1 Luke Littler

2 Luke Humphries

3 Michael van Gerwen

4 Stephen Bunting

5 Jonny Clayton

6 Chris Dobey

7 James Wade

8 Ross Smith

9 Damon Heta (UP 2)

10 Josh Rock (DOWN 1)

11 Gary Anderson (DOWN 1)

12 Mike de Decker (UP 1)

13 Danny Noppert (DOWN 1)

14 Martin Schindler

15 Dave Chisnall

16 Rob Cross

17 Gerwyn Price

18 Nathan Aspinall (NEW)

19 Ryan Searle (DOWN 1)

20 Peter Wright (DOWN 1)

Gian van Veen is the player to drop out, but you have to think that's only going to be temporary. Heta gets back into the top 10 with his final, while Nijman is getting closer and closer to the top 32 following another good run at this level. Matt Campbell breaks back into the top 60 following his final session visit.

That's probably going to be it in terms of posts for a bit - as mentioned, there's no Euro Tour for a month, so I'll be looking to use this non-darts, non-football time of the season to recharge the batteries ahead of the Matchplay run up.

Leverkusen quarters - ah, that's better

Not a perfect run by any means as Aspinall pulled off the win over Pietreczko, but a triple hit on Heta, Campbell and Bunting clawed back a good chunk of Saturday's losses, so we'll take that. Clearly when it looks like we've identified players to lay, we'd rather not have to lay them twice for obvious reasons, but at least it did work this time. Onto the quarters:

Campbell/Heta - 33/67

Menzies/Clayton - 36/64

Aspinall/Dobey - 30/70

Nijman/Bunting - 48/52

As such, looking at the markets, there's nothing really doing in the top two, we'll lay Aspinall one more time (backing someone who just averaged 110 and 6/8 on doubles rather than Brooks and Pietreczko makes things a bit more comfortable), and take a small nibble on Nijman. If we project further looking at who's favoured, Clayton's a tiny favourite over Heta (not even 55/45), while Dobey's probably around that mark as a favourite against Bunting. A Clayton/Dobey final would similarly be extremely tight - would give Chris the edge, but it's so marginal and with him still not having won at this level, there might be that sort of intangible element that makes it a coinflip. This should be a pretty damned good session regardless.

Leverkusen day 3 - the rebuild starts here

Wow is all I can say about that one. Wouldn't call it the worst day ever, but it might be top five, with two large bets running into a 107 average and 6/6 on doubles and then a 106 average and over 50% on doubles as well. Brooks didn't help, I did sense check that when the numbers said he should be favoured, and it's right, there is a little bit of a consistency issue but it's never going to be enough to swing something to not be a bet. We did at least downsize so that's a start, nicking that one would probably have turned the day into break even. Eight games, let's go:

Wade/Campbell - 57/43

Heta/Harrysson - 78/22

Menzies/Edhouse - 58/42

Clayton/de Decker - 56/44

Aspinall/Pietreczko - 53/47

Dobey/Gilding - 66/34

Wright/Nijman - 45/55

Bunting/Gurney - 65/35

As such, it looks like continuing to lay Aspinall, Gurney and Harrysson will be the plays for me, although I'm cutting the bet sizing on account of at least some of these playing well, and obvious bankroll things, also Campbell may be a tad undervalued. Let's see what happens.

Leverkusen day 2

Yesterday was a big irritant. I think I described it on X as like putting the lunchtime kickoff in an accumulator - I had a small number of minimum plays all in the 2-3 range, which went alright, but then had a max play. On the first game. So we know how the whole day is going to go right from the outset. And when Madars couldn't score, that basically set the tone and the rest didn't matter. Oh well, at least I thought the edge of the play might have been a bit overstated and toned the bet down slightly, but it's still a bad one. We go again today:

Smith/Campbell - 70/30

Searle/Gilding - 60/40

Heta/Mansell - 68/32

Noppert/Edhouse - 71/29

Chisnall/Menzies - 52/48

Anderson/Nijman - 60/40

de Decker/Joyce - 59/41

van Veen/Gurney - 73/27

Dobey/Springer - 55/45

Wade/Wenig - 59/41

Wright/Pilgrim - 76/24

Clayton/Wattimena - 56/44

Smith/Harrysson - 76/24

Aspinall/Brooks - 49/51

Schindler/Pietreczko - 62/38

Bunting/Woodhouse - 62/38

Leverkusen day 1

Draw is up. At a first glance, that looks pretty favourable for Gilding, Woodhouse, Wattimena, Pietreczko, Edhouse and to some extent Michael Smith (who due to withdrawals has been upgraded to a first round bye) in the Matchplay hunt. Cullen, Gurney, Barney, Joyce and Zonneveld could have had easier draws, but the only real bastard draw any of them could have got is probably Springer, so they'll all be happy to miss that one (Dirk got the short straw there). Let's jump straight into round one:

Razma/Pilgrim - 74/26

Edhouse/Krivka - insufficient data

O'Connor/Mansell - 61/39

Zonneveld/Wenig - 60/40

Campbell/Soutar - 52/48

Wattimena/Hermann - insufficient data

Gilding/Knopf - insufficient data

Nijman/Dolan - 68/32

Pietreczko/Bohrmann - insufficient data

Menzies/Huybrechts - 60/40

Joyce/Evans - 56/44

van Barneveld/Harrysson - 68/32

Cullen/Brooks - 52/48

van Duijvenbode/Springer - 57/43

Woodhouse/Horvat - long data only

Gurney/Veenstra - 57/43

We have seen some of the names here before that we don't know. Krivka played ET3 and lost 6-4 to Edhouse so it is a rematch, didn't look awful, did beat Krcmar in the quali but that was back in February now. Hermann is a Dev Tour player, has seemingly a couple of quarters (although the most recent one I think is an error on dartsdatabase), so probably not terrible but clearly an awful draw. Knopf also played ET3 and got swept by Menzies, quali performance was underwhelming, Gilding should have no trouble. Bohrmann is a complete random but did get up into the 90's a couple of times in the quali so while I don't think he should threaten Ricardo, if he can get to 3-3 or so it could get spicy. Horvat is a known player, we just don't have a huge amount once we exclude his 2024 data.

Looks like we've got a few close ones. I'm intrigued to see Brooks project so close to Cullen, there is a minor consistency thing but it is only that as Joe's about as up and down as the database on average as well. Pilgrim being that much of a dog to Razma is maybe a little bit more of a consistency thing, but he's really not had a great twelve months at all, getting through Q-School aside. Ought to be a decent day, Betfair doesn't have all the markets up yet and there's nothing matched on most markets, so will wait to bet until the morning in all likelihood.

Edit - Neglected to actually do the line on the Woodhouse/Horvat data we actually have. 65/35 that one.

Ups and downs

Very weird tournament. Round 1 was not good in the slightest, nicking just the two wins through Edhouse (just) and Springer, whereas round 2 was pretty darned elite, going 6/7 before Rock inexplicably lost to Pietreczko. The upshot was that we made a tiny profit - but at some cost. It seems like we've been betting on Clayton a fair bit (although in actuality it's not been that many), and he's binked so the value is gone, and Niko Springer being good is a fairly open secret but one that the market hadn't fully adjusted to. And he's finalled, so the value has gone. We'll go again in Leverkusen in a couple of days in what is actually the last Euro Tour before the Matchplay cutoff (although we do have a few Pro Tours), so the last chance for someone to make big moves. Before we look at that, some new FRH rankings:

1 Luke Littler

2 Luke Humphries

3 Michael van Gerwen

4 Stephen Bunting

5 Jonny Clayton

6 Chris Dobey

7 James Wade

8 Ross Smith (UP 4)

9 Josh Rock (DOWN 1)

10 Gary Anderson (UP 7)

11 Damon Heta (DOWN 2)

12 Danny Noppert (UP 4)

13 Mike de Decker (DOWN 2)

14 Martin Schindler (UP 1)

15 Dave Chisnall (DOWN 1)

16 Rob Cross (DOWN 6)

17 Gerwyn Price (DOWN 4)

18 Ryan Searle (UP 2)

19 Peter Wright (DOWN 1)

20 Gian van Veen (NEW)

Aspinall's the player to drop out. It's kind of surprising to see Cross dropping that much, but he has been pretty darned quiet this year. Still, it's pretty close all the way up to Wade so plenty of chances to make some moves. Niko's only a few places off the top 64 now.

So with the Matchplay coming up, here's the key spots (picture courtesy of the Weekly Dartscast):

Anyone above Cullen looks safe (Dirk's the next one above and a clear 13 grand ahead of Cullen),  while below Zonneveld, O'Connor's near four grand further back, Doets is another 2k behind Willie, and nobody else is above 50k. While it's not impossible that someone can come from nowhere (heck, Ratajski wasn't really in the running a couple of weeks back), being a whole Pro Tour win behind is a fair bit. Sure, there's five attempts to do it, but you've got to think that everyone else isn't going to stand still. We'll see how ET8 changes things - but for now, here's what these players are doing in terms of points per turn in 2025:

Ratajski 92.97

Wattimena 92.62

Smith 91.33

Joyce 91.05

Cullen 91.05

Gilding 91.02

Zonneveld 90.73

Woodhouse 90.52

Gurney 89.80

van Barneveld 89.80

Pietreczko 89.56

Lukeman 88.76

Edhouse 88.64

As such, Wattimena excepted, the three players who are scoring the most are those in 16th, 17th and 18th respectively. Those in 9th to 12th are all looking pretty good, so should just keep ticking over. The problems come for the bottom three - Zonneveld isn't playing bad at all and is basically right in the middle of the pack. but being more than 10k behind Joyce is a big ask, and there's four other players he needs to get by as well. Edhouse is rock bottom of the rankings but at least has ET8 to try to get some cash - Lukeman's not in ET8 and isn't much better. Those that need to look over their shoulders are Pietreczko and Barney, but it feels like Ricardo is playing a tad better of late, whereas with RvB you don't really get that same feeling. It should be noted that WD are indicating ET9 counts, whereas the OOM rules on the PDC site indicates the opposite. I'm leaning towards the latter.

Should be back Thursday with thoughts about Leverkusen.

Onto the Netherlands

Ross Smith looked fantastic and Ratajski got the results to back up the darts he's been doing in the Pro Tours since we last spoke, unfortunately the latter isn't here to build on it, but we've got a pretty good set of 48 players, as I'm away down in London for the playoff final this weekend, I'm not going to be able to update any projections on the fly, so will call each round 1/2 permutation, see who's most likely to come through, then run a bracket from there. Numbers will go in seed v PT, seed v qualifier, PT v qualifier order.

Humphries/Menzies/Plaisier - 71-79-61

Smith/Joyce/de Zwaan - 56-71-66 (de Zwaan only with long data)

Price/van Veen/Krcmar - 54-75-71 (Krcmar only with long data)

Chisnall/Edhouse/Huybrechts - 60-61-52

Clayton/Woodhouse/Hopp - 63-83-73

Smith/van Barneveld/Hendriks - 70 (no data on Hendriks)

Heta/Gilding/Sparidaans - 56-81-76

Noppert/Zonneveld/Vandenbogaerde - 61-76-67

van Gerwen/de Decker/Mansell - 61-75-66

Searle/Cullen/Meikle - 64-76-65

Wade/van Duijvenbode/Harju - 29-63-80

Wright/Nijman/van Peer - 47-75-78

Bunting/Wattimena/Springer - 54-53-49

Schindler/Lukeman/Wenig - 62-62-51

Dobey/Gurney/Kuivenhoven - 71-71-50

Rock/Pietreczko/Sedlacek - 75-77-52

Which gives a knockout stage of (with just the two seeds favoured to fall, oddly in the same part of the bracket):

Humphries 64-36 Smith

Price 70-30 Chisnall

Clayton 48-52 Smith

Heta 48-52 Noppert

van Gerwen 55-45 Searle

van Duijvenbode 59-41 Nijman

Bunting 58-42 Schindler

Dobey 46-54 Rock

Humphries 48-52 Price

Smith 53-47 Noppert

van Gerwen 49-51 van Duijvenbode

Bunting 42-58 Rock

Price 58-42 Smith

van Duijvenbode 50-50 Rock

Price 51-49 either of those two. That semi is too close to call.

Won't be back until Tuesday. May tweet some stuff if I see anything interesting.

Some pre-emptive projections

These are given as is, and will obviously not take into account the quarter finals:

Semis:

Lukeman v Wade (43), v van Duijvenbode (22)

Anderson v Wade (75), v van Duijvenbode (55)

Wright v Woodhouse (61), v Smith (55)

Gilding v Woodhouse (56) , v Smith (50)

Final:

Lukeman v Wright (31), Gilding (36), Woodhouse (41), Smith (35)

Anderson v Wright (67), Gilding (71), Woodhouse (77), Smith (71)

Wade v Wright (38), Gilding (43), Woodhouse (49), Smith (42)

van Duijvenbode v Wright (63), Gilding (67), Woodhouse (73), Smith (67)

So, by the looks of things, the winner looks like it is going to come from the top half, and it's likely to be whoever comes through the probable semi final of Ando and DvD. Will Dirk finally get his first Euro Tour? He's probably not going to get a better chance than this. Should also be noted that in all of these stats, Wade's form drops like a stone off a cliff once you get into the three and six month statlines, it's only what's still in the database from October backwards that is keeping the numbers you see quite as "good" as they are.

Sindelfingen last eight

3/3. That went well. Puts us back up to where we were before Friday's evening session and in a nice spot for the tournament. Last eight is now set, here's where I see things:

Lukeman/Anderson - 22/78

Wade/van Duijvenbode - 26/74 (trending towards DvD)

Wright/Gilding - 54/46

Woodhouse/Smith - 44/56

As such, the real value appears to remain on Dirk, although Ando should probably be a bit shorter.

Quick round 3 projections

Yesterday was OK, Dirk and Niels did well for us, Michael Smith dodged a bullet for us, just a shame Joe didn't quite get it done. Very quick this morning:

Lukeman/van Barneveld - 46/54

Cross/Anderson - 41/59

Zonneveld/Wade - 47/53

van Duijvenbode/Schindler - 62/38

Menzies/Wright - 41/59

Gilding/Noppert - 44/56

Woodhouse/R Smith - 32/68

Humphries/M Smith - 67/33

Sindelfingen round 2

Wow, that was looking like it was going to be an extremely strong session for a while there. That afternoon session was close to perfect - yes, Bradley Brooks missed a lot of doubles, but that one was a bit of a flier anyway and only for a small punt as the large bets on van Veen, Scutt and Woodhouse piled in, and Leon Weber got us a good chunk given the price he was at. Then in the afternoon, if anything Searle was worse on doubles, Ratajski wasn't quite as bad but certainly wasn't brilliant and should clearly have been at worst 5-4 up rather than losing 6-3, Rydz dropping the game is neither here nor there as again that was just a small punt, upshot is we're right back where we started. Oh well. Frustrating, but it is what it is. On to Saturday, let's see what we have.

Danny Noppert v Wessel Nijman - 48/52

Damon Heta v Martin Lukeman - 68/32

Michael Smith v Daniel Klose - 75/25 (again long data only on Klose)

Gary Anderson v Gian van Veen - 54/46 (shorter data favours GvV a tad more)

Chris Dobey v Luke Woodhouse - 68/32

Nathan Aspinall v Niels Zonneveld - 53/47

Rob Cross v Mike De Decker - 56/44

Dave Chisnall v Ross Smith - 33/67 (newer data HATES Chisnall)

James Wade v Joe Cullen 48/52 (shorter data likes Cullen a lot more)

Jonny Clayton v Andrew Gilding - 59/41

Gerwyn Price v Raymond van Barneveld - 77/23

Peter Wright v Leon Weber - 72/28

Michael van Gerwen v Dirk van Duijvenbode - 50/50

Luke Humphries v Connor Scutt - 56/44

Josh Rock v Martin Schindler - 63/37

Stephen Bunting v Cameron Menzies - 62/38 (recent data favours Bunting a bit more)

I've listed where there's more than marginal changes in the sample size, as I know some people may favour form a lot more than larger samples. Form is baked into these numbers somewhat - these take an average of the numbers from current month plus last three months, plus last six months, then a twelve month sample - so a great leg thrown yesterday will effectively count three times, whereas something thrown last September only counts once. I think I have listed this methodology before, but if not, this is what I am meaning when I say short, medium or long data, I generally want 50 won legs before I'll include something. I'll be placing my bets in the morning, but don't expect anything before Sunday morning for the third round, on a long football trip to South Wales tomorrow.

Sindelfingen round one

Just going to be a quick short notice one. Will do it in dribs and drabs as I get a few minutes away from the day job:

Martin Lukeman v Benjamin Pratnemer - insufficient data on Pratnemer

Cameron Menzies v Michael Unterbuchner - insufficient data on Unterbuchner

Wessel Nijman v Bradley Brooks - 61/39 (slight form trend towards Brooks)

Gian van Veen v Nathan Rafferty - 90/10

Ritchie Edhouse v Connor Scutt - 27/73 (slight form trend towards Scutt)

Luke Woodhouse v Johan Engstrom - 85/15 (long data only)

Ryan Joyce v Leon Weber - 67/33 (slight form trend towards Weber)

Jermaine Wattimena v Daniel Klose - 79/21 (long data only)

Ryan Searle v Niels Zonneveld - 68/32

Joe Cullen v Marcel Erba - no data on Erba

Mike De Decker v Max Hopp - 79/21

Raymond van Barneveld v Krzysztof Ratajski - 32/68

Andrew Gilding v Gabriel Clemens - 47/53

Martin Schindler v Callan Rydz - 47/53

Ross Smith v Paul Krohne (long data only) - 75/25

William O'Connor v Dirk van Duijvenbode - 34/66

FRH update

When I say FRH update later tonight, I mean now, got done with entering all the data but then hit the wall and just needed to come back to this the next day. So here we go:

1 Luke Littler

2 Luke Humphries

3 Michael van Gerwen

4 Stephen Bunting

5 Jonny Clayton (UP 1)

6 Chris Dobey (DOWN 1)

7 James Wade

8 Josh Rock (UP 1)

9 Damon Heta (UP 2)

10 Rob Cross (DOWN 2)

11 Mike de Decker (DOWN 1)

12 Ross Smith (UP 4)

13 Gerwyn Price (DOWN 1)

14 Dave Chisnall (DOWN 1)

15 Martin Schindler (NEW)

16 Danny Noppert (DOWN 1)

17 Gary Anderson (DOWN 3)

18 Peter Wright (DOWN 1)

19 Nathan Aspinall (UP 1)

20 Ryan Searle (DOWN 2)

Dimitri's the player to drop out, having had a pretty quiet year so far and he's not even 21st, van Veen is the last player out right now and he's fallen below Edhouse. Joyce is up to the top 25, while if Nijman wasn't top 40 before, he is now.

Probably nothing before Sindelfingen so check back on Thursday.

Graz quarters

Tad irritating that. Wattimena basically not showing up is fine, it happens, Cullen losing from 5-3 up is a bit more annoying as that swaps the entirety of the book really. Can't complain too hard though as we really dodged a bullet with Schindler being down. On to the quarters and it looks like we have a half decent chance of a new winner - is this when Dobey or Dirk finally step up? Does Joyce go one better than his previous final this year? Ross Smith has a major but he's not actually won one at this level. We could very easily have a final between two players who have never won a Euro Tour, which'd be a lot of fun. But for now, some projections:

Gurney/Rock - 26/74

Schindler/Dobey - 40/60

van Duijvenbode/Smith - 53/47

Heta/Joyce - 59/41

New FRH rankings later tonight once the event is done.

Graz round 3

Little bit of a recovery. Looked unlikely once Searle lost to Joyce, but Campbell pulling off the upset put us into the black for the day, so we'll take that. Eight games tomorrow, and our projections are this:

Wattimena/Gurney - 65/35

Noppert/Rock - 41/59

Doets/Schindler - 31/69

Dobey/Nijman - 54/46

Campbell/van Duijvenbode - 26/74

Wright/Smith - 41/59

Heta/Cullen - 58/42

Chisnall/Joyce - 48/52

Graz round 2

Not the ideal set of results yesterday. Big one was the Razma game, while Madars did well to get things back to a decider, Ian (who's quietly having an alright season) wasn't missing anything on the outer ring, and while they both did their job in leg 11 leaving a double after twelve, White having first shot was more than enough. Elsewhere, Bissell could maybe have got into an early lead and asked questions of Pietreczko but didn't, while van Peer wasn't really close to Doets. Nijman did his job and so did Woodhouse (although that one was a bit close for comfort) so it wasn't a critical loss, but gives us work to do today.

Smith/Landman - 74/26

Searle/Joyce - 63/37

Noppert/Springer - 55/45

van Veen/van Duijvenbode - 51/49

Cullen/Tricole - 70/30

Rock/Ratajski - 61/39

Gurney/Suljovic - 51/49

de Decker/Nijman - 47/53

Heta/Sedlacek - 67/33

Wright/Woodhouse - 59/41

Clayton/Wattimena - 55/45

Aspinall/Doets - 64/36

Dobey/Pietreczko - 72/28

Bunting/Campbell - 68/32

Schindler/Dennant - 66/34

Chisnall/White - 56/44

As such, there's only a couple of places where I'm seeing real true value, and I've taken decent chunks of Ryan Searle and Joe Cullen. There's a few where I've had a small stab, but these are only like 1% shots, you can work these out yourself. Should be back this evening with round three projections.

Graz

So today I learned there was a new rule for the HNQ's in that a card holder can apparently opt to go for one home nation qualifier over the course of the year as opposed to the tour card holder qualifier. Hence why Suljovic got in. This clearly seems like a reaction to the Czech event last year where I believe both Sedlacek and Gawlas didn't get in and the home contingent was not marketable, clearly this is just a bit of a marketing gimmick in the newer areas as for Germany/Netherlands this seems irrelevant as the card holder qualifier seems possibly easier, but hey, it's a new thing. The upshot is we've got Mensur, Rowby, Zoran and Goedl all in, so all known quantities, let's quickly scan through round 1 and just give probabilities, I have the NFL draft in less than two hours so I'll try to be brief:

Geeraets/Campbell - 48/52

Ratajski/Mansell - 67/33

Razma/White - 62/38

Gilding/Landman  62/38

Tricole/Goedl - no data

Joyce/Harju - not sufficient data on Harju to be confident

Pietreczko/Bissell - 60/40

Dennant/Rowby - 65/35 (no short data on Rowby)

Wenig/Springer - 36/64

van Duijvenbode/Jehirszki - no data

Nijman/O'Connor - 60/40

van Barneveld/Sedlacek - 50/50

Edhouse/Suljovic - 52/48

Doets/van Peer - 51/49

Wattimena/Lerchbacher - no data

Woodhouse/Rafferty - 78/22

Where I'm saying there's no data, there might be a handful of legs, but we're dealing in one or two matches so it is nowhere near representative. Hence what I post on the Rowby game, we have basically nothing this season. The Harju game I could probably put something up, but it would fall into sample size issues pretty quickly and I feel it'd just say lump Joyce regardless and as he's going to be big odds on, I'll just leave it alone.

What did we learn from Munich?

This is just going to be a brief one, and I'm going to hold on new FRH rankings until after Austria, but I think one thing is clear - that is the best we have seen van Gerwen in a long, long time. That may be close to his best. van Gerwen at his best is a huge addition to the sport, and if he keeps playing like that for the next three months it will make the Matchplay an extremely interesting proposition. van Veen is continuing to play great stuff, it really is a case of when and not if he binks one of these, he was one of the five we posted up in a very Dutch list as to who would be the next one to win at this level (Bunting, as one for a major, was not included), and he'd probably be higher on the list now than he was then (just before the UK Open). Rock is really looking back to his best as well, Ratajski is continuing a phenomenal start to 2025, and aside from Nijman dropping the ball in the opening round, we were close to flawless as to who we actually bet on.

Should be back Thursday evening. It'll be a late night with the NFL draft so I should be able to have the time to get everything sorted the day before.

Munich round 3

Today was a very good day. Only Dirk let us down, which when I ended up on more than half the matches, can't be complained about. Yes, some of these were small plays to be sure, but a win is a win and after a rough start to the year it's good to get some numbers in the black. Onto the last sixteen:

Price/Rock - 52/48

Cross/Ratajski - 55/45

Joyce/Zonneveld - 54/46

van Gerwen/Searle - 54/46

Chisnall/Smith - 34/66

Schindler/van Veen - 36/64

Wright/Razma - 55/45

Littler/Cullen - 78/22

Munich round 2

Oh Wessel, why do you lose a disproportionate amount of the time. Sheeeeeeeeit. Let's pile on to round 2 projections:

Noppert/Razma 56/44

Heta/Joyce 60/40

Gilding/van Veen 36/64

Searle/Menzies 68/32

Rock/Williams 78/22

Cross/Pietreczko 70/30

Smith/Ratajski 46/54

Cullen/Mansell 60/40

Wade/Zonneveld 54/46

Price/van Barneveld 77/23

Chisnall/van Duijvenbode 29/71

van Gerwen/Huybrechts 74/26

Littler/Crabtree 84/16

Wright/de Decker 50/50

Clayton/Schindler 57/43

Smith/Wattimena 59/41

I suppose the one that looks crazy is the Chizzy one. But when did he last play well?

On to Munich

Always catches me out this one starting on the Saturday. Let's rush through the games.

Joyce/Borbely - Always tough to gauge these qualifiers. Borbely came through way back in early February and let's just say he didn't look good.

Edhouse/Mansell - Real nice game second up. Ritchie's better, but not by much (maybe 52/48), and Mickey's trending better in 2025, but again, not by much.

Razma/Grundy - Looks like pretty much the archetypal 70/30 game in favour of Madars, regardless of sample. Odd, Grundy hasn't looked awful and I don't think Razma has been spectacular, but numbers are numbers.

Woodhouse/Crabtree - This is becoming a nice opening session, and one that might be deceptively close, I've naturally got Woodhouse better, and the 2025 stats are the best, but this is only 58/42 and he's not actually significantly better than this this season. Crabtree can play.

Gurney/Zonneveld - Session becoming more stacked. Zonneveld might actually be a small (53/47) favourite here, he's quietly been getting a lot of good performances and results and could very easily catch Gurney off guard here.

Nijman/Williams - Jesus, this session is excellent, although this one might not be one of the better ones, with Wessel playing so well he projects better than three in four, just getting up to 76/24, with the best numbers being the most recent numbers.

Huybrechts/Behrens - OK, they've got to chuck in the odd dud, Finn being a qualifier who didn't break beyond the low 80's and is pretty much unknown. Kim's not really done much of anything for quite some time, but shouldn't need to do much of anything to get the dub in this one here.

Menzies/Doets - How this one isn't in the evening session is beyond me, this might be the best opening stanza on the Euro Tour of all time. Doets has been a bit up and down and hard to gauge, but I've got Cammy up 64/36 here, which doesn't seem unreasonable particularly given his form to start the season.

Pietreczko/Paxton - Into the evening session and we've got a Euro Tour debut for Adam, to the best of my knowledge, not got a huge deal on him but it's averaging at 70/30 in favour of Pikachu, which feels like it should be about right.

van Veen/Eidams - Rene's been around for a while and we typically know what we're going to get, there's the odd flash but that's pretty much it, and there's not been big evidence of it at least in the qual, and against Gian it might not matter regardless.

Suljovic/Ratajski - It is a little bit weird that these are listed this way round but that is the way the PDC wants to work, pretty easy to call this one in favour of Krzysztof at just over a two in three clip (68/32), Mensur's done it all but Ratajski is continuing to play at a clearly superior level.

van Barneveld/Rosenauer - Michael has probably been around as long as Barney has. He got aided to an 88 average in the quali one time by Roetzsch but is showing nothing to make us think RvB is in any trouble at all.

Wattimena/Unterbuchner - We get to the last of the HNQs and probably the best of this pick, Michael hitting 95 in the final round and a couple of relatively unassisted games at or just above the 90 mark. We know he's dangerous, but such is the draw rigging that you're getting a tough opponent just way too often, and Jermaine's definitely one of those.

van Duijvenbode/Boulton - Dirk's showed a bit more form of late and looked alright midweek, and is projecting as a surprisingly massive favourite here, up at 84/16 which does surprise me as Andy's a pretty solid pro.

Schindler/Vandenbogaerde - Mario's a name that has popped up a few times this year and this feels like this might be a redo from somewhere, maybe even a Euro Tour we've already done, and this one comes up in Martin's favour as you would expect, the raw numbers of 71/29 feel like they may be selling the Belgian a bit short but the best sample is in 2025 so meh.

de Decker/Engstrom - Mike finishes the session off against Engstrom, the Nordic qualifier who we have probably enough data on for the 85/15 projection in favour of de Decker to likely be accurate enough to go with.

That's your lot, back for round two when we get there.

FRH and 180 in 180 update

So the back end of Riesa was not kind to us, but we've got a new champion at that level, and we see welcome returns for Price and Menzies in the Pro Tour, which gives us the following FRH updates:

1 Luke Littler

2 Luke Humphries

3 Michael van Gerwen

4 Stephen Bunting

5 Chris Dobey

6 Jonny Clayton

7 James Wade

8 Rob Cross

9 Josh Rock (UP 6)

10 Mike de Decker (DOWN 1)

11 Damon Heta

12 Gerwyn Price (UP 4)

13 Dave Chisnall (DOWN 3)

14 Gary Anderson (DOWN 2)

15 Danny Noppert (DOWN 2)

16 Ross Smith (DOWN 2)

17 Peter Wright (UP 3)

18 Ryan Searle (DOWN 1)

19 Dimitri van den Bergh (DOWN 1)

20 Nathan Aspinall (DOWN 1)

The last update was before the two Pro Tours immediately preceding Riesa, so Rock and Price getting the cake in those is represented here. Cammy's good form sees him into the top 30, while good form for Ian White sees him back into the top 50 for the first time in a long time.

Not a huge deal going on this weekend, we've got some Women's Series that I don't really care about, then a couple of Pro Tours next midweek before the annual Munich Easter weekend Euro Tour, looks like a pretty good set of qualifiers so that one should be fun.

But for now, a 180 in 180 graph - we've done this before, but it's a scatter plot of everyone who's got 180 legs in the database in the past 180 days. As such, it goes just about far enough back that we include all of the "major season" (except the Grand Prix, that's probably mostly expired by now but as it's double in, we don't track it anyway), and with 12 Pro Tours plus the Masters and UK Open, there should be chance for most of the new card holders to get onto the chart. The y-axis is points per turn, the x-axis is hundredths of points per turn, so higher up = better, then on the same horizontal line, further right is better:

It's a bit compressed so as not to overflow the layout, but I think the version here is just about legible, a full size version can be viewed here (link) - some things to note:

- That Taylor, Nijman and van Veen group on the 93 line is great for the future of the sport (similarly with Rock even higher, and while Littler is the present, he is obviously worth mentioning)

- Told you that Scutt was throwing good stuff, Dirk and Ratajski also rounding into form nicely

- Some good German representation on the 91 line

- Beau Greaves is up above 90. I think it's very fair to suggest that if she does get a tour card, then if she keeps playing this good (and there's no real reason to think she'll regress), she stands a serious chance of holding the card after two years

- Lower down, I was perhaps a bit surprised to see Lipscombe as low as he is given the runs he's made. Similarly it feels like Labanauskas is having a good 2025, but the numbers aren't saying he's really got better since the years where he lost a card for a reason.

Away this weekend, so as stated, won't be any updates, I doubt I put anything up prior to Munich, I'll be needing to get the Pro Tours into the database ahead of that so don't expect any random analysis or comment unless anything really major crops up (round about now, the only thing I could think of would be clarification of the worlds qualification format, as that's something that'll almost certainly be controversial and be worthy of a post.

Round 3

Round 2 was an improvement. Some losses were clawed back, we had a couple of players (Clayton, Cullen) look like good plays but for whatever reason not put a glove on their opponents, otherwise we were generally OK, rode our luck a bit with Wright but it is what it is. Into the last sixteen, I'll do the same small - medium - large - composite win chances for the first listed player, use it as you will.

Humphries/Smith - 48 - 54 - 54 - 52

Heta/Nijman - 45 - 46 - 49 - 47

Bunting/Menzies - 61 - 65 - 57 - 61

van Barneveld/Sedlacek - 51 - 46 - 47 - 48

Gilding/Rock - 44 - 42 - 38 - 41

Price/Aspinall - 70 - 66 - 65 - 67

Schindler/van den Bergh - 55 - 54 - 55 - 55

Chisnall/Wright - 28 - 34 - 51 - 38

I suppose the big weird one is the last one. There is some consistency deviation in Chizzy's favour, but it is nowhere near significant enough to think about doing anything other than maybe making minor adjustments to sizing. The other one that stands out is Sedlacek being as close as he is to Barney. There's really not a lot to separate them full stop. I'll bet in the morning when the market has matured a bit, there's only two games that even have £100 matched right now.

Round 1 is done. Oh dear

Most of the action that we ended up having was on the afternoon session. While we were satisfied with picking up the obvious Nijman money and getting a real nice result with Gilding, Rydz collapsing and then Searle running into an inspired Labanauskas pretty much did us over fairly badly. Oh well, it is what it is. We've got 15 games tomorrow (after Cross's late withdrawal) so we'll just go with the same projection things, all the low volume players are gone so these should all have decent enough samples. Using the same format as the previous post, the last number is the key one.

Wade/Menzies - 48 - 57 - 51 - 52

Noppert/Sedlacek - 67 - 68 - 65 - 67

Smith/Pietreczko - 85 - 71 - 70 - 75

Heta/Vandenbogaerde - 69 - 73 - 76 - 73

Dobey/Nijman - 58 - 48 - 51 - 52

Bunting/Labanauskas - 79 - 82 - 83 - 81

Chisnall/Woodhouse - 35 - 45 - 58 - 46

van den Bergh/Tricole - 64 - 74 - 66 - 68

Clayton/van Barneveld - 73 - 70 - 65 - 69

Price/de Decker - 65 - 59 - 60 - 61

Humphries/van Duijvenbode - 50 - 52 - 59 - 54

Veenstra/Gilding - 39 - 43 - 47 - 43

Wright/Edhouse - 66 - 61 - 58 - 62

Aspinall/Cullen - 43 - 52 - 56 - 50

Rock/van Veen - 39 - 44 - 50 - 44

That's your lot. Schindler (because of course it's Schindler) gets a bye, I'll be checking the markets somewhere on the M5 tomorrow and seeing what we can get done to claw back what we lost today. A last 16 update will likely be late, or on Sunday morning. Later all.

Riesa round 1 thoughts

Just going to very quickly list all the projections I have for now - here we've clearly got some complete unknowns, so hard to call, but as we're likely to see severe odds on prices for their opponents (thanks for rigging this round PDC) I doubt we miss much of value. I'll have a quick look at the qualis but don't expect to see a great deal. Numbers will go in short - medium - long - composite sample sizes with the Pro Tour player's numbers being listed.

Nijman/Szaganski - 83 - 83 - 80 - 82

Rydz/Vandenbogaerde - 83 - 74 - 70 - 76

Edhouse/Krivka - No data. Krivka was averaging low 80's, picked up to 88 in the final against Kciuk but that was a step up in opponent.

Menzies/Knopf - No data. Not awful, got a couple in the high 80's and did push one round up to 97. Didn't beat anyone better than Eidams though.

Gilding/O'Connor - 51 - 50 - 52 - 51

Woodhouse/Campbell - 48 - 52 - 57 - 52

van Veen/Goyer - No data. Goyer only crept into the 80's once, and that was by one dart. Everything else in the 70's. Real lucky run to get here.

Searle/Labanauskas - 88 - 87 - 85 - 87

Wattimena/Sedlacek - 71 - 64 - 60 - 65

Pietreczko/Ratajski - 15 - 31 - 36 - 27

van Barneveld/Klingelhoefer - Six legs of data, from Gurney smashing him 6-0 in this event last year. He averaged 75 then, averages in the quali weren't terrible, only just below 80 in the first then above 80 throughout with a peak just below 90 in the semi against Unterbuchner.

Smith/Tricole - 65 - 79 - 72 - 72

van Duijvenbode/Springer - 57 - 55 - 61 - 58

Schindler/Lovely - 70 - 67 - 69 - 69

de Decker/Klose - 100 - 76 - 80 - 78 (ignoring the short sample as that comes from just one match for Klose)

Cullen/Owen - 80 - 66 - 57 - 68

So in terms of notes, I can't see any of the players we don't know about really. Maybe Krivka can hang around for a bit, the qualifier is tougher than the domestic one if only because there's two more matches that need winning and Edhouse isn't the worst seed he could have faced. Maybe Knopf is better but Menzies is better again than Edhouse I think. Goyer's probably a 6-0 job, Klingelhoefer might be able to keep things interesting against Barney once in a blue moon but probably not. Worth noting that Lovely's stats are pretty much all from 2025, so while Schindler's data will change, Lovely's doesn't really with just a couple of added Challenge Tour games. Klose is the opposite, we have plenty from 2024 but nothing really from 2025, just his previous Euro Tour appearance. The mid range sample is also a bit short but there's just enough and it doesn't change the equation that much. Probably the notable ones where we've got real form changes are Cullen, where he's started out 2025 pretty hot and Owen not so much, and then Pietreczko, where while Krzysztof is red hot in 2025, Pietreczko's having another bit of a stinker start to the season much like last year.

I'll be placing my bets later, if any, there's only really a couple where there's been anything of note matched at this stage (the Gilding and Woodhouse games), the others are basically nothing or only a few quid right now.

Why we don't use averages - a reprise

Had a mildly pleasant conversation on X yesterday in relation to a post saying that Connor Scutt was facing the highest opposing average on the Pro Tour this year. We each put our points forward, and weren't necessarily disagreeing, but the main point I was making was that Scutt being a good player helps that statistic. This is something we've been over before, and a huge part of the reason that, below the Pro Tour level, I am very selective as to what data I include in my database, but let's look at the facts. Just filtering down to the Pro Tour events, here are the top ten players in terms of winning legs average so far this year:

So the gist of this is that Scutt is killing the legs he won a clear two points per visit better than anyone that isn't the best player in the world, and even in comparsion to Littler, it's fairly close. The point of this is simple - Connor is extremely close to effectively winning every single leg he has won in five visits. He is less than a point behind (the mark would obviously be 100.2). What does this mean for the opposing average? On a basic level, it means that Scutt's level of play is such that he is preventing his opponents from throwing at doubles, or, more pertinently, not throwing at big trebles, on a much greater frequency than anyone else in the game right now.

To give an example, let's give a standard leg. This one I will admit is curated, and done in such a way to emphasise my point, but I don't think it's hugely misleading and in general you should be able to get the picture. Let's assume that you throw second in a leg, and you kick off with 100/100/140 in some order, leaving 161 after nine, then miss a couple at treble but hit 25 to leave 96, leave yourself in on tops after that visit, and clean up for an eighteen darter on the third dart. It's a solid leg, but let's see what happens dependent on your level of opposition.

If you are playing against me, and I am shit, you are going to be allowed to take all those throws, and go out in eighteen darts. That's a pretty trivial average for the leg of 83.5.

Now let's say you're playing against a decent Challenge Tour player, or lower level tour card player. They're able to take the game out in six visits themselves - so we never get to throw those three darts at tops. That increases our average to 92.2 - a near nine point increase already, just based on one visit.

Now let's say we're playing against an even better player, let's say a mid level card holder, or just anyone who clears the game in five visits. Now we don't even have those three darts from 96 to leave ourselves on a double - our average bumps again to 101.25, as we don't need to set anything up.

Now let's go full send, and play against Littler, who holds in four visits. Here, we just have our first three visits - where we are doing nothing but throwing at big trebles, and our average for the leg increases even more to 113.33.

With this, I hope you see why I don't use averages at all, and just look at how quickly someone wins a leg. With this sort of example, someone could win 6-0 against the same opponent, but finish higher or lower in average just because they have more time to fuck around. And I'd hope that you see that Scutt, in this instance, by not allowing opponents to fuck around, will naturally drive their opposing average up - regardless of what their opponent may be doing, it's just how it works.

Now in fairness to Connor, he has been running into some tricky draws. His opponent list so far has been Rock, Aspinall, Gotthardt (W), Griffin (W), Searle, Joyce, Owen, Klaasen (W), Huybrechts (W), van Veen, Anderson, Searle, van Veen, Reus (W), Wattimena (W), Dobey (W), M Smith. He's had seven first round exits, and those draws have been fucking brutal, the easiest he's had being Rob Owen who hasn't actually started the season badly at all. But when you look at the players he's beaten, and the raw averages he's beaten them with, he's gone 105, 106, 97, 107, 100, 105 and 102. In the games he's lost, he's not dropped below 88, so it is not as if he has had any stinkers that would drag things down. His opposing average is good because he has been playing good players, true, but when he's been beating players (or even in matches he's lost), he's been doing so in such a manner which is severely limiting the opportunities the opponents have to hit doubles in the first place.

That was a long one, and it is a redo, we did the same probably close to a decade ago by swapping out Noppert for MvG in the first BDO worlds Durrant won and seeing what happened (basically Glen's average went up 2-3 points but, rather than win the title, he lost 7-0), but it's just a timely reminder of how things can escalate and make players look better than they are on account of the quality of their opponent.

Should be back tomorrow with thoughts about the Riesa draw.

Cash rules everything around me

Obviously there's been a huge announcement today that the PDC have made some enormous prize money increases, and have also increased the field sizes of a couple of tournaments, notably the world championship. This comes as no surprise to anyone that's been paying the slightest amount of attention to what Porter et al have been saying over the last, say, twelve months, but the announcement today gives one hugely disappointing tell which I was really, really hoping they would avoid. It comes with the worlds prize money breakdown:

Winner: £1,000,000

Runner-Up: £400,000

Semi-Finalists: £200,000

Quarter-Finalists: £100,000

Last 16 losers: £60,000

Last 32 losers: £35,000

Last 64 losers: £25,000

Last 128 losers: £15,000

Now what is bad about this, you may ask? Well it's simple - it is the implication that the whole thing is a straight knockout, everyone starting from the first round. This absolutely sucks. What we have right now is a pool roughly approximating numbers 33-64 in the world (i.e. the Pro Tour list) play up against 32 other players, some will be in the 65-96 range, many will be a bit further out. The worst will be a lot further out again. The perfect set up would have been to have the same structure as now, but with the 65-128 playing off in a round zero to get into the 2024/5 tournament's round one, and then go as existing. However, everyone is starting in the same round.

Why is this bad? Because it's going to create a lot of boring darts. An awful, awful lot. Given how the PDC have changed the first round draw of the Euro Tour this year, and given how they have changed the seedings for the Grand Prix, and given how almost every other major works, one has to assume that they will have one pot of 64 "good" players (whether this is the top 32 from the OOM + top 32 from the Pro Tour, the top 64 from the OOM, or something else entirely, we don't know yet) and one pot of 64 "bad" players. What this is going to give us is the sort of situation we see in the tennis majors every single tournament. Incredibly one sided games. If we use tennis as an example, Grok indicates that around 5-6 seeds go out in the first round of each event. Some of these are going to be injury related. Some of these could be based on the fact that whoever would be #33 in the rankings has no protection in the first round and could get drawn against the #32 seed - a simple example is Gael Monfils, #33 in the rankings right before last year's Wimbledon, being drawn against the #22 seeded Adrian Mannarino and winning the match, #19 seed Nicolas Jarry losing to a protected ranking Denis Shapovalov, the #31 seed going out to someone just outside the top 50, the #26 seed losing to someone inside the top #50, those sorts of things. The assumption will be that this won't happen if the PDC organise the draw based on how they have organised draws in the past and changes they have actively made for this upcoming season with a protected half and a fucked over half - Humphries, van Gerwen etc literally won't be able to play anyone within, say, the top 50 in the opening round based on any reasonable metric you want to choose.

The upshot of this is that we get 32 additional games, which will feature the world's top 32 against players from outside the top 64, and as we do not know where they are going to draw these additional 32 players from to fill out the 128 player field, a lot of these may be from even further outside the top 32 in the world. Now we don't see too many of these sorts of spots that often, but if we look to the round of the UK Open when the big guns came in this season, we had maybe two examples where this sort of matchup could be close - Rob Cross beat Thomas Lovely 10-4, and James Wade beat William Borland by an even more lop sided score. Similarly in the fifth round, Aspinall dropped two legs against van der Velde, and Joyce dropped three against Lauby. We're going to see this a LOT, and we're going to see a lot of 3-0 results. Probably a lot of 9-0 results. PDC/Sky may think "woo, we get another Littler game to televise", but if he draws Marko Kantele or Nitin Kumar or Dominik Gruellich or someone even lower down who wins their way in, and it goes 3-0 3-0 3-0 and the adverts last longer than the match, who does that really help? Nobody. We're literally only a touch over 24 months past a worlds where only three seeds lost their last 64 game. We could quite possibly have 32 additional games and I could call all 32 games right now by saying the seed will win. I really don't want this tournament to suck, while nothing will ever beat the UK Open this is extremely close to my favourite event of the year. I just get the distinct impression that we are simply going to get a lot more additional bad darts. How bad, it is hard to say, I just hope it is at least bad enough that for 26/27, the PDC are forced to change the format. They need something to teach them that balanced sport is good sport.

Göttingen aftermath

Enormous result for Aspinall, and his price being long enough against Humphries to warrant a small bet was enough to get us back to break even for the event, so all is good, pretty good run for Joyce who puts himself the right side of the Matchplay cutoff as a result and ought to additionally keep him nicely safe in the Euro Tour invite list going forward. Let's look at what that's done to the FRH rankings:

1 Luke Littler (UP 1)

2 Luke Humphries (DOWN 1)

3 Michael van Gerwen

4 Stephen Bunting

5 Chris Dobey

6 Jonny Clayton

7 James Wade (UP 1)

8 Rob Cross (DOWN 1)

9 Mike de Decker (UP 3)

10 Dave Chisnall (DOWN 1)

11 Damon Heta (DOWN 1)

12 Gary Anderson (UP 5)

13 Danny Noppert (DOWN 2)

14 Ross Smith (UP 2)

15 Josh Rock (DOWN 2)

16 Gerwyn Price (DOWN 2)

17 Ryan Searle (UP 1)

18 Dimitri van den Bergh (DOWN 3)

19 Nathan Aspinall (NEW)

20 Peter Wright (DOWN 1)

Edhouse is the player to drop out, and he's actually fallen below Schindler as well who may well be in the list shortly based on recent scores. But the big one is at the top - while they're actually tied to the nearest pound, the sort is putting Littler up to #1 based on the decimal point. Wade having a couple of decent Pro Tour runs and the UK Open not degrading yet is enough to nip ahead of Cross, while de Decker having a Euro Tour final and two Pro Tour semis since the last update sees him into the top 10. Ando having a Pro Tour win sees him rise, as does Smith with some steady performances. Searle going up is more on Dimitri doing nothing of note, while Aspinall's move up is obvious. Joyce hits the top 25, Menzies is on the brink of the top 32, van Veen after his Pro Tour is just one spot behind Edhouse at 23, while real consistent performances from Kevin Doets list him just outside the top 40. Jeffrey de Graaf has consolidated a top 50 position.

Who's had a good start to the season? I'm just going to set the master computer to after the Littler worlds win and see who's up at the top of the scoring. The number 1 takes no guessing, and van Veen being as high as the top 3 might not surprise you either, but Price being #2 might. After that, it's mostly the usual suspects, but some names of note:

- Dom Taylor is showing no let off after his time off, and scoring well over 94 per turn.

- Ratajski's also over that mark, we might not have really seen the results but is looking pretty dangerous again.

- Some rising names who are continuing to play well include Nijman, Wattimena and Scutt.

- A few surprises are just over the 92 mark - Cullen's rebounded well, O'Connor is a name who's caught a few eyes early this year and the numbers back it up, we all saw what Springer can do, but Rydz and Soutar might be surprising names in that group.

- Justin Hood is just below that 92 cutoff and starting his Pro Tour career really quite nicely.

- Greaves is also somewhere in the 91 bracket, along with continuing to do alright from last year Clemens, Lennon and Plaisier.

- Some names that might surprise you that are below 90 include Michael Smith, Kevin Doets, Daryl Gurney, Raymond van Barneveld (we're dropping below 89 now), Ritchie Edhouse, and after his red hot Q-School run, you might have expected a bit more from Bradley Brooks.

- Even lower down in the 87's are Chizzy and DvdB, it feels like Robert Owen has had a good start but the numbers don't agree, Pietreczko is back down there and Jim Williams, although he's not played much, has also had a sluggish start.

- Getting even lower still, Kim Huybrechts is below 87, de Graaf is also oddly around that mark.

- The lowest card holder is van Dongen which we might expect, but I can't see anyone else struggling to such an extent that they're below 80. Kanik, Claydon and Olde Kalter might be the lowest of the rest.

We've got a little bit of a lull with a Dev Tour weekend, but we're right back with mid week Pro Tours this time next week, then we go again with Riesa.

Göttingen quarters

Not really sure what to make of that (I'm meaning the whole session, not the comedic leg 11 of Menzies against de Decker, which is must see viewing). Ando got bailed out massively, make no mistake, at the same time Nijman ran into someone averaging 110 which you really can't do anything about. Smith however, 4-1 up and on throw really, really should be seen out, but wasn't, and annoyingly the one killer leg was to hold to make it 5-5 when a five or possibly six visit hold would have done with what Luke threw there (I'd guess 240 in six is at best a 50-50 proposition?), move that anywhere else in the last half of the game and Michael just gets home. Oh well, at least Gary saved us to some extent, and any time you have a 3/1 shot get to a deciding leg, you're probably happy you were at least on the right side of the line, so let's look at the quarters.

Menzies/Joyce - Very close. Joyce probably coming into form a bit more, but all samples are real close and Ryan only projects at 53% overall, which with the market favouring Joyce a tad, I'm not seeing the opportunity for value.

Price/van Gerwen - This one should be really good with how the players are playing, and all three samples I use have it no more than 51/49 in either player's direction, this is the closest thing to a flip I think I can see. There's not much of anything being matched here, but it's looking like it'll price up as a sort of 4/5 Price evens MvG game, which isn't offering much.

Smith/Anderson - A third close one. Ando's better on the longer samples for sure, but December on, it does look like Ross is playing the better stuff, and the averaging of them makes it Ando being favoured, but not quite 55/45. There's not actually anything being offered to back Ross here, but Ando is available at 1.87, which looks as close to correct as you're going to get.

Aspinall/Humphries - And one that isn't so close. All three samples have Nathan in the 30% to 40% range, and generally in the lower range - averaging out to having a tiny fraction more than a one in three shot. There isn't actually a market on Betfair yet, but 365 have Aspinall at 11/5, so I've got to think that if we're offered anything, it's because of an underestimation of Nathan, but it's not going to be anywhere near enough to play.

So unfortunately I don't think we have anything at all to do. I was going to do all the semis as well, but given three of the games look extremely close, I think we can summarise easily. Joyce against Price looks like an obvious 2-1 sort of game. Ando against Humphries looks like basically a coin flip, while Ando against Aspinall, as you'd expect, looks around the 65/35 mark. Then, as a possible final, Price against Humphries seems flippy, and you should be able to use the other numbers listed here as a proxy to work out other permutations. As I write this, the last game is now there on the exchange, but there's nothing much being offered yet.

Göttingen round three

Well that was a touch annoying, going 3/5 but one of the losers being the biggest play of the day on Wright, who'd done the hard part in getting a four visit break down 3-5, only to then miss three clear at double to force a decider where, although he'd have to break again for sure, he'd at least be asking questions of de Decker. Gilding was neither here nor there, got a healthy 4-2 lead but then the scoring just completely disappeared, which is unfortunate. Eight games in the last sixteen today - the small loss yesterday was basically the same as the small win on Friday, so let's see if there's anything available where we might book ourselves a small winner.

Menzies/de Decker - We mentioned Mike's game above, Cameron came through a decider against Heta where he had to come from behind with Damon on the hill, who did miss a couple of match darts so a bullet dodged for Menzies. de Decker seems favoured, but it's only in the mid to high 50's in terms of percentage chances, which is pretty much in line with the current market so no value to be had.

Cross/Joyce - Mentioned Rob's game already. Ryan also did for us with a pretty solid showing against van den Bergh, also getting home in 10. This looks as close to 60/40 as you can get it, maybe Rob is trending very very fractionally better than that on form, as such it's another game where there's no value in the market at all.

Price/Nijman - Gerwyn looked extremely strong against Ryan Searle, who wasn't playing bad at all himself (a point shy of a 110 average in his losing legs!), while Wessel played right in the first game of the day and was pushed all the way by Noppert but just fell over the line. The numbers give Price a tiny edge, only like 52/48, as such with Nijman being up around 2.5 on the market we're going to have a play, although I have toned the recommended sizing down a tad based on that Wessel never seems to convert quite as often as he should do.

van Gerwen/van Veen - Michael was taken to a deciding leg by Niko Springer, which we all thought was a possibility, while Gian took one leg less to get through a decent enough affair in a game we'll probably see for decades to come against Josh Rock. The numbers only give Michael a small edge again, we're talking 53/47, and more recent numbers actually give Gian the slight edge, however with big vig on the market and only just north of 2 available on van Veen, we're not touching this one.

Chisnall/Smith - Dave came through against Ricky Evans with little trouble, while Ross was almost as trivial a winner against Wade, albeit coming up against much more pressure. Ross is favoured, and it's by a fairly decent chunk - a bit more than 60/40, boosted by a very strong outlook in form since December. Unfortunately this seems to be baked into the market already, Ross is close to a play but it's not quite there.

Schindler/Anderson - Martin looked phenomenal in dealing with Jonny Clayton, while Anderson fell behind early against Woodhouse but reeled off six legs from seven to get the dub. Gary projects very well here - better than 70%, but how strong do we bet? 1.61 is good, Martin is trending better in the form stats but even those give Ando around 2-1, and 1.61 is better than 2-1, I'll give Martin a little bit of benefit of the doubt and tone it down a touch based on form, homefield and yesterday, but won't be dissuaded from going strong on the twice world champ.

Aspinall/Wattimena - Nathan was last on yesterday and needed every leg to dispatch of Ritchie Edhouse, while Jermaine was another standout performer in taking care of Chris Dobey. Jermaine seems the better player on all stat samples, maybe getting even stronger with form, but it only averages out a touch better than 55/45 so Aspinall is there or there abouts, the markets are giving Wattimena a small edge so there's nothing doing here.

Humphries/Smith - Luke played well in a high quality game against the in form Boris Krcmar, while Michael dispatched of Ricardo Pietreczko for the loss of just a single leg. The more recent world champ is better for sure, but Michael is close enough that he's not that much of a dog and probably has approaching a 40% shot to take this one. As such, the 4 that is available for Smith looks like well worth being a decent underdog punt.

With it being international break, I should be back for the quarters and may also have the time to put up some provisional semis lines.

Göttingen round 2

Round 1 was a bit annoying. Didn't have anything on the afternoon session outside of a couple of the long odds on players (although Nijman was a bit iffy), then went 2/4 on the evening, purely by coincidence the last four games. Evans and de Decker got home comfortably, Hunt was a bit of a long shot and would have needed to hit the doubles he missed, but Scutt? Oh man. Very questionable decision making in the decider for me. That would have made it a pretty nice day as opposed to just better than break even, but we go again with the seeds entering today.

Noppert/Nijman - Feels like Wessel very slightly, a sort of 55/45 kind of game, so there's no real value with Danny already being priced as a very small underdog.

Wade/Smith - Looks like Ross has the better of it, a tad better than 60/40, as such I feel the market is slightly overvaluing James, it's a play on Ross but it's not the strongest by any stretch.

Cross/Gilding - Another 60/40 sort of game, Andrew's still showing enough to have more than a chance here and at the price offered is definitely worth a tiny pop.

Heta/Menzies - Heta's better, but it's not by much, Menzies projecting at slightly better than 40% to claim this one, as such the line seems pretty much perfect and there's no value either way.

Dobey/Wattimena - Much the same as the above, except here Jermaine's maybe got an extra percentage point's advantage. If the market was a bit tighter we might look at Dobey here, but it isn't, so we don't.

Smith/Pietreczko - Looks pretty much a pure 2-1 shot in favour of the former world champ, with form based samples going more in his favour. We're offered a little bit better than 1.5 on Michael so I think that's worth a tiny play.

Rock/van Veen - Really too close to call. I've got Gian by the tiniest of margins, but that's all pulled back by really good form numbers (as you would expect given his game of late). That form is throwing Rock at getting close to 6/5, which is near a bet for me but I'd need a bit more to actually open the wallet.

van den Bergh/Joyce - Another fairly tight one, with Joyce being the small favourite and coming off a great win yesterday. It does trail in slightly in form towards Dimitri but he's never actually winning any sample. That said, being able to get better than 2.5 does look fairly decent value.

Anderson/Woodhouse - Gary's a strong favourite here, looking more or less 70/30 for the most one sided game we've got so far, although Luke is a bit closer in the most form based sample we have. As such, while Gary being available at closer to 1.6 than 1.5 is a good play, it's perhaps not quite as good as it otherwise might be, particularly given this is a redo from last time out where Woodhouse won and won well.

Price/Searle - Price is hovering at just better than 55/45 on the longer samples, but on the shortest one Ryan does creep in at just better than 50/50, so this seems like it should be very tight, there's not much of anything matched at all in this one and no line seems appealing at this time.

Chisnall/Evans - More rematches, this time from both the worlds and UK Open. Here's similar to the last one except a bit more exaggerated, Chizzy projecting round about 60/40 in the bigger sample, but it's the other way round in the smaller one. Overall it's favouring Dave, but not by a great deal and even money, which we're not quite getting, would be where we start to bet on Dave.

Wright/de Decker - Very tight one. Longer form suggests de Decker by around 55/45, shorter form goes the other way around. Tough to call, so with Wright being a decent enough price north of evens, this is the best play so far.

van Gerwen/Springer - Niko's got talent, for sure, enough that even against someone of van Gerwen's quality he's still more or less only a 40/60 dog. The current price of not quite 2.7 is very close to being enough to fire, so if money comes in on Michael, as it may well do, there could be a bit of value in laying him here.

Humphries/Krcmar - Looks like Luke has a solid advantage, but Boris is playing well and the form samples favour him more than the longer one (although there may be some sample issues with him just having dropped off the tour). 3/1 is a pretty big number, on the longest sample it's bad, on the average of the three it might be a tiny play, but I'll pass given the shortest one, which does favour Boris the most, may not be truly representative.

Clayton/Schindler - Looks like Clayton's got the edge here, it's averaging out at a bit better than 60/40, with Martin's best numbers coming in the longest sample, although there Clayton's still better than 55/45. That seems a bit counterintuitive given Schindler literally won a title this week, but it is what it is, Clayton I think at 1.7 is very close to a bet but I'll let this one pass for really short form and homefield reasons.

Aspinall/Edhouse - Final game, and it's one where the seed seems favoured, getting close to 60/40 in Aspinall's favour so Edhouse definitely has equity here. There doesn't seem any value in the market either way though.

That's the lot, should be back tomorrow morning (or maybe late tonight) with last sixteen thoughts.

Göttingen thoughts

Been a bit of a while since the last update - we've had some really fun Players Championships this last week, and the Challenge Tour has taken a big swing in the favour of Labanauskas who already at this stage has got to be looking pretty good to regaining his card. We'll do an FRH ranking update after this event, for one there's a little bit of a gap after this event, and for two I just noticed I didn't actually update my spreadsheet with the Belgium event after being away for that weekend, whoopsie. Into this week, and I'll just put out raw numbers for each of the first round matches, deal with those as you will.

Players - back to December for P1 - back to September for P1 - back 12 months for P1 (* - limited data, less than 50 won legs)

van Duijvenbode/Krcmar - 73* - 68 - 71

Pietreczko/Klose - no data - 60 - 67

Edhouse/Doets - 43 - 59 - 60

Wattimena/Kantele - 100* - 92* - 92

Schindler/Hunt - 58 - 55 - 65

Woodhouse/Gruellich - 71* - 69 - 75

van Barneveld/Evans - 39 - 44 - 49

Smith/Unterbuchner - 90* - 87* - 86

Gurney/Springer - 41 - 43 - 51

van Veen/Scutt - 55 - 45 - 48

Searle/Welk - no data

Nijman/Krohne - no data - 89* - 78

Gilding/Rydz - 39 - 49 - 46

Joyce/Cullen - 50 - 55 - 57

Menzies/Soutar - 36 - 52 - 58

de Decker/Lukeman - 76 - 66 - 66

So the ones with real limited data are those involving the home nations qualifier, Kantele's game, as well as the games involving Krcmar and Gruellich. In those two last ones I don't think anything more needs to be talked about, similar with Kantele, while those numbers are a tad aggressive, I don't think it's by that much (Jermaine is 1/5 in the sportsbooks). Klose as a former card holder I think we can go with the two longer samples as it's only missing newer data and we're roughly confident. Unterbuchner and Krohne we have some details on and they've both got incredibly tough draws, so I don't think I'm that bothered about the numbers being a bit high or short on data. That just leaves the Welk game, who's pretty much a complete unknown, but in the quali he was in the mid to high 70's in every game, with the exception of the semi final, where he did get up to 83 over 11 legs with the highest opposing average he faced, definitely getting some helpful opposing kills there. Against Searle, I don't think we need to talk too much about this one really.

I'll be back tomorrow evening with round two thoughts.

Belgium rounds 1/2

Alright, draw is in, home nation qualifier is in, let's look at the first installment of what I hope isn't a massive rematch fest of a tour that is a shell of its former self:

Humphries v de Decker/Lovely - This one seems pretty darned straight forward. Great for Thomas to be here, but against Mike here, this looks around a sort of 75/25 game at the very minimum, quite possibly closer to 80/20, but in the next round, this seems a lot closer than I thought it would be, de Decker looking like well over 40/60, and on home territory, there could be a play here. Then again, I did suggest in the UK Open that Humphries might be overvalued against Searle, who he then twatted 10-0, so maybe I've got some sort of data issue that is undervaluing Luke? Who knows.

van den Bergh v Schindler/Long - Cool to see Jim here, but Schindler looks clearly more than 2-1, and frankly the only reason it's not over 3-1 is a relatively small recent sample where Jim has a massive consistency issue, so this looks like a clear showdown against the young kids, where Dimi might be around a 55/45 favourite.

Heta v Smith/Joyce - Nice to get a lot of data here, Smith/Joyce being one where it's clear as to what is going on, where Michael's maybe not quite at 60/40, but fairly close, and would be getting on to about 50/50, albeit heavily influenced by the most recent form.

Price v van Veen/Hurrell - Seems like a fairly easy first round call, Hurrell has talent but he has only a 25-30% chance against someone of Gian's calibre, who, primarily based on current form, may be a razor thin favourite against Gerwyn, and only maybe 45/55 if we ignore the most current form. There's really not much between them.

Cross v Smith/Gijbels - Sybren is someone who we've seen a few times in various events, primarily the WDF worlds where he had a decent run, albeit didn't make a great impact, and against someone like Ross Smith, clearly in the top few players who weren't seeded through to the last 32, is likely to get murdered here. Cross would be better in round two, but at a tad under 60/40, it's clearly not prohibitive, and Ross has a great deal of equity in terms of getting to Sunday, as you'd expect against anyone.

Wright v Menzies/Campbell - This first round game is a real fun one between players who, without trying to be negative, can quite reasonably be described as volatile. Matt's a really good stage player, and the numbers only show him at around a 60/40 dog status and trending in the right direction, so this may be closer than many might think, then against Wright, who could be anywhere on any given day, he may well be a dog, with Peter trending really good of late and probably being 60/40 the other day.

Bunting v Wattimena/de Backer - This is what still remains cool about the Euro Tour, we see complete random players that I know nothing about. Patrick has got through five rounds to get here, beating former card holder Robbie Knops in the final round and best described as "a name I know" Luc Bogaert in the round before, but while he didn't get seriously threatened in any game (his worst loss was 6-3), he didn't average better than 82 in any game either. Against someone as red hot at Jermaine I think he's fucked. In round two, Jermaine is really, really, close. Closer to 50% than 45%. We've talked for ages as to how well Stephen is playing. Wattimena is also playing at an elite level.

Noppert v Gurney/Tricole - Daryl is a favourite in the first game, as you'd expect, it's around 2-1 and he's trending a touch better in more recent samples than over larger samples, so maybe Thibault is not having the greatest start to the season. If Daryl plays Danny, it looks like a standard more than 60%, but not quite 2-1 favoured line for Noppert, which doesn't seem in any way unreasonable.

Littler v Searle/Pilgrim - Darryl is good. Ryan is just that much better. This is showing at better than 80/20 in every sample. Searle is shit hot. Now against Littler? It's around 70/30. Pretty standard.

Anderson v Woodhouse/Waegemans - Someone I know nothing about! It appears he has Challenge Tour winnings less than my bar tab for the month, and did get into the BDO worlds about a decade ago as a random qualifier, losing to Gary Robson. OK then. Can't gauge too much from that other than Luke'll be reyt, and should lose well more than 75% of the time. Kind of the draw you want a bit of a warm up game for, but the draw says no.

Chisnall v Pietreczko/Dennant - Great to see Matt getting into one of these, although against Ricardo in a field where he seemingly does his best work, I'm not sure how it'll go, although on just the pure numbers this seems deceptively close, and in recent times, although not on the greatest samples, Dennant seems better. If Ricardo was to play Dave, this looks like an approaching but not quite 60/40 game for Chizzy, but this is a really weird section all round.

Aspinall v Edhouse/Bates - Back to all established card holders, which is what we like. Longer data favours Edhouse, more recent data favours Owen and drags things just under 60/40 in favour of our European Champion. If Ritchie was to play Nathan, it looks more like 60/40 the other way, i.e. in favour of the Stockport native, and it might be slightly more as he does seem to be in a bit more form in things that aren't counting to the stats (i.e. the Premier League).

van Gerwen v Rock/Krcmar - It's a real shame Boris dropped off the tour. Great player, but just wasn't getting it done. Looks about a 3-1 thing to me - that doesn't seem absurd, sure Krcmar can show up, but Rock is a great player. Rock against van Gerwen? This is tight. Super, super tight. We're talking 51/49 tight, and there's no obvious circumstances that make me think that something's not right. Michael is favoured, but not by much. Not at all.

Wade v van Barneveld/Crabtree - Barney against Cam is a decent young versus old one. Where the numbers say Crabtree should win. Now lets caveat this, it is based strongly on recent form, and there is a big difference in consistency, so maybe in context Barney is the better player (duh), but let's not just think "ZOMG five time world champion win" in this one. If it was Barney that Wade faced, I'm getting James at a gnat's over 60% - again, this seems fine, he's just got to another major final so is clearly playing well.

Clayton v Nijman/Schweyen - Francois' someone we know a fair bit about, although almost entirely from his WDF worlds run where he got all the way to the semis before being obliterated by Shane McGuirk, he's obviously not bad, but against Wessel, one of the more dangerous floaters in the first round draw, this is trouble. In round two? Nijman's projecting 60/40. Better than that actually. Jonny has looked alright in 2025, and Wessel has been struggling to punch a ticket on stage, so let's bear that in mind.

Dobey v van Duijvenbode/Labanauskas - All known games here, although Darius has been off the tour for a bit - that said, it is with enough recent data that makes us think that he is going to get completely murdered by Dirk. We are talking not pretty shit here. Dirk against Chris? It's projecting pretty close. I'd have thought Dobey would be a bit more ahead, but he's not.

That was the tournament that was

Round 5 didn't go great to be honest. We got the biggest bet in Joyce ,but missed on some close ones, Schindler coming from behind against Slevin particularly hurt given the odds in question, Searle not winning a thing is just a thing. As mentioned, wouldn't have been available to look at the last 16, and then the last 8 was chalky enough that there didn't look like anything would be that far off to really consider. Maybe we could have got a spot where we lay Humphries, but I doubt it. New FRH rankings:

1 Luke Humphries

2 Luke Littler

3 Michael van Gerwen

4 Stephen Bunting

5 Chris Dobey

6 Jonny Clayton (UP 1)

7 Rob Cross (DOWN 1)

8 James Wade (UP 4)

9 Dave Chisnall (DOWN 1)

10 Damon Heta (DOWN 1)

11 Danny Noppert (DOWN 1)

12 Mike de Decker (DOWN 1)

13 Josh Rock (UP 6)

14 Gerwyn Price (DOWN 1)

15 Dimitri van den Bergh (UP 2)

16 Ross Smith (DOWN 1)

17 Gary Anderson (DOWN 3)

18 Ryan Searle (DOWN 2)

19 Peter Wright (DOWN 1)

20 Ritchie Edhouse

Big winners were Wade with his final and Rock with his semi. Clayton's semi doesn't move him up a whole lot, but does give a bit of a bugger. Most of the quarter final losers were all right next to each other so don't really shift much. Littler with his win is now within 60k of Humphries, a good run in Belgium this weekend means with continued degradation being more of a thing for Humphries, he could cut the gap in half, continue playing like this then, assuming no massive cuts in events entered, he ought to be number 1 within a couple of months. Lower down, Ratajski gained a couple of spots but is still outside the top 32, Willie O'Connor is back in the top 50, Robert Owen is fairly close to that mark, but yeah, this event became chalky quickly so there's not a great deal going on. Should be back Thursday for Belgium thoughts, but I'm away for the weekend so I'll try to put everything in advance as much as I can.

Round 5 projections

Surprised to end up for the day, particularly given Ando fucked up a sizable play again, and de Decker showing that Sky/PDC might have been right to not include him in the Premier League, but hey, Burton > Szaganski, Scutt > Price and Greaves > Bellmont all pulled in decent chunks, along with generally being more hit than miss on smaller plays. Onto round five - with tomorrow being the North West groundhop day and me being at a match kicking off round about the same time as the draw for round six will be made, I can pretty much guarantee that I won't be able to do anything for the last sixteen in terms of projections (and covering every possibility is a clear non-starter in terms of pure time it'd take to do it), but let's jump into projections for the last 32:

van den Bergh/Dobey - 40/60

Littler/Wattimena - 83/17

Searle/Humphries - 52/48 (seems to be heavily weighted by recent form)

Owen/van Gerwen - 18/82

Rock/Smith - 57/43

Soutar/Clayton - 35/65

van der Velde/Aspinall - 13/87

Cross/Noppert - 50/50

Chisnall/Ratajski - 39/61 (similar)

Suljovic/O'Connor - 50/50

Razma/Smith - 39/61

van Veen/Burton - 81/19

Schindler/Slevin - 51/49

Lauby/Joyce - 15/85

Menzies/Wade - 49/51

Scutt/Heta - 57/43

Round 4 projections

Draw done, and what a fucking draw that was. Here's the thoughts:

Stephen Burton/Radek Szaganski - 61/39

Ryan Searle/Adam Hunt - 78/22

Dave Chisnall/Ricky Evans - 58/42

Martin Schindler/Mario Vandenbogaerde 62/38

Daryl Gurney/Danny Noppert - 33/67

Scott Williams/Willie O'Connor - 53/47

Kevin Doets/Michael Smith - 21/79

Alan Soutar/Matt Campbell - 58/42

Gerwyn Price/Connor Scutt - 52/48

Cameron Menzies/Mike de Decker - 35/65

Joe Cullen/Krzysztof Ratajski - 38/62

Martin Lukeman/Nathan Aspinall - 37/63

Beau Greaves/Luke Humphries - 34/66

Jonny Clayton/Gary Anderson - 24/76

Dylan Slevin/Haupai Puha - 82/18

James Wade/Willie Borland - 72/28

Luke Woodhouse/Mensur Suljovic - 53/47

Jose de Sousa/Ross Smith - 28/72

Jurjen van der Velde/Adam Lipscombe - 62/38

Dimitri van den Bergh/Raymond van Barneveld - 70/30

Justin Hood/Josh Rock - 30/70

Brendan Dolan/Danny Lauby - 82/18

Madars Razma/Ricardo Pietreczko - 56/44

Damon Heta/Kim Huybrechts - 78/22

Michael van Gerwen/Dirk van Duijvenbode - 58/42

Stephen Bunting/Chris Dobey - 45/55

Thomas Lovely/Rob Cross - 14/86

Ritchie Edhouse/Jermaine Wattimena - 31/69

Peter Wright/Luke Littler - 19/81

Nick Kenny/Gian van Veen - 25/75

Ryan Joyce/Andrew Gilding - 40/60

Robert Owen/George Killington - 59/41