Monday, 13 January 2025

Hold my beer

Can someone tell me the differences between these columns please:


Not seeing a huge amount of difference? That's because there's not a huge amount of difference. The columns are the top 16 in the world at the cutoff points for each of last year's UK Open, Matchplay, World Grand Prix and World Championship. This is pertinent for two very good reasons - firstly, the PDC has announced today that the Grand Prix will now have exactly the same seeding format as the Matchplay - rather than having just the top 8 be seeded, giving you the possibilities of things like Humphries running into Bunting or Price running into Noppert in the first round, it'll be much the same 16 against much the same 16. The level of churn between the two events is minimal given the same general players getting in, the only differences between the two fields last season is that Gilding and Ratajski made the Matchplay while de Decker (lol) and Menzies made the Grand Prix, so it has a very samey nature in the first place, only having the double in format and seeding system to really differentiate between the two. Now it has exactly the same seeding format? Mother of god. Look at the level of churn, or lack of it, through those columns. Humphries is obviously #1 every time. Smith and van Gerwen are in that #2/#3 bracket every time. The only players in the first list that don't appear on every list are Wright (and he was only #17 in the worlds seedings), Dirk (who had his red hot form from 2022 disappear from the main list and then his even hotter early 2023 Pro Tour form disappear from the Pro Tour list), Cullen (who dropped a Euro Tour off his rankings between the Matchplay and Grand Prix) and Smith (who was there for all the first three prior to his major win falling off his rankings. Aspinall is in the 4/5 section of the bracket for three of them before dropping to 12, which is still the same quarter. Price is in the 4/5 for the first half and 7/10 for the second half. Cross and Chisnall share the #6 spot, Cross moving to that 4/5 split for the second half, while Chizzy is in the 7/10 for the first half. Clayton remains in the spots to meet Humphries in the quarters for three of the lists. Heta goes 11, 11, 9, 9. Fact is, it's really, really hard for anyone to move up or down the main Order of Merit, as opposed to the Pro Tour, where one bink, especially if it is a Euro Tour, changes a lot very quickly.

Which is why it is absolutely batshit insane the changes they have made to the Euro Tour. For those who have not seen the announcement, not only have they switched the seedings from the Euro Tour from the top 16 in the Pro Tour OOM to the top 16 to the main OOM, they are also now rigging the first round draw so that those who qualify through the Pro Tour cannot face each other in the first round. So yes, what that means is that a circuit which was already feeling samey week on week and getting a bit of Premier League syndrome about it, is going to be even worse. Looking at the rankings for all of the current OOM, the Matchplay seedings race and the worlds seedings race, we see the following:

1 - Humphries, Humphries, Humphries
2 - Littler, Littler, Littler
3 - van Gerwen, van Gerwen, van Gerwen
4 - Cross, Bunting, Bunting
5 - Bunting, Cross, Dobey
6 - Chisnall, Dobey, Cross
7 - Clayton, Chisnall, Chisnall
8 - Heta, Aspinall, de Decker
9 - Price, Clayton, van den Bergh
10 - Dobey, Heta, Anderson
11 - Aspinall, Wade, R Smith
12 - Wright, Wright, Edhouse
13 - Noppert, Price, Heta
14 - Anderson, Anderson, Clayton
15 - Wade, Noppert, Noppert
16 - Rock, R Smith, Searle

So basically EVERYTHING is looking like a Littler/van Gerwen semi. Huge amounts look like a Cross/Bunting quarter. van Gerwen/Anderson in the last 16 frequently, Littler/Noppert in the last 16 frequently, Wright running into Bunting, Cross, or both, all the time. It is HUGE protection for the biggest names, and the lack of a free draw in the first round gives massive protection to the incumbent top 32 as well. Never mind that we don't get the opportunity to see a bunch of the fun stuff that the European Tour is all about, with random qualifiers running into each other. The following matches from last year all wouldn't have happened under the new rules:

Woodhouse/Hurrell, van Peer/Klose, Wenig/van Put, de Decker/Landman, Roetzsch/Wattimena, de Zwaan/Ehlers, Wenig/Lennon, Mueller/Veenstra, Menzies/de Decker, van der Wal/Edhouse, Menzies/Whitlock, O'Connor/King, Burton/Barry, S Williams/Springer, Merk/Littler, Rydz/Sparidaans, Labanauskas/Razma, Monk/Edhouse, Taylor/Goedl, Nijman/Grbavac, de Zwaan/Sedlacek, Kuivenhoven/Toonders, Hilger/Dennant, Puha/Roetzsch, Zonneveld/Puha, Kist/van Velzen, Razma/de Graaf, O'Connor/Mansell, Baetens/Rafferty, Sedlacek/Dennant, Szaganski/Taylor, Pratnemer/Troppmann, de Sousa/Hopp, Mansell/Ehlers, Kenny/Klaasen, Tobback/Soutar, Wattimena/Raman, Clemens/Lukeman, van der Wal/Bialecki, Schweyen/Doets, Bezjian/Csoka, Jehirszki/Nijman, Beveridge/Barry, Vegso/Dekker, Razma/Fehlmann, Hertig/Meikle, Owen/Zonneveld, Lukeman/Rydz, Wattimena/Kovacs

This is in no way comprehensive, there are probably some I have missed, I have excluded players from the alternate list as I don't really know how that is going to be handled this year, so could have involved more. Are all of those games going to be good? No. Some of them will outright suck. But the point is that there are two things that are boring as fuck in sport - one sided matches, and overdone matches. Would I want to watch Man City against Spurs if they were to meet in the FA Cup for a fourth meeting this season? Probably not. Did I watch Man City against Salford this weekend? Well I tried for 20 minutes before giving it up as a bad job. Would I watch Salford against, say, Newport County? Maybe. It is a competitive match between clubs I don't see that often. Looking at that list of matches we will not see in the Euro Tour this year, I'd be far, far more interested in seeing something like Menzies/de Decker, Labanauskas/Razma or de Zwaan/Sedlacek, or for that matter the game between the two Hungarian qualifiers both averaging sixty-something, than going into Riesa at the start of April for ET3 and getting a semi final between Littler and van Gerwen, a matchup we could have seen in the worlds, World Masters, UK Open, two previous Euro Tours and nine Premier League nights. Yes, by the time we get to Euro Tour 3, we could potentially have seen Littler face off against van Gerwen FOURTEEN FUCKING TIMES (and that's not even counting any times they might be on a Pro Tour stream board), and we're not even at Easter.

Sure, there will be instances where there'll be players in the top 16 of the OOM who opt to give it a miss, I'll give you that. That'll shake things up a bit, but likely not by much - particularly now they know they only have to turn up for the Saturday, as opposed to the Friday where if your Pro Tour rank was shit, you'd end up playing. I get the feeling that Porter has not heard of analogies about shearing sheep, and would prefer just to pull out a bolt gun and cap them, then wondering why he's run out of wool. But hey, we're all just keyboard warriors aren't we.

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