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.