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.