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.