Correct score betting - a reprise

Mentioned this in the previous post, but thought I'd do it now. Let's say you're looking at tonight's games, you fancy a bit of a punt on the Littler game. You think he's going to win easily enough, but he's super odds on, so you don't see any value, so you pick a fairly one sided score out of a hat, let's say 10-4 Littler. Searle's not awful, should get some legs, but never really threaten. Can't disagree with any of that thought process, but there's a problem.

For your bet to win, precisely two things must happen. Now you may be thinking "well, yeah, Searle's got to win precisely four legs and Littler must win the match". True, but the two things I'm thinking of are the following:

a) The game must get to a score of precisely 9-4

b) Luke must win leg 14

How we get to 9-4, we really don't care - Searle can get off to a flier and Luke could then start steamrolling, we could get a bit of a reprise of Noppert/Menzies except with a few more legs for the loser, or anything in between. Doesn't matter. What does matter is the second point. Littler absolutely has to win the fourteenth leg.

The problem here is that darts works a lot like tennis. If you are on serve, you are much more likely to win the upcoming game than not. So it is the same in darts. We detailed in the previous post that even the worst player in the field should hold his throw more than half the time against the best player in the field. Now if Littler wins the bull, and opts to throw first (as he should), Searle is going to be on throw in the even numbered legs. Which includes the leg that Littler must win in order for your bet to win.

Of course, you could wait until we know who has won the bull, and if it is Littler then take a score that has Searle winning an odd number of legs. However, we don't know who does that (which, if you didn't know, you can see on sportradar) until fairly close before the off, and the bookie is going to flip to their prices of Littler having won the bull before you can place the bet. And they clearly do factor this in - looking at the live prices of Wright/Wattimena (at 5-1 Jermaine), the prices of 10-4 and 10-6 are shorter than all of 10-3, 10-5 and 10-7 - precisely because Jermaine has the darts in the even numbered legs.

So what should you do instead? Well, why not just go for the handicap bet - here, why not just take Littler -4.5 or -5.5? Or why not try to hit a middle? Take Littler -3.5 and Searle +6.5 at the same time, so 10-4, 10-5 and 10-6 will all pay off both sides. It won't pay off as much, but still gives you much the same sweat.

Tournament is going alright for me so far. Wade putting in his best ever performance, at least on averages, didn't help (and given how many games he's played here, that's some going), although I don't think he necessarily needed to with how Cullen was playing, but hitting on both Noppert and Nijman for lumps and then small pick ups on Gilding and DvD today keep things ticking over nicely. Searle pulling the upset this evening would be the icing on the cake, but that's pretty much a freeroll at this stage so long as Price and van Gerwen don't make mistakes on Monday night, when I'll probably be back to you with last sixteen thoughts.