I posted on this to some extent when it was announced, in that while I think the expansion of the worlds is great for the players, throughout all levels of the game for once it has to be said, for the consumers, i.e. you and me, it really doesn't add much. Let's compare and contrast exactly what the change is.
Round 1 last year:
32 seeds - bye. 32 Pro Tour players v 32 international/miscellaneous qualifiers
Round 1 this year:
32 seeds v 32 international/miscellaneous qualifiers. "33-64" on OOM v 32 international/miscellaneous qualifiers
Now the second half are clearly not going to be exactly the same, but there is going to be some serious overlap between the two. The auto spots to 33-40 would very much likely be in the 32 Pro Tour spots in the old system. Just looking at the names it's hard to think that any of them would have missed out. Then, similarly, those that are left in the Pro Tour list are likely to be those in spots 41 to a bit below 64 on the Pro Tour. Sure, you have your first year guys like Springer and Brooks who have had great year 1's of their card (although they're close), but there's very much a feel of the usual suspects. Looking at the list as is, the likes of Zonneveld, O'Connor, Mansell, Rydz, Evans, Soutar, Clemens, it's a fair enough mapping.
Of the "right side" of the draw, it's a bit hard to say whether the 64 from this year is actually weaker on average than the 32 from last year. While the expansion coming mostly in added spots to secondary tours, which theoretically speaking only adds weaker players, you're getting 16 shunted down from the Pro Tour, who theoretically might be a bit stronger having played at a higher level all year, even if those 16 are effectively the best of the bottom half.of the 128. Last year, looking by quarter, only Gotthardt got to round two (and lost), only Campbell and Gates got to round two (and both lost), Toylo, Merkx, Griffin and Barry got through from Q3 (and all lost) then ub Q4 Lee, Nebrida, Owen and Slevin got through, with just Nebrida and Owen winning through - so just two actually beat a seed, one of which should have been a Pro Tour qualifier but for the Jeffrey de Graaf thing (and given he went on a run as well I think that argument's a complete wash).
As such, I think that a huge number of the added games will be dull as ditchwater. Now some people will just want to watch their favourite players, want to see the elite put on amazing displays and go for nines, hit 180 overs bets and big checkouts, and that they roll to a 3-0 win with the adverts lasting longer than the match is not relevant to them. That's fine, everyone's entitled to get what they want from this sport. Me, I want a contest where there's genuine peril for both players. I would watch a fight between Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua. I would watch a fight over the last can of special brew between two drunks in Cracky Gardens. I would not watch a fight between either of the first two and either of the second. So the question becomes how many of these matches will actually be boring as fuck?
The simple answer is the patented Tungsten Analysis Bar/Piss Break Test. This works very simply. We watch the first two sets. If the non seed wins one of them, this might be a decent game and we'll watch to the end. If not, i.e. the seed is two up, we assume it's over, go to the bar or for a slash, which given the inefficiencies of Ally Pally, will likely take us the next two sets to complete. If the game is over, we've correctly called it as boring and the match fails. If it's back to 2-2, we're back invested again and the match has redeemed itself.
So what we will do is take the current 32 on the race table, then also take the bottom 16 (in Werner Rankings Ladder (tm) order) from the Pro Tour list, and 16 players that should provide a representative list of international qualifiers. Now for this second part, I'm going to take the more obvious names, this coupled with the seeds in this scenario hitting basically all the Pro Tour qualifiers they can, will make the result seem more favourable than would typically be expected in terms of getting acceptable quality games. So our line up is:
Now I would hope that most people would agree with the assessment that I made in the previous paragraph that this method would likely produce a stronger than expected lineup to go against the seeds, it does look like that to me on paper, but I think it's kind of necessary to get players with enough data so that we do a fair assessment. I'll now do a draw, pit the 32 against the rest, and run the numbers:
Now this is the thing that surprises me. Mainly on how I defined my metric - it is really just too easy for someone who is relatively competent (at a world championship level) to be able to either hold out their set on throw, or nick the opponent's set. That is all they would need to do for me to consider a game interesting. Hold for three legs. That's it. If you think on a basis of "get a 15, they need to get a twelve, if not and I clean up in 18, they need to get a 15", then it asks not insignificant questions.
That said, the upshot of the exercise is that I'm going to give the PDC a break. I don't think the expansion as handled is great - I still think that pushing seeds to round 3, next best 32 from the Pro Tour to round 2 then everyone else in round 1 would be far better. At the same time, I can understand why they would not want to add another four days of sessions where the public buys in advance, and then gets shown Adam Gawlas v Tom Bissell, Stefan Bellmont v Adam Hunt, Lisa Ashton v Darren Beveridge and Darius Labanauskas v Jurjen van der Velde. As an example. There would be people that are so dense that would not look at a flatter bracket and understand that the elite players will not be playing, yet still whine about what they are seeing. Because people are idiots. People will quite easily see "world darts championship tickets brrrrrrrrrrrr" and buy them despite the outset clearly identifying there is zero chance of them seeing a truly elite player, and then complain about it. My point of view is fuck them, Matchroom's may be different. I don't know. I'm going to give them a mulligan for now - maybe the qualifiers bring more than what I think they will. But I won't hold my breath.
