Post Matchplay etc stuff

Always been more or less a couple of days behind everything, be it the back end of the Matchplay, the midweek Pro Tours, or the plethora of stuff that's happened this weekend, but we're up to date now. Big props to Littler, congrats to Wade for another fine tournament showing, then we've got new Pro Tour winners in Wattimena (we could see this coming) and Bialecki (maybe not just yet, but whatever), then this weekend a few players locked up their Ally Pally spots, which sold out pretty much instantly despite the increased pricing, increased session count and decreased overall quality of games. Fun times. That last comment I'll come onto in a separate post, but for now, we're due a new set of FRH rankings:

1 Luke Littler

2 Luke Humphries

3 Michael van Gerwen

4 James Wade (UP 3)

5 Jonny Clayton

6 Stephen Bunting (DOWN 2)

7 Josh Rock (UP 3)

8 Chris Dobey (DOWN 2)

9 Gerwyn Price (UP 2)

10 Damon Heta (DOWN 2)

11 Ross Smith (DOWN 2)

12 Gary Anderson

13 Danny Noppert (UP 1)

14 Mike de Decker (DOWN 1)

15 Martin Schindler

16 Gian van Veen (UP 2)

17 Dave Chisnall (DOWN 1)

18 Rob Cross (DOWN 1)

19 Nathan Aspinall

20 Jermaine Wattimena (NEW)

Searle's the player to drop out, although if Jermaine hadn't made the Pro Tour final he won, he would still be in the top 20. Zonneveld making a final moves him closer to the top 40, Bialecki's win puts him in the top 75, while Wenig making a final shifts him into the top 80. 

We've now got a little bit of a summer recess - I'll dive a bit more into what I said above about how the new worlds format is not good, but apart from a couple of Pro Tours, a Challenge Tour weekend and a chunk of silver rated WDF events, there's not much going on for the rest of the month, so expect sporadic updates, if any updates at all, prior to the Euro Tour at the end of the month.

As for a quick update on how the betting is going this season - it's fair to say being down a third from the starting bankroll is not where I'd want to be right now, but this is a lot more volatile than what I was doing previously. More than half the losses come from one man in one tournament and you know who he is. There's still some room before the end of the season to claw back towards parity, and I've had my first long shot each way worlds bet in BRadley Brooks, 250/1 boosted to 325/1 was too good to turn down for someone who did what he did at Q-School and has a Pro Tour win, semi and quarter in the last five events. It's going to need a bit of luck to get into a position where we can start to lay, right now he appears pretty much borderline as to whether he will be top 64, and that could come down to the PDPA qualifier and who comes out of that, but he's playing well enough and has enough of a peak game to be able to beat seeds in this in a short format, get out of round two and then we can probably look to just start betting his opponent to green out the position.