Matchplay fast approaching

Well that's another Euro Tour in the books and it's yet another win for Nijman, making it an astonishing eight titles and we're not even half way through the year (although we're well over half way through all the tournaments that will be played. At this stage, one's got to think that he's played himself into a spot where he should be being considered for a World Series call up in 2027, I would use the P-word but until he does something on TV, you can't really consider it yet. Heck, they've spurned players who HAVE done something on TV multiple times in the past, so even that doesn't mean anything. He's top five in scoring this year of players that you think would play the PL (I'm excluding Anderson here) behind only the two Lukes, Price and Dobey, so the game is there and the titles are there. Except on TV. Here's what it's done to the FRH rankings:

1 Luke Littler

2 Gian van Veen

3 Luke Humphries

4 Jonny Clayton

5 Ryan Searle (UP 3)

6 Wessel Nijman (UP 5)

7 Gerwyn Price (DOWN 1)

8 James Wade (DOWN 3)

9 Josh Rock (DOWN 2)

10 Danny Noppert (DOWN 1)

11 Gary Anderson (DOWN 1)

12 Chris Dobey

13 Stephen Bunting

14 Nathan Aspinall (UP 1)

15 Ross Smith (UP 2)

16 Michael van Gerwen (DOWN 2)

17 Luke Woodhouse (DOWN 1)

18 Jermaine Wattimena

19 Krzysztof Ratajski

20 Rob Cross (NEW)

I didn't immediately post this as Nijman was so close to Searle (who got a nice bump after a Pro Tour final) that he might have got into the top 5. Not yet, but give it until the end of the week and he'll be there. Everyone else in a fairly close race between 4th and 11th shuffles down a bit, apart from Clayton who's got a small buffer at the top. Aspinall and Smith having good runs moves them above MvG who's looking like he's going to need to really go deep in the worlds to maintain any sort of ranking. He's only just in the top 20 in the tour card race. Cross picking up a bit of form with a Pro Tour win and Sunday's final sees him back into the top 20. A bit lower down since the last one, de Decker's found a little bit of form and arrested the slide, although realistically he's out of the Matchplay at this point, Beau Greaves is into the top 64, surprise Pro Tour finalist Maik Kuivenhoven is just shy of the top 75, while another good floor run for Tom Bissell gets him into the top 80. In other Tom news, Sykes is up into the top 100 after a fantastic Euro Tour debut.

I would talk about the Matchplay race, but it's really pretty dull at this point. There's only two events left before the cutoff, I thought ET10 counted but it doesn't. As such, there's really only three spots to play for and Gurney, Menzies and Heta have a big edge. Heta's over 5k ahead of Chisnall who's the last one out. Huybrechts, Bialecki and Sedlacek are within 10k of Heta, but that's a Pro Tour final so is going to be a very tough ask. de Graaf and Veenstra are mathematically alive but would need a win and some help (Veenstra actually needs more than a win being just over 15k behind). The next two are remarkably Cristo Reyes and Beau Greaves but that's only noted for just how good they're both playing. The Grand Prix race looks a lot more interesting but we'll cross that bridge after the Matchplay.

ET9 round 4

Not too often that you win two bets with the same three figure checkout in each player's last possible chance to hold, but we got there, Jermaine also did the job so that session saw a very healthy profit. Into the quarters now, not that I usually project the semis/final in the running anyway, but won't today, but will give a quick twelve month gauge for some possibilities. Anyway, quarters:

Cross/Aspinall - 43/40/40/41

Sykes/Wattimena - 49/48/48/48

Gilding/Smith - 36/37/37/37

de Decker/Nijman - 38/33/36/36

Not a huge amount of seasonal/form variation there, only the last one shifting any significant amount and even that isn't a big deal. In the top half, if it was Aspinall/Wattimena, that'd be around a 60/40 in Nathan's favour, and if it was Smith/Nijman in the bottom half that'd be really too close to call, maybe Wessel's just edging it. Aspinall's pretty similar to Nijman's numbers in a potential final year long as well. So we could be in for some tight ones - we thought that this afternoon, and Nijman and Aspinall crushing aside, we weren't too far wrong with everything else going 10+ legs, so this could be a late one.

ET9 round 3

Wasn't much of value on day 2. Heta losing to Doets, meh, that's fine, Kevin's playing great, just seemed a tad overvalued. Then Tom Sykes. Very nice. Only takes us back to where we started at the outset of the tournament, but hey, definitely the MVP of this event so far. Onto the last sixteen.

Cross/Doets - 46/41/47/45

Searle/Aspinall - 46/48/46/47

Menzies/Sykes - 43/45/48/45

Noppert/Wattimena - 42/48/50/47

van Gerwen/Gilding - 64/60/63/62

Dobey/Smith - 54/50/52/52

Joyce/de Decker - 35/38/38/37

Bunting/Nijman - 39/40/50/43

Christ. Not a single projection anywhere that is more than a 2-1 dog, and only six of 24 are greater than 60-40 one way or another. This ought to be a good one.

ET9 round 2 part 1

Getting this out of the way as I'll be watching the US WC game later and don't want to rush back and have to go through sixteen games. Probably after having a few. Bonus points if you can spot the deliberate mistake in the previous post - of course Pratnemer can't play in the home nation qualifier for this. That'd require him to be from Slovakia, and not Slovenia. Small distinction, but one that we'll try not to repeat. Down small on this section, mainly thanks to Pratnemer and/or Hood not converting a 4-1 lead. Thorpe gave us a nice pick up, but while King, Bates and Engstrom did alright for minimum plays, none of them got really near enough to make things exciting. Got three more pending tonight, DvD hitting against what hopefully might be a bit tired late call up in Razma (although, to be fair, we don't know when the withdrawal took place and he might have known for weeks and the PDC just didn't make it public until the draw) will be the key one but got another couple of small plays at evens as well. Anyway, those first eight games:

de Decker/O'Connor - 44/43/49/45

Heta/Doets - 44/45/47/45

Nijman/Pratnemer - 82/81/80/81

Wattimena/Chisnall - 62/64/64/63

Dobey/Thorpe - 75/73/75/74

Woodhouse/Gilding - 65/59/54/59

Clayton/Joyce - 66/68/72/69

Bunting/Zonneveld - 50/52/61/54

Actually, I'll just list the eight undecided ones here, and then edit the post later rather than making a fresh one:

Noppert/Razma - 64/61/65/63

Searle/Huybrechts - 51/55/61/56

Aspinall/Long - 86/80/83/83

Schindler/Sykes - 44/46/48/46

Price/Menzies - 74/80/74/76

van Veen/Cross - 50/67/65/61

van Gerwen/Ratajski - 57/53/62/57

Smith/Cullen - 58/61/64/61

If I end up bokking Menzies, Cross or Cullen by saving two seconds now and not listing their opponents then so be it :)

ET9 round one

So now we head to Slovenia, where Pratnemer didn't read the rules, and didn't enter his home nation qualifier, made it anyway, so we've got five home players in the draw. 71, 77, 73, 77, 76, 85, 77, 68, 79, 72, 69, 71, 72, 67, 72, 76, 62, 72. That's the averages from the players in the HNQ that actually made it. Of course there's going to be some level of drag factor but holy shit this could be even worse than those early Hungary Euro Tours in terms of quality, I'd bet the farm on under 10 legs won by the qualifiers, and if they got five that'd be a pretty huge achievement, no combination of who they could play would be remotely easy given the PDC riggage of the draws, but Cross, Menzies, Chisnall and Zonneveld is pretty tough regardless. At least in terms of other randoms, we know Kelemen but he has insufficient data throughout, while Engstrom only has long data, so we've got ten games to have a look at in full.

Hood/Pratnemer - 79/78/74/77

Sedlacek/Thorpe - 62/58/59/60

Gilding/King - 56/59/59/58

Doets/Bates - 71/70/69/70

O'Connor/de Graaf - 48/50/51/50

Joyce/Engstrom - 66

van Duijvenbode/Razma - 76/70/72/73

Huybrechts/Barry - 65/66/63/65

Gurney/Long - 78/63/66/69

Springer/Sykes - 44/47/45/45

Ratajski/Reyes - 58/60/53/57

Some notes. Thorpe does seem legitimately that close, as does Gilding. Long being that big a dog on that short sample seems odd but the numbers say he is just that bad. Sykes has a pretty significant consistency issue, but at the same time, Springer's is as well and the overall numbers are close to identical. Then you have Ratajski/Reyes, which is equal parts fun and disgusting for a first round match. Also big props for when you host a Euro Tour in a country for the first time, and put their best player (and you can stick an ever in that sentence as well) on first in the afternoon. Seriously, the PDC need to get fucked at times.

So how did those WC tiers go?

I'll just give a good/ok/bad/ugly rating for each of them. In ascending order of what the teams did:

India - Expectations were low for sure, but one leg won and averages of 72 and 70 didn't even clear the lowest of low bars. OK

Mongolia - I had a bit more hope than India given how much the country has improved over the last couple of years, and an OK group, but they were almost as bad. Ugly

Portugal - Didn't think they'd do much, but a weak showing in their winnable game puts the projection pretty much on point. Good

New Zealand - Tough draw for sure, but even though I didn't think they'd get much change out of it, I'd have thought at least getting an 80 average was likely, but they couldn't even manage that. OK

Thailand - Had the lowest of low expectations, and while they did get three legs, the averages were just not there so I'm calling this one a win. Good

Finland - Prediction said there's a fair chance of a bad result, but getting boatraced by Hungary and finishing bottom makes them exceed that by quite a bit. OK

China - Gave them half a chance of getting a positive result here. France gave them an open lane but they missed the lay up. Bad

Australia - Oh boy, we said the group was a minefield, and they stepped on every one, losing the decider against the US then going completely to pieces against Canada. Ugly

Gibraltar - OK so these were a late call up, did a little bit better than what I would have guessed if I knew that, but meh, no prediction no rating. Uganda is void

Croatia - We thought this had fairly good equity to not get out of the group, or even finish bottom, which they did, two 3-4 losses is maybe harsh but it's well within the realms of what we thought. Good

Trinidad and Tobago - Prediction looked perfect after game one where they got two legs but barely averaged 60. Then they beat a team that was sitting on a double to reach the semi finals earlier. Nice work but makes the prediction fail. Ugly

Slovenia - Averaged 79 in both games, splitting them one a piece. Not sure how to rate that, it's not good but they got points, so I guess it's slightly better than I thought. OK

Japan - We recognised this was a tough group, and they got the win over the weak seed but lost to the strong non seed. We somewhat hedged our bets, and it wasn't too bad a call. OK

Singapore - Pretty much bang on. Ireland were too strong, but they averaged well, then played worse but beat the last minute call ups from Gib, who were probably a tougher opponent. Good

Lithuania - Repeat everything we just said. Lost the match they should, won the match they should, played better at least in terms of averages in the former (but, as we know, that's what happens with averages). Good

Philippines - Had real high expectations, but woefully underperformed against the hosts. Even if they turned up they probably still wouldn't have won, and they recovered really well, but the damage was done. Bad

Hong Kong - You did the hard part! You beat the seed, and got into a match where you only needed three legs to get into a playoff, or all four to advance outright. And you shat the bed and won two. Bad

Denmark - Wow, they were not good. Thankfully they had India playing awfully so got a win, but that was substandard. I'm only giving partial credit to myself here but that's more due to being wrong about India than these. OK

Italy - Had some optimism here, but losing to Latvia straight out of the gates basically killed it. Did the job against T&T but given the shocking last game they fell just short when this could have been more. Bad

Canada - Pretty middle of the road stuff really. If you had said they would get one win I wouldn't have picked the one they did, but after they did beat Australia they couldn't convert. Bad

South Africa - Pretty much what I thought. Sweden were too strong, despite SA averaging five points more, but then fell apart scoring wise in the second game, but as they were playing Mongolia they won anyway. Good

Switzerland - This pick was alright I think. Poland were predictably strong, but it was these who got the win, mainly because Portugal were maybe a bit worse than expected. I'll call it OK, but much like Denmark, it's not down to the Swiss really. OK

Austria - Probably an overestimate. They smashed China as you would think, and actually looked good, but par here was getting out of the group and they ought to have beaten France, but didn't. They played better than I thought, but got worse results, so this stinks both ways. Bad

Hungary - I think I can call this a win. Best possible result you can get when finishing second in a group is outperforming expectations, shame they couldn't get that last leg against Norway. Good

Norway - Speaking of which, we hit the KO stages and these lost 8-0 to Scotland. The group was read as somewhat even and I did give them a chance of doing this, so while calling it C isn't great, I don't think it's a total loss. OK

Spain - Thought they would perform pretty well, and as thought, they got out of the group. Given the draw they did get, they really couldn't get past the top 16, but I can't mark myself down for that. Good

USA - This was good stuff. I thought everyone had some equity in the group, but I think the US actually sweeping it, and then pushing Wales fairly decently in the last sixteen might be a fair bit more solid than I gave them credit for. OK

Poland - These on the other hand ought to have done better. The group went as expected, and the game against Ireland was perfectly winnable, but not a gimmie, they just weren't at the races. Not calling it ugly as it wasn't an easy draw, but it wasn't the win I thought it'd be. Bad

Sweden - Fairly bang on. Won the group as expected. Would have needed a really favourable draw to have much chance of going further. Netherlands wasn't it although they at least kept it close. Good

Czechia - This is kind of similar, win group then get awkward draw and lose, but I can't give it the same result as Germany was a much easier draw than the Netherlands, and I had more optimism out of the gate. OK

Belgium - This was so nearly a very good prediction, but then they contrived to escape the group thanks to Hong Kong fucking it up. It's still an underperformance and they certainly didn't play well, but I can't give myself the complete win here. OK

France - This is a weird one. Thought meh, and they definitely performed meh in the groups, but as neither opponent could really get it done, they did much better in terms of results than I thought, and were a leg away from the quarters despite not even averaging 80 in that game. Bad

Germany - One of three 5-8 seeds to lose where they should. I thought they'd do worse, mainly because the Philippines were a real potential banana skin, but that game was over in a flash, then they got an alright draw in Czechia and held their nerve. Netherlands were too strong, but by that point they'd already done much better than I thought. Ugly

Ireland - I'm not sure what to make of this. I thought they might do better than the seeding suggested, and they matched it, but their scoring was very solid and they come through Poland who were seemingly everyone's dark horse, so I'm not sure I can call it bad. OK

Wales - Calling this one good I think is fair. Made no mistakes in the group (although one average was a bit smelly), steadily got to the last eight with a favourable draw, then got the worst possible quarter, but got to a decider somehow before making an absolute meal out of 84 for the match and not getting a dart even at the bull. Or even leaving yourself on a double if you did come back. Good

Latvia - Always got to be one team that hugely outperforms, and it's Razma and Melderis this time. Getting out of the group was weird as hell given how things played out, but they did, which puts them at below par for the course in some sense, then they get the god draw, almost fuck it up, but somehow scrape home and get down to 24 in a deciding leg. Only for NI to kill 144. Bad

Northern Ireland - Scrape through two games 8-7, both against teams they should comfortably beat, then run into a genuinely good team and get completely shoed. I said par for the course, 3 seed going out in the semis feels that way, it doesn't feel right to say good but I think I have to. Good

Scotland - Play team you're massively better than - average 99, win 8-0. Play team you're better than, but not hugely better than - average 99 again, win 8-5. Play team you're worse than, average drops 11 points and you win three legs. I said par for the course, I said they're not beating England, this is exactly what happened. Good

Netherlands - Did pretty much what they were supposed to. Had a tricky first game, but got progressively better in the second and third, until England turned on the afterburners in the final. I put par for the course as I really wasn't confident in them reaching the final, so didn't want to say S tier. They did get there, so while I can say my prediction was right, I don't want to get super credit for having what turned out to be excessive pessimism. OK

England - Team Luke wins. As you would expect. Spain gave them a battle as you would expect, and Wales kept things closer than you might have thought, but neither the semi nor the final were particularly close. I said should reach the final, they did, they weren't that impressive until they got there, but that still seems to be a win. Good

And that completes the tier list recap. We have Pro Tour events Tuesday/Wednesday, and then a Euro Tour on the Friday. IRL stuff means that anything I do get our for the latter might be either on really short notice or right after the draw, but I'll try to get something done.

Brief update and World Cup tier list

What a great tournament that was. Luke Woodhouse has the London buses effect and jumps straight from Pro Tour winner to Euro Tour winner in less than a couple of weeks, our balance increases 30% recovering all the damage that has been done of late, then on the Pro Tour we have another surprising winner, although this time a repeat winner in Jeffrey de Graaf. Ross Smith did nicely to get the other one, while Willie O'Connor removed pretty much any chance of a missing the Matchplay calamity with a great trio of events. Veenstra picked up over 10k to keep outside shots alive (although the Grand Prix might be a more realistic ask), Cristo Reyes continued very solid form, Jimmy van Schie had a very decent Euro Tour and kept things ticking over on the floor, and yesterday Henry Coates had a very surprising semi final run. Here's the new FRH rankings:

1 Luke Littler

2 Gian van Veen

3 Luke Humphries

4 Jonny Clayton (UP 1)

5 James Wade (UP 1)

6 Gerwyn Price (DOWN 2)

7 Josh Rock

8 Ryan Searle

9 Danny Noppert

10 Gary Anderson

11 Wessel Nijman

12 Chris Dobey

13 Stephen Bunting

14 Michael van Gerwen

15 Nathan Aspinall

16 Luke Woodhouse (UP 2)

17 Ross Smith (DOWN 1)

18 Jermaine Wattimena (DOWN 1)

19 Krzysztof Ratajski

20 Martin Schindler

Yeah, not really much doing. Smudger unlucky to go down one despite a Pro Tour win, but Woodhouse did much more. Price hasn't picked up anything since April, so Clayton making a Pro Tour semi and Wade just turning up puts them above him.

We've got a bit of a lull now, so let's ignore the Nordic Darts Exhibition and go straight on to the second most important World Cup of the month, the Frankfurt Pairs Exhibition. Here I'm going to do a tier list, broken down by the following:

S - should reach the final

A - should greatly exceed expectations

B - might do better than expected

C - probably par for the course

D - will likely underachieve

F - dumpster fire making up the numbers

This is all going to be mostly in comparison to the team's seeding, or lack thereof. So bear that in mind before I shit on your country.

(1) England (Littler/Humphries) - This is by far the strongest team ever compiled for this event, if you want to make some arguments about some of the Taylor/Lewis or MvG/Barney sorts of teams, you can do, but I'd disagree. Based on seasonal scoring, Littler is top by a point from Price (who isn't here), who's second from Humphries by less than two tenths of a point, who's nearly two points ahead of the next best player. Their edge is huge, which'll make it all the more funny when they lose their first game again. Tier - S

(2) Netherlands (van Veen/van Gerwen) - For some reason I thought van Gerwen was missing this one. Which thankfully he isn't, as if he missed it, you still wouldn't get the strongest Dutch player there is right now, as Noppert is third ranked. van Gerwen is at least second, but there's another two players (Doets, DvD) before you even get to van Veen in the Dutch rankings. They're doing enough that they should do OK, but as the number 2 seed, do I feel confident in them reaching the final? Not really, but with everyone else looking pretty weak as well, they might. Tier - C

(3) Northern Ireland (Rock/Gurney) - The defending champions at least have some sort of chance. Rock's somewhat reeling from a disaster of a PL debut, and has dropped a tad, while it seems like I lay Gurney every week who's scoring under 90. They're clearly not as good as the Dutch are, but with the standards being so bad in this tournament as a general rule, I can't rule them out going deep again. Tier - C

(4) Scotland (Anderson/Menzies) - This is a tough one to call. On one hand you've got Anderson, who still maintains elite levels of play and is probably the strongest non-Englishman who's turning up, then you've got Menzies, who's making a debut here and flips between brilliant and crazy, often within the same match. Think it depends a lot on which Cammy turns up, if he's decent this could well be par for the course (as even if he does turn up, I can't see them beating England), if he doesn't then I'm not sure how much Anderson would be able to carry the team. At least it's not Wright that's here, but frankly Soots is playing better now. Tier - C

(5) Germany (Schindler/Pietreczko) - Oh boy. Schindler, while not exactly playing badly, is a fair bit off the level that saw him pick up Euro Tours, while Pietreczko seems to be struggling with some sort of dartitis like thing, on occasions it looks like he's worked out something to manage it to some degree, on others, not so much. Even when he's winning, he doesn't look good. With the home crowd, they'll get some help, but Springer and Clemens are scoring better than Pietreczko is, heck, Gruellich, Weber, Hofkens and Gotthardt all are. I can see scenarios where they don't get out of the group, and if they do, there's probably more bad draws than good ones. Tier - D

Philippines (Toylo/Nebrida) - I'll do the teams in the group with each of the seed to keep things a bit compartmentalised. This is always going to be a competitive nation, arguably the strongest in Asia, and you've got the 2/3 on the Asian Tour rankings, both of whom have a lot of experience on the big stage at this point in their careers. I'd like the numbers to be a bit better than they are, but this is totally a team that could cause upsets. Tier - B

New Zealand (Tata/Robb) - This is a pairing that feels like it should always do better than it actually does. They've had plenty of players who I've thought might make the breakthrough to tour card level (and holding it before anyone mentions Puha), but it's just not happened although I think Robb has that upside. They just don't play enough darts outside of New Zealand to really get the miles in at a competitive level, which at least financially is understandable. Tough draw. Tier - D

(6) Belgium (de Decker/van den Bergh) - Oh my god what an absolute shitshow this might be. de Decker has fallen off a cliff completely since winning his major and is nowhere near the Matchplay, despite being twentieth in the world and getting a huge number of Euro Tour shots as a result, while van den Bergh is even worse and is somehow in real danger of losing his tour card. Neither is scoring over 90 per turn this year, the best Belgian by a mile (Huybrechts) is below both in the rankings so isn't here, I do wish they should change the rules so that they just pick the top player by rights and they pick their partner, christ DvdB is less than a tenth of a point per turn ahead of Vandenbogaerde who's done basically nothing since having his card reprieved. If anything, Baetens is stronger than both of these and he doesn't even have a card right now. Tier - D

Hong Kong (Leung/Lee) - This is a fun pairing who got out of the groups last time (admittedly maybe the easiest group you could reasonably construct) and then beat Sweden in a bit of an upset. They've both won on the Asian Tour this year, and while like the Philippines I'd like a bit more in terms of numbers, they have a knack of getting the job done. Which they very well might. Tier - B

Slovenia (Pratnemer/Bazicek) - These make a return after forever after Benjamin won his tour card after looking decent on the WDF etc circuits for some time, and he's looked competent enough once getting there without doing anything to make us really think he'll keep his card right now (he's outside the worlds race). The other guy I know little about, other than doing a quick google, seeing he played Q-School, and seeing that the average there started with a six. Well that's that then. I mean they have a tour card holder so I'm not sure this is dumpster fire level, but it's going to need Pratnemer to have the carry of his life. Tier - D

(7) Wales (Clayton/Kenny) - I mean if Price turned up then this would be S tier without any thought, but if Price turned up they'd get a first round bye, so here they are at 7. Clayton has had a great Premier League, and is in the top ten of players here very comfortably, and that should see them well enough. Kenny is up with him, and he's OK but not having the greatest of years, with his scoring down well around the mid 80's and results outside of the worlds race. Clearly this is a step down over Price, but it's a huge step down over Owen as well who's outperforming Kenny by miles but is behind him by like one Pro Tour win. Shame, with Owen I'd put this at A-tier, but all I can say for what we've got is that they've got basically no chance of getting knocked out in the groups, and the quarters, draw dependent, looks like a possibility with at least a puncher's chance. Tier - B

Lithuania (Labanauskas/Barauskas) - This is the same team they've had for years, and is another one alright, one not so much pairing. Darius is pretty solid, but they've just not been able to get anyone close to him, and if Barauskas is still the second best player they've got, it's a problem given he's not even in the top 32 of the Nordic/Baltic tour. They're probably the stronger of the non-seeds in this group, but way, way off the top one. So second looks obvious on paper and very hard to argue against. Tier - C

Thailand (Ouamuapa/Rodman) - These are back after a couple of years away, and it's a whole new team that I know absolutely nothing about. Ouamuapa had seemingly one Asian Tour quarter last season where he looked bad. Rodman I have zero on. If you combined their Asian Tour winnings this year, they wouldn't even break the top 80. Nice that you're back, but thanks for coming. Tier - F

(8) Ireland (O'Connor/Mansell) - So Mickey has switched from north to south, and got himself back in the team, this being at the expense of Barry, who's scoring better than Mansell and getting just as good a set of results this season. So harsh on Keane and yet another one that isn't picking their strongest side, but Mansell can hardly be described as bad (and seems like the perfect sort of player that would disrupt even more than pairs affects quick players) and in O'Connor they have someone who is performing at a very high level. The group looks easy, and I think I prefer their chances out of any of seeds 5-7 to get a good run going. Sure, it's draw dependent, but they have a real good shot of outperforming their seeding, and ought to at least match it. Tier - B

Singapore (Lim/Tan) - Lim we know everything about already, while Tan is here for a second year and not doing dreadfully on the Asian Tour (at least in terms of results, on the rare times he's got deep the numbers aren't really convincing). This looks like another team like Lithuania that given the group, a 1-1 projection seems extremely easy to make and one that should be matched a huge chunk of the time. Tier - C

Uganda (Ocheng/Said) - Always cool to see new nations getting represented. Always also cool to try to work out who the hell these people are. Quick look at the small amount of African data I can find is not pretty. Will be a nice experience, but incredibly tough to see them getting a win, heck, might be tough to see them getting more than a couple of legs. Tier - F

(9) Poland (Ratajski/Bialecki) - Now this is what we're talking about. Ratajski is playing at a hell of a strong level, scoring in the top ten of players that are at the tournament, and is actually twelfth overall in this season, while Bialecki is putting in very strong work himself, scoring just a tad under 90 and very much in the Matchplay race (he's last man out right now). We've seen Polish teams put up obscene numbers in the past, and this is a team that's got a more than manageable group with the quality and upside that there's only really a couple of teams that should seriously worry them. It's an obvious dark horse, but it is what it is. Tier - A

Portugal (Camacho/de Sousa) - Hard to know what to make of these. Jose is the obvious name but has really done little since the loss to Pietreczko at the worlds secured him losing his tour card, he does have some small Challenge Tour winnings, but it's actually below Camacho, which given what Luis did at Q-School in terms of statistics is a bit of a worry. This isn't the worst chance they'll have of getting a win, but it's not great either. Tier - D

Switzerland (Bellmont/Walpen) - These might be the better team than Portugal on paper, what with Bellmont having a card and Walpen having probably more experience at a PDC level than Camacho has, but I'm still not convinced that they're any good at this level. I kind of should say that one of them or Portugal should be C as I'm not really sure who's better, it's probably these but they could easily lose that match. Tier - D

(10) Sweden (de Graaf/Lukasiak) - It's some timing for Sweden that Jeffrey both chose to be Swedish, and also got a Pro Tour win on the eve of the tournament. He's looking extremely strong, arguably the highest level he's been at since joining the PDC, and while Lukasiak (and a lot of the other Swedes) has not really impressed, and might not be better than Tingstrom (or, for that matter, Harrysson), they all have something about them, even if levels of optimism about Swedish darts have been limited from a couple of years ago. It's a good group, and if they get a favourable knockout draw, then maybe they can do something, but I think there's more teams they'd prefer to avoid. Tier - C

South Africa (Filby/Petersen) - Hey, do you guys remember when Devon Petersen won a Euro Tour? Yeah, those were weird times. Probably fair to say that he's nowhere near that level now, and Filby's a name we've seen for a bit but is nothing special. Do they have enough to beat Mongolia? Probably. Could they do something special and beat Sweden? Maybe? If JdG wasn't playing quite as well as he is then I could perhaps see a B rating, as is, I'm guessing just middle of the road. Tier - C

Mongolia (Myagmarsuren/Lkhagvasuren) - The fun I've had with data entry noting down some of these players when they've done some decent work on the Asian Tour. They're really not doing too badly - both of these are in the top 20, and their tour averages of mid 70's isn't that horrible. Will they come in as underdogs? Sure. Will the debutants have the crowd on their side? Probably. Are they good enough that they might be able to spring a surprise win? Against who they've got, I don't hate the chances. This may look silly if they both shit the bed on a big stage debut, but there's a chance. Tier - B

(11) Australia (Heta/Leek) - The Whitlock streak is over, with Simon not having a card and Adam Leek now having one, making selection more or less automatic. Leek has been solid and maybe running a touch bad in terms of results (real good consistency score), while Heta is kind of the same, still playing very good stuff, but maybe quite not at the peak levels he has. Not far off though, any team with a top 20 player (if you want to argue Heta isn't any more, be my guest) and a competent enough card holder as support has somewhat of a shot. Damon's right next to Clayton in the scoring and Leek's right above Kenny, so why wouldn't we think they might outperform? The group, to be sure, is a minefield, but get through that and who knows. It's only the group that doesn't make me want to put them higher. Tier - B

USA (Sevada/Buntz) - The US reverts to having a competitive team for the first time in a few years, can't blame van Dongen for having turned up to collect a pay check (as they would spell it, and also seemingly still use, remarkably) but the unfortunate combination of him and Lauby, who for my money is worse than either of Adam or Stowe, left them looking awful. Now they have no card holders so are using I guess the CDC rankings, and likely have the strongest team they have. Maybe Spellman has an argument. I don't really know what the expectation is here. I don't think either of them are worse than Leek is. Would only take Heta to have a little bit of an off day that any result is on the table. As this tier says "might", I'm fine with it. Tier - B

Canada (Long/Cameron) - A vastly experienced team here, Long in the second year of a card where he's really not looked quite as much of a waste of a card as I feared he might have been, while Cameron continues to look alright, although with the absence of the Seniors Tour now, maybe not playing quite as much as I'd like, but still seems fine at CDC level. That match against the USA is going to be one for the ages and may well be too close to call. So I think I need to go for the same tier really. All the group might do better than expected. So someone's going to fail badly. Tier - B

(12) Czechia (Sedlacek/Gawlas) - After being the team that went for the longest without getting a win of any description, they've finally got it together, and at the start of the year were looking like a very dangerous wildcard, with Karel being in the majors races, and Adam regaining his card and starting out 2026 pretty well. Gawlas has regressed a bit and Sedlacek has faded a little bit, but being up in the seedings, maybe he can turn things around with a good steady run of Euro Tour wins. Group is alright, and if Adam can turn up, then the chances of them sneaking to back to back quarters is definitely live. Tier - B

India (Kumar/Goenka) - Nitin plays again, and on the Asian Tour is in the mid 70's. Goenka makes a debut, and is in the low 70's. It's a tough group and hard to see them getting anything out of things. They did pick up a pair of legs in both matches last year, against Czechia in one of them no less, so are showing at least a pulse, but I think given the group the projection would be finish third and not look completely terrible. They may not get that far. Tier - D

Denmark (Jorgensen/Graversen) - We have no card holders here, so we look to the SDC tour, and we get Jorgensen back after a couple of years away, and Graversen making his first start for Denmark. Graversen scrapes into the top 10 of the SDC averages, while Jorgensen is a fair bit lower down than that. That's a fair bit of a concern, the numbers are not particularly great, and while I think they're a stronger team than India, the distance is not that much and almost makes me think that I should bump India up a tier. They lost badly to Malaysia in a winner goes to knockouts game last year, and something silly could easily happen again. Tier - D

(13) Austria (Suljovic/Rodriguez) - This is a complete mix of form. Suljovic is looking as good as he has done pretty much since he was last in the top 32, having a very nice renaissance, while Rusty looks pretty cooked, not performing well at all, was one of the worst card holders last year and is no better this time. The fortunate thing is that the group is manageable, and Mensur in current form should counteract Rusty in current form enough that they get out of it, but would need a godlike draw to do better than that. Tier - C

China (Zhan/Zong) - Always tough to know what to expect from these. Zong is the strongest player by miles, and didn't really look out of place at the worlds, while Zhan has played a little bit of Asian Tour, and may not be the worst player here but doesn't appear to offer a great deal at this level. It's not the worst group, they're not getting out of it, but that French team isn't all that so maybe, just maybe, they can do something of note here. But probably not. Tier - C

France (Tricole/Thuillier) - France had a nice run three years ago, but this is a different team now, Thibault staying in as the card holder, but it's Thuillier who will partner him, having got a pretty steady series of cashes on the Challenge Tour, much more than Labre has been able to manage. He's had some flashes, and appears easily better than Zhan (heck, he might be better than Rodriguez), but I'm not sure that there's a huge difference between Zong and Tricole, who if anything doesn't score heavily enough and might be a bit overrated, seasonal numbers of under 87 really aren't retain card levels, although he's doing enough to get in the worlds so he might do it anyway. They should beat China and they should lose to Austria, but this is a weird enough group that either of those could be reversed. So I kind of have to stick them in the middle. Tier - C

(14) Latvia (Razma/Melderis) - Just like their neighbours Lithuania, this is a side that has one card holder who's pretty solid (Razma seems a good couple of steps above Labanauskas), and then one guy making up the numbers, although Melderis (and Zhukov as well) are doing more, and Valters has played his way onto the Euro Tour at least. Much like Austria, this one more or less writes itself, the draw is favourable, but I can't think of any knockout draw that would be favourable, so seems to be a case of the low seed doing what the low seed should. Tier - C

Italy (Turetta/Castelli) - A couple of years ago, Italy made the dream run to the quarter finals with Turetta and dalla Rosa, this year Michele is back, now back at Challenge Tour level where he's doing alright in the top 30 after a two year card run which was relatively uneventful. He's joined by Castelli, who's not doing too badly himself, picking up a few decent scalps and scoring alright, having wins over and more prize money there than Brian Raman and Joe Murnan for example. This isn't a great team, but it isn't a bad team, it should be easily good enough to finish second, and if Madars isn't on form, there's enough here that they have an outside chance of repeating 2024's heroics. Tier - B

Trinidad and Tobago (Balfour/Walklin) - Another debuting team, having made a surprise run through Argentina and the Bahamas in their regional qualifier. We've seen that Salate and Sweeting are no mugs, so this is a bit of an upset. 10-1 in the final sounds convincing, but only three of those legs were in as few as 18 darts, with more than half going past seven visits. Which, even in one of the better groups they could have got, simply isn't going to cut it at this level. Tier - F

(15) Croatia (Krcmar/Ljubic) - Weird team this. Krcmar isn't the card holder, but has more prize money on the order of merit than Ljubic, who's in the second year of his. Pero's down at 76 for scoring this year with a dreadful legs won-lost record, with Boris being by far the superior player and very much a threat. However, this is a nightmare of a group for them to have landed in, and if Boris isn't on peak form it's perfectly reasonable to think that they could finish bottom of the group. Krcmar probably isn't the best player in the group and I don't think Pero is better than anyone. Boris is good enough that they're not going to stink the group out, but no team is longer than 2-1 to win the group in the betting, that's how even this is. Tier - D

Japan (Sakai/Muramatsu) - Japan's team is forever interchangeable, but it's a bit of an odd one with Sakai being here for the first time, topping the Asian Tour order of merit as things stand, and Muramatsu making a first return since 2019 having been in the side for the first nine events. He's fourth in the rankings there, and both are in the top five for the averages, so it's very much a coin flip between these and the Philippines as to who's the strongest Asian team. It's hard to gauge expectations - I think I have to go with something positive simply because the seed is so weak, but the other non-seed is an absolute bastard as well. Anything could happen. Tier - B

Spain (Reyes/Justicia) - And completing the Operation Mindfuck that is anyone trying to work out who'll win this group is Spain. Cristo is back having made the worlds and then having won his card, and he looks like he's not missed a beat at all, looking arguably better than he did when he was in and around the top 32 discussion, while Justicia, a multi-time card holder himself with a win on the worlds stage, is doing steady work on the Challenge Tour with a final this season already. A good card holder with a competent partner is a combination that can do damage in this, and that's exactly what Spain have. What happens here, I don't know, I've got a 1-1-1 leg difference tiebreak cluster in my mind, and a non seed getting a win is par for the course. These are good enough that they could just win both games outright, and, with a bit of luck, get a favourable draw and make some progress in the knockouts. Tier - A

(16) Finland (Haavisto/Masalin) - Seems like both of these have qualified for a Euro Tour this year. Which is probably good enough to get seeded, a little odd as 22 countries have a card holder and Finland isn't one of them, but I guess they do some sort of two people on the OOM beats one person on the OOM thing. Haavisto is third on the SDC rankings, Masalin is down at barely a Nordic Championship qualifying spot, but is in the top ten in the averages at least. Hard to call this one, they might squeak through the group, but they could very easily lose to Norway, and Hungary are getting better all the time. Maybe they qualify, but there's a lot of permutations where they don't. Tier - D

Norway (Dekker/Sivertsen) - And we get a Scandi (no wait not Scandi) derby in this one, and this team seems a bit more polarised. Dekker has the card and tops the Nordic rankings, as well as being right on the fringes of making the worlds through the Pro Tour again, while Sivertsen is a bit less well known, down in the seventies for averages, but this is a returning team having gone 1-1-1 with South Africa and Poland last year. I think the gap between Dekker and whoever is smaller than that between Sivertsen and whoever, and we could get a tiebreak again. It wouldn't take much for Norway to do enough to qualify, but they could easily collapse as well. Tier - C

Hungary (Kovacs/Szekely) - Our final team sees the Hungarians look to finally get something going, and they've got a couple of players who've been here before, but not in this exact team. Kovacs was at the worlds having won the Hungarian super league but was fairly easily beaten by Callan Rydz, while Szekely is a good but not great veteran, with players like Peter Kelemen and Andras Borbely who are coming through perhaps quite not being ready for this level of play. They'll be a steady team, probably not with the upside needed to get out of the group, but against this level of group, where they'd probably be projected to finish third, a win does not seem completely unreasonable. As such, got to give them a decent ranking. Tier - B

So there you have it.

S - England

A - Poland, Spain

B - Australia, Canada, Czechia, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mongolia, Philippines, Wales, USA

C - Austria, China, France, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Norway, Scotland, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden

D - Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, India, New Zealand, Portugal, Slovenia, Switzerland

F - Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda

ET8 quarters

Thank you whoever on Betfair was silly enough to make Jimmy van Schie the underdog in that one. Looking pretty wide open now with van Veen missing a match dart, although Doets and Nijman do look strong. Let's look at the quarters:

van Schie/Woodhouse - 37/39/39/38

Doets/Evans - 74/70/64/69

Nijman/Heta - 61/64/60/62

Joyce/Chisnall - 43/45/46/45

Probably some small slivers of value out there. Heta might be the best value but there's not really much and he's going to have to score a lot heavier this evening, can't rely on that level of sunrunning on the doubles that often against someone of Nijman's quality.

ET8 round three - ahhhhhhhhh

That one felt good. It didn't feel that good looking back in retrospect to see how Gian didn't wake up until he was 5-2 down, but a gorgeous clean sweep of 5/5 on the afternoon session, coupled with hitting on O'Connor and as mentioned van Veen (the latter for a substantial chunk) puts us substantially up. Or, if we look a bit back, more or less where we were two months ago after the previous 2-3 Euro Tours have been a complete shitshow. Still, this gambling game is a marathon, not a Snickers, and we'll go again tomorrow. NOTE TO SELF THEY'RE STARTING AN HOUR EARLIER THAN USUAL FOR REASONS

Sebastian Bialecki v Jimmy van Schie - 44/42/44/43

Cameron Menzies v Luke Woodhouse - 36/39/45/40

Kevin Doets v Justin Hood - 52/49/52/51

James Wade v Ricky Evans - 68/63/62/64

Ryan Searle v Wessel Nijman - 43/43/46/44

William O'Connor v Damon Heta - 46/47/44/46

Niko Springer v Ryan Joyce - 61/61/55/59

Gian van Veen v Dave Chisnall - 70/76/74/73

It remains close across the board. Unless you get van Veen against an out of form player. Then it doesn't. Marv.

ET8 round two

Small pickup today. Had some small fliers not work, main hit was Hurrell simply not scoring against Bialecki in what looked like a really promising spot but just wasn't to be, still, at least was on a couple of very strong plays that ended up in whitewashes. I do have to laugh at the PDC's write up saying that Aspinall is an "old adversary" of Kevin Doets. Which is pundit speak for having one really good game at the worlds and then otherwise having barely played each other. It's hardly a Taylor/Barney level of rivalry, is it? Still, it's getting on for two in the morning now and I have no idea why so let's just get the projections out. Maybe the hottest seed right now against maybe the strongest non-seed is first game on. What an absolute shitshow.

Wessel Nijman v Krzysztof Ratajski - 60/60/65/62

Luke Woodhouse v Andrew Gilding - 63/60/54/59

Mike de Decker v Jimmy van Schie - 49/48/58/52

Daryl Gurney v Ricky Evans - 52/45/48/48

Damon Heta v Karel Sedlacek - 61/62/62/62

Ryan Searle v Dirk van Duijvenbode - 49/51/50/50

Dave Chisnall v Joe Cullen - 41/40/46/42

Jermaine Wattimena v Justin Hood - 46/43/50/46

Danny Noppert v William O’Connor - 47/52/55/51

Chris Dobey v Sebastian Bialecki - 73/72/76/74

James Wade v Niels Zonneveld - 52/49/53/51

Stephen Bunting v Cameron Menzies - 53/53/65/57

Nathan Aspinall v Kevin Doets - 48/51/56/52

Gian van Veen v Dimitri van den Bergh - 76/79/80/78

Martin Schindler v Ryan Joyce - 59/60/59/59

Ross Smith v Niko Springer - 62/65/67/65

Wow, that is a TON of close matches. The only ones that have someone better than 2-1 either way are the van Veen one (understandable given how much of a disaster DvdB has been) and the Dobey one (which maybe might be closer if Bialecki plays like he did yesterday again). Regardless, this looks like it might be the most competitive set of Euro Tour games I think I've ever seen. Vamos.

ET8 round 1

These things are coming thick and fast, so with the draw being made (and a shitload of withdrawals again, so many that Dave fucking Chisnall is seeded, christ), let's look at round 1:

Ricky Evans v Teemu Harju (full data only) - 68

Karel Sedlacek v Jason Riedtke (no data)

Ryan Joyce v Christian Kist - 53/54/55/54

Ian White v Jimmy van Schie - 37/31/35/34

Krzysztof Ratajski v Daniel Klose - 84/84/79/82

Alan Soutar v Dimitri van den Bergh - 70/70/63/68

Justin Hood v Max Hopp - 61/66/62/63

Andrew Gilding v Jeffrey de Zwaan - 66/66/67/66

Niels Zonneveld v Richard Veenstra - 59/58/58/58

Kevin Doets v Lukas Wenig - 78/72/72/74

Cameron Menzies v Rob Cross - 42/45/44/44

James Hurrell v Sebastian Bialecki - 69/69/66/68

Dirk van Duijvenbode v Paul Krohne (no short data) - 86/83/85

William O'Connor v Cristo Reyes - 52/53/51/52

Joe Cullen v Marcel Hausotter (insufficient data)

Niko Springer v Nandor Major (insufficient data)

No real surprises there, I guess the one that is most notable is that Harju is that close to Evans (although Ricky I don't think has been playing that great), and that Hurrell is that favoured over Bialecki who's playing some great stuff. Well, it is what it is, so let's try and make some progress.

ET7 aftermath

Ryan Searle was one win away from checking off one of the five who I'd picked as a new Euro Tour winner, but it was Ross Smith who achieved that feat (but he already has a major obv). Nice run by Menzies, and a little bit of a good run for Cross, which puts both back into the Matchplay as it stands, frankly ahead of more interesting people but it is what it is for now, looks like we have six Pro Tours and three Euro Tours before the cutoff, we've got one of the latter in four days and then two of the former right after that, so I'll have a look at the run in once we're a little bit closer. For now, with a pretty minor loss for the tournament in the books, we'll do a new FRH rankings update:

1 Luke Littler

2 Gian van Veen

3 Luke Humphries

4 Gerwyn Price

5 Jonny Clayton

6 James Wade

7 Josh Rock (UP 3)

8 Ryan Searle (DOWN 1)

9 Danny Noppert

10 Gary Anderson (DOWN 2)

11 Wessel Nijman (UP 4)

12 Chris Dobey (UP 1)

13 Stephen Bunting (DOWN 1)

14 Michael van Gerwen

15 Nathan Aspinall (DOWN 4)

16 Ross Smith (UP 1)

17 Jermaine Wattimena (DOWN 1)

18 Luke Woodhouse (UP 1)

19 Krzysztof Ratajski (DOWN 1)

20 Martin Schindler

Nobody in or out, we've had two Euro Tours and eight Pro Tours since the last update, of which Rock binked one and Smith binked the other, there's a huge gap up to Aspinall from Smith (despite the former seemingly being on a hiatus since forever) while there's really not much of anything between fourth place and tenth (where Anderson is on almost as long of a break, neither of them are close to Littler in that respect though). Nijman continually printing money sees him keep going up, while Woodhouse getting a debut bink sees him continue to climb the top 20. Lower down, Doets is up into the top 25 as he continues his impressive form, Zonneveld has just crept into the top 32, while returning to the top 50 are Suljovic and Huybrechts.

Likely won't have anything before the Kiel preview.

ET7 round three - oh for the love of god

Moderate loss today. Of course, if:

- Brooks didn't miss six match darts

- Woodhouse didn't leave himself in the 200's after fifteen darts in a decider

- O'Connor didn't miss a match dart

- Chisnall didn't revert to the bad type of peak Chisnall after showing some signs of recovering

We might have been in a better spot. That said, to be balanced, we did dodge somewhat of a bullet with Dobey missing match darts, so while I'm not where I'd like to be, it could have been worse. Onto the last sixteen, there will be nothing after that given that I'll be watching the playoff final (on TV, while I live in Stockport I'm not going down to fucking Wembley to watch them), today only saw me getting even close to halfway to a max bet on the Searle game so I think we're pretty close to zero value anyway, but let's project the third round.

Gian van Veen v Kevin Doets - 51/58/61/57

Ryan Searle v Kim Huybrechts - 57/59/65/60

Stephen Bunting v Rob Cross - 48/51/60/53

Ryan Joyce v Jermaine Wattimena - 31/31/33/32

Michael van Gerwen v Damon Heta - 56/58/58/57

Ricardo Pietreczko v Ross Smith - 12/13/20/15

James Wade v Wessel Nijman - 38/36/40/38

Cameron Menzies v Martin Schindler - 46/48/49/48

Just looking at that lineup, I get the feeling this has the potential to turn into a dumpster fire, but who knows?

ET7 round two

Huge pile of meh that. Hit our two big bets (although Cullen made it a lot closer than it really needed to be), missed on basically everything else. DvD was the annoying one, was a hold fest through the entire game, but Cross won the bull, what can we do. I mean it is basically just south of break even, so who cares.

Jermaine Wattimena v Bradley Brooks - 74/68/50/64

Damon Heta v Niels Zonneveld - 51/49/51/50

Luke Woodhouse v Kevin Doets - 47/46/45/46

Danny Noppert v Ricardo Pietreczko - 80/81/73/78

Ross Smith v Joe Cullen - 58/60/64/61

Mike De Decker v Rob Cross - 46/46/47/46

Wessel Nijman v William O'Connor - 66/66/66/66

Josh Rock v Cameron Menzies - 66/66/69/67

Chris Dobey v Kim Huybrechts - 57/56/65/59

James Wade v Dave Chisnall - 61/61/62/61

Ryan Searle v Charlie Manby - 67/70/67/68

Christian Kist v Ryan Joyce - 47/46/45/46

Gian van Veen v Connor Scutt - 70/71/73/71

Michael van Gerwen v Madars Razma - 69/69/73/70

Stephen Bunting v Krzysztof Ratajski - 42/43/64/50

Martin Schindler v Karel Sedlacek - 51/52/55/53

ET7 round one

Well that came about fast, had a bit of a moment on Monday when I really wasn't paying attention to anything, then saw that a Players Championship had finished which I forgot was going on, so Tuesday was catching up with that, the Tuesday one, and then three regional tours to go with that as well. Yikes. Thank fuck that didn't happen when my eyes were shit or that could have been a nightmare. Still, Woody got his first title finally, so well played to him, I'll do a FRH ranking update after Riesa is done, but for now, we'll go through the first round projections.

Ryan Joyce v Jeffrey Sparidaans - 64/68/66/66

Connor Scutt v Finn Behrens - insufficient data on Behrens

Madars Razma v Gyorgy Jehirszki - no data on Jehirszki

Andrew Gilding v Bradley Brooks - 65/62/44/57

Cameron Menzies v Michael Unterbuchner - 57 (only long data on Unterbuchner)

Ricardo Pietreczko v Maik Kuivenhoven - 31/34/44/36

Karel Sedlacek v Johan Engstrom - 71 (only long data on Engstrom)

Niels Zonneveld v Keane Barry - 62/66/67/65

Dave Chisnall v Liam Maendl-Lawrance - insufficient data on Maendl-Lawrance

Kevin Doets v Tom Bissell - 65/62/62/63

William O'Connor v Paul Krohne - 80/73/76 (no short data on Krohne)

Joe Cullen v Chris Landman - 79/79/73/77

Dirk van Duijvenbode v Rob Cross - 61/62/59/61

Krzysztof Ratajski v Cristo Reyes - 58/59/51/56

Niko Springer v Charlie Manby - 53/55/51/53

Daryl Gurney v Kim Huybrechts - 31/30/42/34

Few seriously periodic changes to note there. Brooks being favoured over Gilding over the long period is kind of standard as the medium period started more or less exactly when his form fell off a cliff. Kuivenhoven being favoured over Pietreczko in more recent samples is not a surprise, but on the long one is a little bit off. Gurney only being close to Huybrechts in the long sample I think is more indicative of Kim picking up form hugely over the last six months or so.

Kind of want to do a bit of a deep dive on van Veen since the worlds, but that'll have to wait until next week. 

ET6 quarters

Last 16 not great. Nowhere near as bad as the last 32, but still a small loss. Huybrechts hitting his match dart would have made it pretty solid, but Springer hitting his match dart would have been orders of magnitude worse, so can't be too annoyed. Last eight:

Doets/Woodhouse - 54/54/54/54

Gilding/Cross - 52/55/49/52

Reyes/Rock - 35/34/28/32

Schindler/Gurney - 57/60/55/57

Kind of surprised Woodhouse is so close to Doets, and that Schindler is actually favoured, but that's what the numbers say...

ET6 day 3 - fine margins

My god that was brutal. Data suggested strong bets on Soutar and van Veen. Soutar - has throw in decider, misses three match darts, loses. van Veen - has throw in decider, has eighteen darts to finish it, doesn't even get dart at a double. Seems kind of brutal, but it is what it is, Heta not playing great (grats to Reyes on hitting the nine though) didn't help earlier, and if Huybrechts hadn't pulled the win out of the bag we'd have been looking at an enormous loss. Can we rebuild tomorrow? Let's see:

Doets/Joyce - 77/76/68/74

Wade/Woodhouse - 48/47/54/50

Huybrechts/Gilding - 59/54/45/53

van Gerwen/Cross - 63/65/60/63

Noppert/Reyes - 50/56/58/55

Rock/Springer - 67/70/72/70

Smith/Schindler - 70/70/66/69

Razma/Gurney - 54/56/47/52

Don't think I see a huge amount of surprising data there, other than the last one. Madars projecting as the favourite seems a bit weird, but looking at the mid range data where he is favoured the most, there is a bit of an inconsistency thing going on, but it's not enormous. Will we be able to retrieve anything tomorrow? I'm going to guess not, but we'll see.

ET6 day 2

Meh day. Hurrell had his chances which would have made it a nice day, but it wasn't a bad day. Whatever. We move on, we lost nothing. Let's pile into day 2, I'm not expecting to see much value but maybe something comes in.

Wattimena/Gilding - 60/56/56/57

de Decker/Joyce - 62/61/63/62

Cross/O'Connor - 47/45/53/48

Searle/Doets - 47/50/54/50

Smith/Zonneveld - 57/57/56/57

Heta/Reyes - 63/61/61/62

Woodhouse/Owen - 64/60/62/62

Dobey/Huybrechts - 57/57/68/61

Gurney/White - 55/62/66/61

Rock/Kovacs - insufficient data on Kovacs

Wade/Suljovic - 64/61/62/62

van Gerwen/Ratajski - 51/51/61/54

Noppert/Soutar - 37/42/58/46

van Veen/Razma - 79/81/79/80

Schindler/Wright - 74/75/70/73

Nijman/Springer - 71/74/68/71

I suppose the one that stands out hugely is the Noppert/Soutar projection. Looking at it, there is a fairly decent consistency differential between the two (in Alan's favour obv), and given the timing in the year, the difference between the short and medium samples will likely just catch a small number of majors and nothing really else. But other than that, nothing seems out of the ordinary really.

ET6 day 1 plus bonus next new event winners content

Jesus, I know Rusty's in bad form, but losing in the first round of the quali? Sheeeeeeeeit. Well, the draw is out, the only other Austrian card holder is Suljovic, he's in and would be HNQ4 so I'll project assuming he's through, nobody else Austrian has enough legs to do a projection, so let's go - will be short/medium/long/composite as usual.

Joyce/Clemens - 49/46/56/50

Pietreczko/Kovacs - insufficient data on Kovacs

Zonneveld/Hurrell - 49/50/54/51

Gilding/whoever - insufficient/no data on whoever

O'Connor/Ostlund - insufficient data on Ostlund

Ratajski/whoever - insufficient/no data on whoever

Springer/Kenny - 67/67/63/66

Doets/Landman - 86/85/79/83

Chisnall/Reyes - 44/41/48/44

Cullen/Owen - 62/58/58/59

Sedlacek/Huybrechts - 37/38/48/41

Wright/whoever - insufficient/no data on whoever

van Barneveld/Soutar - 18/17/39/25

Menzies/Suljovic - 47/49/53/50

van Duijvenbode/Razma - 74/72/75/74

Smith/White - 59/68/68/65

So, with Doets picking up a first title this week, and Greaves grabbing one as well, it's time to do the periodic "who do we think will be the next winner at each level" post. Except this time, I won't do it for the majors, because frankly, who's even close right now? I would say maybe Rock, but given how far he's been off the pace in the Premier League, I don't know really. Frankly it might be Mitchell Lawrie. At least with the Euro Tour and Pro Tour, you've got a fair chance of not running into Littler to need to win one, so let's go with those two.

Euro Tour (excludes Littler, Humphries, van Veen, van Gerwen, Clayton, Anderson, Bunting, Rock, Noppert, Wade, Price, Aspinall, Schindler, R Smith, Heta, de Decker, Cross, Chisnall, Gurney, van den Bergh, Edhouse, Ratajski, Nijman, Wright, M Smith, Gilding, Pietreczko, Cullen, van Barneveld, White, Springer, Suljovic, Huybrechts, Hopp, King):

1 - Chris Dobey - It's still pretty darned insane that he has not won one of these yet, and even more insane that he's still only been to one final, and that was back in 2019! He's still playing at an elite level, still being seeded through to the second round (although he's been given a bit of a stinker of a draw today), and still winning titles at the Pro Tour level. We've been saying when rather than if for Chris for quite some time now, and it's still true.

2 - Ryan Searle - May not be playing at quite as high a level as Dobey is, but due to that worlds semi he's going to be in the seeds for quite some time, and has shown enough on the stage that if he keeps plugging away, it'll click eventually.

3 - Dirk van Duijvenbode - Seems like he's been quiet for a bit, and doesn't have the advantage of the other two above as he'll have to go through an additional round each time, but in terms of pure statistics he is very much up there in terms of having a shot. He's not too dissimilar to Nijman and he's winning fucking everything right now, he's been to multiple stage finals, and it really wouldn't surprise anyone.

4 - Kevin Doets - Now that the first title is in the bank, is this going to take the brakes off him? I'd suggest it might. As of right now he's only getting the first round automatic call ups, but with no Matchplay or Grand Prix money to defend, he might start going up the rankings pretty quickly (he's currently in the low 20's in terms of a WC seed projection) and get there, particularly if he can bink a second Pro Tour or get through an opening round. We've seen him win some pretty big stage games in the past, so it could translate to this level pretty easily.

5 - Luke Woodhouse - After those four, I think there's a pretty big gap and no really obvious number five. So I'll just take the highest ranked player who has not got a title of any description, the numbers in my database are basically adjacent to Searle who we've got there already, so I'll use him to round out the group.

Pro Tour (additionally excludes Searle, Dobey, Wattimena, Joyce, Menzies, van Duijvenbode, Doets, Rydz, Dolan, O'Connor, Williams, Mansell, de Graaf, Soutar, Brooks, Plaisier, Bialecki, Greaves, de Zwaan):

1 - Niels Zonneveld - I've said a few times on various things in the past that his career has somewhat mirrored Doets', so it would make perfect sense for him to be the next player to step up. Numbers are more than competent, he's been close a few times, converting one seems to be something that'll happen sooner rather than later.

2 - Cristo Reyes - It might surprise a few that he didn't win a tournament in his first PDC run, but he didn't. That said, we know what his peak is and he's looked pretty darned good so far. He's not helped by starting from fresh, but if he keeps chugging away, he may bink one regardless, but could pretty easily get into a spot where he'd have a seed or be close to it by the end of the year.

3 - Justin Hood - To be honest, I'd have expected a bit more out of Justin in 2026, who's been extremely quiet after his worlds breakout party. However, he did reach a final last month, and we know he can put together a string of really good performances, the seasonal numbers aren't too dissimilar to Zonneveld's. He does have kind of the same problem that Reyes does in that he won't be getting too many kind draws, but also like Reyes he is good enough to play through those.

4 - James Hurrell - I've frequently picked players on these that have had a history of doing well in BDO/WDF type events, as I think those sorts of events are the sort where if you've had some success, it shows the type of schedule you need to come through to get a Pro Tour. He had a good worlds and is now firmly situated within the top 64, so has shown he absolutely belongs at this level.

5 - Karel Sedlacek - Think this is the last player that's got seasonal scoring of over 90 that has a tour card (note that, for these lists, I only consider players with a card) but doesn't have a title. That's not for lack of trying, as he's got himself up into the top 32 on the Pro Tour order of merit. Has a very nice peak game, getting deep on a few occasions in the last twelve months, wouldn't take much more to take it all the way to the hoop.

6 - Charlie Manby - Oh wait, I forgot one guy who's scoring over 90. Worlds was a lot of fun, and we've seen very good levels of play on the secondary tours, it's not quite happened for him yet on the Pro Tour, but the ceiling is so high for him that once he's used to the full time schedule, he can absolutely get there.

7 - Jimmy van Schie - We've known he's a classy operator for quite a lot of time, van Schie's another one that might need a little time to get to grips with the PDC schedule, but once he's done so, he's another where the sky is the limit.

8 - Richard Veenstra - He's been in these lists before, but is back on here after a turn up in form over the last few months. There's not a lot to say that wouldn't be just replicating what's been said for a few players already, he's on the fringes of the top 32 on the Pro Tour so will absolutely get the chances.

9 - Tom Bissell - Who thought we'd be saying this twelve months ago? Pretty much unknown when he won his card, he has absolutely improved a ton in year two and has seasonal scoring a lot better than a lot of long established names, and he's converted this into decent results with multiple Pro Tour semi finals already this year. He's less than five grand off of making the Grand Prix as things stand - get a little bit of a run going in Riesa and he's right up there.

10 - Keane Barry - With so many youngsters coming through and making huge names for themselves, Keane can often get a bit overlooked, however Keane's looking like he's starting to put things together at the senior level, with a solid enough record in the last twelve months in terms of progression of results, if he just keeps his head down and keeps working, he'll likely get a shot in the near future.

There's a few others I could have mentioned. Clemens still hasn't won one which is still a surprise, Ricky Evans has been very close multiple times, then we've got a few players like Scutt, Meikle, Gawlas etc who are all still fairly young and have shown enough of a flash that would make you think that it's not unreasonable they have everything go right on one day.

Anyhow that Austrian qualifier is still going on and showing no signs of ending any time soon so I'm off to the pub.

Post-Sindelfingen FRH update

ET5 is in the books and Price has claimed another title, here's what it does to the FRH rankings:

1 Luke Littler

2 Gian van Veen

3 Luke Humphries

4 Gerwyn Price (UP 1)

5 Jonny Clayton (DOWN 1)

6 James Wade

7 Ryan Searle (UP 2)

8 Gary Anderson (DOWN 1)

9 Danny Noppert (UP 1)

10 Josh Rock (DOWN 2)

11 Nathan Aspinall (UP 3)

12 Stephen Bunting (DOWN 1)

13 Chris Dobey

14 Michael van Gerwen (DOWN 2)

15 Wessel Nijman

16 Jermaine Wattimena

17 Ross Smith

18 Krzysztof Ratajski (NEW)

19 Luke Woodhouse

20 Martin Schindler (DOWN 2)

Heta slides out of the top 20, but is still within a Pro Tour final of getting back in and has a good 25,000 point buffer to the next player down. Price binking has opened up more than a Pro Tour win gap over Clayton, while Searle through to Rock remain extremely close, but have a sizable gap above Aspinall, who's also pretty close to the next three guys down. Nijman's form is mostly trying to see him bridge a gap from Wattimena up to the MvG group, he's more than half way there but still has work to do, and is getting pretty close to the point where he can't get realistically higher without some work on TV.

Lower down since the last update, a bit of a resurgence for Gilding and Cullen sees the latter safely into the top 30 again while Andrew looks to get back to the top 25. Doets is on the brink of the top 30 (and if it wasn't for Joe playing well, he'd likely already be there), while fellow rising Dutchman Zonneveld is 35th with a few struggling players ahead of him. Hood's Pro Tour final is basically keeping him standing still, Sedlacek continues a Matchplay run and is well into the top 50 now, Soutar and Barry are not too far off joining him there while Dimitri's recently dropped out. Two good runs for Greaves sees her into the top 80, and Jim Long isn't far off the top 100 now. Tom Bissell's already got there.

We've got a week off now, and then some steady action as the Matchplay race hots up. Two PC's in the last week of April, another two the week after that before we decamp to Austria, then the cycle basically repeats before Riesa and then Kiel to round out May. This weekend also sees Dev and Nordic Tour action, weekend after that sees Challenge and Asian Tour events, while in the WDF they've got a gold event in Denmark so someone else can print a Lakeside ticket there. There's a couple of things I might look at before the next Euro Tour, so stay posted.

Quarter finals

Small pickup, but it is a pickup. Pity that the Schindler punt didn't project as much larger than basically the absolute minimum. Onto the quarters:

Ratajski/Noppert - 58/43/43/48

Aspinall/Smith - 51/55/53/53

van Gerwen/Nijman - 39/48/49/42

Schindler/Price - 19/18/27/21

Couple of surprising things there. Firstly, I don't know if Krzysztof is playing better than expected, or whether Danny is playing worse, but that's one heck of a deviation in the recent stats. Yep Noppie is super consistent, but Ratajski is only at 1.5 compared to Danny's 0.76, both of those numbers being super super small - the database average is 5. If you've not seen me use this number before, it's what you get when you subtract the points per turn in the legs you've lost away from the same in the legs you've won. A low number typically indicates you're playing better than your actual results suggest if you think about it.

Secondly, I thought Price would be favoured over Schindler, but that much is a bit eye opening, only Martin playing a bit better in the middle of last year even getting the composite number into the 20% range. Couple of markets are up, I'll place my actual punts when the others are and there's a bit more liquidity, nothing is jumping out as value at this stage anyway.

In terms of the semis, the first two are close, so whoever comes through ought to be similar in terms of quality of opposition. Aspinall's projecting a touch better than 60/40 overall against Noppert, just to pick two of them. Then Nijman/Price is oddly about the same - with Price being the one that's favoured. van Gerwen would be a bit more of a dog again, going at about a one in three shot, with the form based (last three full months including what's in April) dragging him down to that mark. Looking at the MvG/Nijman numbers in comparison, it's either consistent that MvG is not having a great 2026, or both Nijman and Price are both kicking ass at the same time. Frankly, it could be both. Although looking at the consistency numbers for van Gerwen, he's actually scoring MORE in the legs he's lost than those he's won. Which is frankly absurd. Only Rob Cross is also showing that, at least in terms of card holders (Derek Coulson also has a pretty big sample size in 2026, but is Challenge Tour). Just something to bear in mind in that the overall numbers may be understating van Gerwen ever so slightly.

And that was a shitshow, but for other reasons

Day 2 is in the books and day 3 is close upon us, and for the second time in two tournaments Gian van Veen crashes out at the first hurdle and undoes a lot of our good work. Now Friday was so good (mainly the afternoon, and mainly thanks to Mickey Mansell) we're still up for the tournament, but it's not the hugely up it could have been. Still, could have been worse, Danny Noppert nearly completely shitting the bed could have been disastrous. Let's look at the last sixteen:

Cullen/Ratajski - 48/46/47/47

Noppert/Springer - 54/68/59/60

Wade/Aspinall - 40/34/40/38

Rock/Smith - 50/54/59/54

van Gerwen/Wattimena - 56/61/59/59

Bunting/Nijman - 29/41/52/41

Clayton/Schindler - 60/63/63/62

Price/Dobey - 67/63/60/63

Even the non-seeds that didn't get through are pretty much well known names, so we're probably not seeing much in terms of value. Mostly even form throughout the board, but mother of god that recent Bunting/Nijman form number. Noppert/Springer being this close in the short form is also a touch surprising. There's really not much in terms of value, I'm taking small plays on Ratajski, Aspinall, Schindler and Price but that's about it.

Oh my god what an absolute shitshow

Not talking about the betting, that went fine, got nice lumps on Gilding, Mansell and Heta, couple of other small pickups, Dirk let us down but that's fair enough, Kim's playing well and it was only a small play so we'll allow it, but what in the living fuck was that Gurney v Lukasiak game? Jesus christ. Thankfully we can pretend that one didn't happen and just move straight on to day two with more money in the bank than we had 24 hours ago

de Decker/Ratajski - 36/47/52/45

Wattimena/Doets - 36/44/48/43

Searle/Nijman - 43/43/47/44

Noppert/Lukasiak - 89/92/90/90

Dobey/Gilding - 62/65/62/63

Anderson/Springer - 80/82/73/78

Bunting/Mansell - 54/64/76/65

Rock/Barry - 67/73/80/73

Smith/Menzies - 74/62/66/67

Price/Chisnall - 86/87/77/83

Aspinall/de Zwaan - 74/77/78/76

Wade/Huybrechts - 45/50/59/51

van Veen/Cullen - 74/78/72/75

van Gerwen/Unterbuchner - 75 (still long data only on Unterbuchner, and oh my god is this one going to be fun for the referee)

Schindler/Heta - 32/36/42/37

Clayton/Melderis - still insufficient data on Melderis

There's a few feels in the afternoon session but will recalculate on the evening session once I know results.

ET5 day one

Yikes, they've really loaded the afternoon session full of what looks to me like the better set of seeds. If I order the players in question in terms of yearly points per turn, we get the following order:

DvD (evening)

Nijman (afternoon)

Heta (evening)

Cullen (evening)

Cross (afternoon)

Ratajski (afternoon)

Doets (afternoon)

Zonneveld (afternoon)

Gilding (afternoon)

Gurney (evening)

O'Connor (evening)

Sedlacek (afternoon)

Springer (evening)

Menzies (evening)

Chisnall (afternoon)

Wright (evening)

So yeah, the evening session gets three of the top four, but then there's a run of five afternoon session players, with 5/7 of the bottom being in the evening. Blimey. I mean we can't blame them for putting Wright and Springer there, but even so... we have insufficent (or no) data on Melderis, Hurtz, Krivka and Masino, only long data on Unterbuchner and no short data on Krohne, so let's get into what we can get into:

Nijman/White - 86/86/84/85

Zonneveld/Barry - 58/66/68/64

Doets/van der Velde - 83/79/78/80

Gilding/Krohne - 77/72/75

Cross/Mansell - 52/48/63/54

O'Connor/Unterbuchner - 63

Cullen/Kuivenhoven - 65/55/58/59

Wright/de Zwaan - 31/36/46/38

Menzies/van Barneveld - 58/63/57/59

Heta/Razma - 76/63/70/70

van Duijvenbode/Huybrechts - 55/66/70/64

Gurney/Lukasiak - 83/82/83/83

As always, it's the newest data first. Shows some trends we might expect to see - Barry is playing real good stuff right now, Cross not so much, Cullen's picked things up a touch, as has Huybrechts. Let's see how this goes, anyone punting on the "wants it less" derby between Menzies and RvB does so at their own risk.

How's things been going so far? (4/4)

Let's finish this series off:

No surprised at the top. Nijman having a really good start to the year sees him up amongst the big names, while in the middle, there's a group of Ando, van Veen, van Gerwen and Bunting, all of whom you would expect to be higher, but either haven't played much, aren't playing quite as well as you might have thought, or both. The bottom end looks pretty much exactly like you'd expect - Wright and van den Bergh bringing up the rear of everything (heck on the live tour card race, Dimitri is losing the card which from the top 32 is insane), we've then got a couple of people who are holding on basically just down to one major performance. Menzies doesn't look like he's got that worlds breakdown out of his system, while Schindler looks like he's dropped off a bunch. That group of Dirk, Damon and Jermaine are players you'd think might be higher up, but for whatever reason, aren't.

I'll be back tomorrow for ET5 thoughts.

How's things been going so far? (3/4)

Onto those that fall into two main groups - those that are looking to push to the top 32, be that overall or in the Pro Tour, and those that are just looking to stay around for another season. At the top we've got the unsurprising Dutch pair, neither's actually won anything yet, but if we were to redo the next new winners post (will probably do one of those in the lead up to the Matchplay), those two would be on the list easily. Probably the name highest up the list that's surprising, outside of Soutar who's playing really well, is probably Keane Barry. He's had some runs, and he's also putting in the performances. Like a few we've mentioned earlier, he's also got into the Euro Tour today, so a good staging post. Looking a bit lower down, O'Connor I would have thought might be a tad higher, while Barney is really looking completely done. At that bottom, Vandenbogaerde had his card saved, but that's probably going. Kenny did the work last year, but needs to up things urgently, then if anyone was thinking Lukeman's collapse in form following his Grand Slam run might turn around, it really isn't.

How's things been going so far? (2/4)

And here's the second year guys. Sedlacek unsurprisingly tops the list, then we've got known good players in Hopp and Kist in the top three. Bissell has made a great start to the year, bot in terms of numbers and then results as well (and he's just made another Euro Tour today as well), so with a bit of luck, maybe he can pull something together and save his card. He's probably left too much to do I'd think, but one or two good runs and who knows? He's not THAT far off the Grand Prix spots and the PC Finals is looking decent so far. There's then a clutch of players who made the worlds last year and are doing fine so far, if they can get in again then who knows, maybe they can push up to the next post. Brooks being so far down is a real surprise. He looked so incredibly good for the vast majority of 2025, but the form seems to have collapsed and what was looking like a pretty safe card retention is now in no way certain. From him down it's the same as the first, about half the list being players who are more or less just making up the numbers, there's been some that are scoring OK but not getting results, and some that have got the odd result but not really done anything fantastically statistically, but not doing the two combined obviously. Much like the first, this shows more or less what we expect it to.

How's things been going so far? (1/4)

I'll hold off on new FRH rankings until after this weekend's Euro Tour, but what I thought I'd do is look at the tour card holders and see how things have been going so far. I've roughly split them into four categories:

- First year card holders (or at least those who started out at zero this year)

- Second year card holders (i.e. those outside of the top 64 who haven't started from zero)

- Those in the top 64 but not the top 32

- Those in the top 32

All have somewhat different aims, so for me this seems like a logical, roughly equal set of pools to split everyone into. First, the first year card holders.

Might be a bit small, if so apologies, but hopefully this data should make sense. I'm doing it now as we're just approaching a third of the way through the season in all of the Pro Tour, Euro Tour and majors. What we're seeing here is kind of as expected - the top six is arguably the known good players that were coming in, along with Gawlas who's had some very good early runs. We've then got a chunk of players who've either been on and off, or are otherwise at least known - Sharp doing well to get in that group, although it's not quite converted into results yet. Then we've got mostly the random players - I'd have thought Landman and Bellmont might be doing a bit better at this point, but there's plenty of time for that to change. Landman has just qualified for a Euro Tour which is going to help. As said, I don't think there is that much that is a surprise here. Next up - the second year players.

ET4 last sixteen

Well, that was a great day. Pretty much nothing went wrong. Hold up... no, my bad, I missed off the first and last bets which saw Heta and GvV cost me a packet. Oops. Still, the rest was pretty nice (shame Springer over MvG didn't project to say anything other than a minbet), so while we lost a touch for the day, the great day 1 keeps us in the black for the event. Last sixteen, here we go - and, unlike last time, there definitely will be no quarter final projections onwards, as I'm at football in person, and not just at the pub.

Noppert/Sedlacek - 62/73/66/67

Clayton/Huybrechts - 54/59/70/61

Ratajski/R Smith - 47/41/37/42

Springer/M Smith - 54/47/49/50

Rock/Zonneveld - 60/58/69/62

Doets/van Duijvenbode - 51/41/35/42

Aspinall/Schindler - 67/74/61/67

O'Connor/Gilding - 40/46/47/44

Looks like a really fun session! Shame I won't be about to watch it :(

ET4 round two

Well, Dolan more or less used the entirety of our get out of jail free cards for the year, but whatever, we had a small pickup and that is all that we need for now, let's just jump straight into round two:

Smith/Kovacs - insufficient data on Kovacs

Wattimena/Zonneveld - 50/49/52/50

Heta/Sedlacek - 78/71/68/72

Gurney/Gilding - 37/35/41/38

Searle/Ratajski - 52/59/62/58

Noppert/Edhouse - 49/64/69/61

de Decker/van Duijvenbode - 29/31/34/31

Chisnall/Smith - 46/41/46/44

Woodhouse/Huybrechts - 59/61/58/59

Rock/Joyce - 76/74/79/76

Wade/Doets - 36/41/51/43

Clayton/Hausotter - insufficient data on Hausotter

van Gerwen/Springer - 62/75/63/67

Aspinall/Pietreczko - 82/85/72/80

Schindler/Dolan - 57/48/60/55

van Veen/O'Connor - 84/79/71/78

Let's just say there's a few interesting projections out there.

ET4 round one

Ah, the time of the year where a Thursday feels like a Friday and then you go to the football, head back, and start looking at the first round Euro Tour games. Jesus. Anyway, the PDC have put the best game on first for whatever reason, here's what I'm seeing for all the games (as usual, short-medium-full-composite projection order):

O'Connor-Bialecki - 61/68/67/65

Joyce-Behrens - insufficient data on Behrens

Ratajski-Lovely - 82/76/72/77

Zonneveld-Lipscombe - 64/70/71/68

Menzies-Sedlacek - 50/65/58/58

Edhouse-Troppmann - insufficient data on Troppmann

Nijman-Gilding - 66/66/61/64

Cullen-Kovacs - insufficient data on Kovacs

Smith-Hurrell - 40/44/51/45

van Duijvenbode-Burton - 66/72/79/72

Dolan-Dekker - 74/74/66/71

Doets-Ostlund - insufficient data on Ostlund

van Barneveld-Hausotter - no data on Hausotter

Wright-Huybrechts - 20/32/44/32

Pietreczko-White - 43/49/58/50

Springer-Schmidt - no data on Schmidt

I am expecting an absolute shitshow, but maybe I get surprised a tad.

Luke wins shocker

No, not that one. New FRH rankings:

1 Luke Littler

2 Gian van Veen

3 Luke Humphries

4 Jonny Clayton (UP 1)

5 Gerwyn Price (UP 1)

6 James Wade (DOWN 2)

7 Gary Anderson

8 Josh Rock

9 Ryan Searle

10 Danny Noppert

11 Stephen Bunting

12 Michael van Gerwen

13 Chris Dobey (UP 1)

14 Nathan Aspinall (DOWN 1)

15 Wessel Nijman (UP 3)

16 Jermaine Wattimena (DOWN 1)

17 Ross Smith (DOWN 1)

18 Martin Schindler (DOWN 1)

19 Luke Woodhouse

20 Damon Heta

Not a huge amount doing. We've only had the two Euro Tours since the last update. Clayton and Price getting a final each bumps them over Wade, who missed one as well but lost first game in the one he did show in. Dobey did significantly better than Aspinall over the two and that's enough to bump him one place, while Nijman obviously won one to move him up to 15th, but there's a huge gap up from there, it's more than another ET bink to Aspinall right now. A bit lower down, Zonneveld getting to two semis sees him closing up on the top 32, bit of a way to go but there's a few players moving in the wrong direction ahead of him. Cristo Reyes is also up into the top 100 as he continues his impressive PDC return.

On the punting side, it was close to break even, down about 1%. Basically Andy Baetens covered everyone else fucking up. We've now got a bit of a break until a couple of Pro Tours this time next week and the day after, then the Easter Euro Tour. Until then, I'll have to try not to get into arguments on Reddit about people who can't even spell probability :-)

ET3 quarters

Actually had slight change of plans so I can blast out projections before the quarters. Baetens pulls through for us again to break even for the session, although it was a case of what could have been as while the two wins I had were 6-5's, the three losses were as well. Rushing onto the quarters, now with less Littler:

Zonneveld/Noppert - 53/48/48/50

Clayton/Baetens - 53/69/61 (still no short data on Baetens, nor would we get it if he gets deeper)

Humphries/Dobey - 71/61/62/65

van Gerwen/Joyce - 80/80/74/78

Mostly pretty flat. Interesting to see Humphries appears to be a bit better on form which is not necessarily what I would have expected, but it is what it is. Also cool to see Neil Duff pick up a title on home soil, very weird mix of known names (going out relatively deep) and newer names (who went deeper). Cool to see.

ET3 round three

Bit of a rough day. Heta, Aspinall and Rock letting me down for decent chunks threw a big spanner in the works, Baetens recovered a fair bit of it but regardless it shifts a solid day one pickup into a loss for the tournament. Not huge, only a couple of percent of bankroll, but annoying never the less. Let's jump into round three, and unlike last week where I said there'd probably be no quarter final suggestions, only to make them, there won't be for sure because Mickey Mouse cup final. Anyway, here we go:

Littler/Zonneveld - 79/80/78/79

Noppert/Searle - 43/44/46/44

Clayton/Smith - 39/50/51/47

Baetens/Schindler - 63/42/52 (still no short data on Baetens)

Humphries/Wattimena - 80/72/71/74

Huybrechts/Dobey - 36/30/28/31

van Gerwen/Gurney - 73/80/72/75

Reyes/Joyce - 68/59/54/60

Betfair haven't got all the markets up yet, but looking at conventional bookies there could be a bit of value here. I'll be up in the morning for the end of the basho so will check back then and hopefully print.

ET3 round two

That was alright. Lost very small pieces on Gawlas and Thorpe, which were more than offset by decent chunks on Baetens and van Duijvenbode. We'll take those wins. Let's look into round two. Most recent data sample first, last number is the composite.

Smith/Menzies - 77/58/66/67

Wattimena/Meikle - 60/59/69/63

Dobey/Chisnall - 76/77/68/74

Searle/Evans - 75/66/66/69

Schindler/O'Connor - 49/44/55/49

Heta/Gurney - 81/75/68/75

Noppert/Woodhouse - 51/58/57/55

Aspinall/Joyce - 80/78/69/76

Wade/Reyes - 56/57/60/58

Clayton/Bialecki - 69/77/78/75

Bunting/Baetens - 56/72/64 (not enough short data on Baetens)

de Decker/Zonneveld - 38/45/49/44

Littler/Krcmar - insufficient data on Krcmar

Humphries/van Duijvenbode - 74/64/60/66

van Gerwen/Mansell - 73/75/76/75

Rock/Huybrechts - 64/69/76/70

Could be some value there. We'll see.