We've got semis on

Real quick as I'll be at a match tomorrow:

Aspinall/Price - 44/51/36/44

Wade/Humphries - 58/36/18/37

That second one is a bit of a surprise, but yeah, Wade is actually outperforming Humphries in winning legs since the start of July. Of course, it's only just and doesn't have an enormous sample for obvious reasons, but it is what it is.

GP quarters

Pretty disastrous second round going 2-4 on bets including losing one big one on Noppert, been a pretty bad tournament full stop but there's still seven games where we might be able to claw something back. Let's see:

Aspinall/Joyce - 88/85/83/85

Price/Clayton - 60/63/74/66

van Veen/Wade - 30/37/62/43

Humphries/Zonneveld - 69/78/77/75

Yikes that disparity in short and long form between van Veen and Wade!

As such, it looks like the only value, and it's huge value, is in laying Joyce, which has gone brilliantly so far...

Grand Prix round two

Not the greatest of results, some people underperforming fairly badly, and notably seeing Littler out, which throws things wide open. We're down to sixteen and up to a best of five set run, so let's project things:

Woodhouse/Aspinall - 35/40/38/38

Noppert/Joyce - 80/71/74/75

Price/Smith - 65/65/69/66

Clayton/Nijman - 49/37/39/42

Humphries/Wattimena - 72/73/78/74

Zonneveld/Anderson - 34/27/26/29

van Veen/Searle - 53/49/59/54

Wade/Bunting - 55/60/46/54

Let's go.

Grand Prix round one

There's been a bit more meat on the bones in relation to the calendar, and boy, choices were made, but that's a problem for future TA Towers and we've got the Grand Prix to project. Now as I mentioned above, I don't actually have a specific setting in the master computer for a best of two sets match. Presumably I thought as that only happens in a double start event where my data doesn't have a direct exact similar computation, let's not bother. But I'll treat this as a best of 11 match. For one, you need to win six legs in this, and for two, a first two three set match (which I do have projected) appears very similar in win chances to a best of 17/19 game in leg play, so it seems close enough. We're only talking a fraction of a percentage difference in any case. As always, I'll give four numbers - the win chance using data from the last three completed months (plus September), then 6+ months, then the last year, and finally an average of the three.

Littler/Woodhouse - 85/78/81/81

Aspinall/Doets - 65/60/59/58

Noppert/Springer - 61/55/62/59

van Gerwen/Joyce - 69/71/74/71

Price/Bialecki - 76/77/82/78

Smith/Menzies - 52/55/56/54

Clayton/Ratajski - 68/55/58/60

Nijman/Cross - 53/57/62/57

Humphries/Chisnall - 70/74/81/75

Dobey/Wattimena - 70/63/63/65

Rock/Zonneveld - 54/54/56/55

Anderson/Heta - 56/67/69/64

van Veen/van Duijvenbode - 50/46/55/50

Searle/O'Connor - 64/60/64/63

Wade/Cullen - 68/58/57/61

Bunting/Gilding - 67/59/63/63

Looks like there might be some value in some places, but I've got Challenge Tour etc to catch up on.

Calendar is out!

And there's a lot to break down in it, so let's jump straight in.

The big one is the long rumoured additional major has been called in - there's no specifics about the European Open, as it's called, other than it'll be in Salzburg the week after the World Cup. Now if this is just a replication of the UK Open, it should be pretty cool. But I guess the proof will be in the pudding, and we'll wait and see what the actual gig is.

The next thing to note is that the European Championship is now over six days, rather than the current four. You've got to assume that it'll be a longer format as a result, the additional two days looking incredibly natural to expand things to 48 players, but again, no specifics yet. If that is what it is and ends up being a pretty simple 1-16 get a bye and 17-48 face off in round one, in other words exactly like a Euro Tour except on steroids, that should be good.

The Premier League has once again snubbed the south west of England, with the nearest place being Cardiff. It's something that happened last year but I didn't really notice, but that seems a little bit harsh. They've had Exeter before as a natural lead in to the UK Open, why they need both of Birmingham and Nottingham, or all of Liverpool/Manchester/Sheffield/Leeds, is a wee bit odd, but whatever.

Euro Tour in France. OK then. I have no idea whether it will sell well, but it's a bit of an open question as to how strong the players there will be. Barring some sort of miracle late season Pro Tour run, Tricole is losing his card (and even if he sneaks into the worlds, he might lose it anyway). Labre has fallen off a cliff. Thuillier who we saw at the World Cup seems better than Labre at this stage. They've got a few who've played some of the Challenge Tour but nobody who looks that close to breaking an eighty average. There's someone called Damien Decla who isn't doing horribly on the Development Tour, but still is clearly a work in progress. So somewhat of a mixed bag. I doubt it'd be any worse than the ones in much of Eastern Europe. Weekend in Krakow is tempting!

The Development and Challenge Tours have been cut to 18 events a piece from 24, and are now running at just one per day over six weekends. I think this makes a lot of sense, assuming that the prize money per tournament increases to compensate, even if the overall amount pumped into each tour stays the same.

World Youth Championship clashes with the final day of the Grand Prix. One has to assume they think Littler isn't going to enter it?

Expect something for the Grand Prix on Sunday. It'll likely just be an attempt at projections, the model I have doesn't have anything that can really adjust to the double in start, nor does it have any standard option to look at how a best of three sets match will go, so the first round will likely be pretty rough.

Quick FRH update

Was meaning to do this on Monday but got sidetracked:

1 Luke Littler

2 Gian van Veen

3 Luke Humphries

4 Gerwyn Price

5 Wessel Nijman

6 James Wade

7 Ryan Searle (UP 1)

8 Jonny Clayton (DOWN 1)

9 Josh Rock

10 Ross Smith (UP 2)

11 Danny Noppert (DOWN 1)

12 Gary Anderson (DOWN 1)

13 Luke Woodhouse (UP 3)

14 Chris Dobey (DOWN 1)

15 Nathan Aspinall

16 Krzysztof Ratajski (UP 1)

17 Stephen Bunting (DOWN 3)

18 Jermaine Wattimena (UP 1)

19 Michael van Gerwen (DOWN 1)

20 Rob Cross

None of this includes any Grand Prix first round money, which as everyone here is in wouldn't change anything. You need to get down to Schindler at 24 before you find anyone that isn't in, and the 7.5k first round money wouldn't see the player directly below him (Gilding) jump him. Gurney at 28 isn't there, but the rest of the FRH top 32 are, with Zonneveld (at 33) and Bialecki (at 40) the two that complete the field.

In terms of the movements, Wade getting a bink mostly just offsets Wade not having got any ranking money since the Matchplay. Smith with a Euro Tour bink and final hits the top 10 for I think the first time, I don't think he got there when he won his major. Woodhouse consistently accumulating well sees him continue to climb, while Bunting not doing a great deal on the Euro Tours since the last update loses some ground, the 100k he got from a worlds semi now counting for barely 10% of that amount in these rankings. Lower down, there's not a huge amount to mention, Dolan getting a good Pro Tour run mostly just arrests a slide and he remains outside the top 50, but yeah, just in general there's not been a huge deal going on.

We've had a bunch of worlds qualifiers been confirmed, such is the depth in most places that it's the case now that it is familiar names, but also with some notable absences. Looking at what we've got coming up, we're a couple of weeks away from the Challenge Tour being done (and then the UK associate qualifier the day after), the Japanese tour is nearly done, and the Nordic tour will finish by the end of September. Bunch of stuff will be sorted in early to mid October, but that's a next month problem. For now, let's just not pay attention to the World Series finals.

Changes I would make if I was Matt Porter (again?)

I'm 99% certain I've done this before, but I'm not going to check what I said, or if I indeed said it. It's something I've been wanting to write for a few weeks, but Lendel posted something about the difficulties facing new card holders which tied in nicely, so I'll do it now. Some of these may well be reposts, but hey, if something was broken in the past and it's not been fixed, it probably still needs fixing. Besides, SUFC are producing awful football again and my life's too short to watch a 0-0 first half against Wolves. So here we go:

1 - Increase the number of tour cards to 136, and the number that retain them each year to 72

Now this is pretty much entirely related to what Lendel was saying in that it's incredibly difficult for a card holder to actually keep it. Doing this would maintain the amount of churn you have in card holders, but it would dramatically cut the percentage of those that retain them who are basically set almost forever given 40 of them get an automatic worlds berth and first round seeding, and an almost similar percentage will get all the cake from the European Tour and the bigger major titles. You'd need to tweak the UK Open a touch as you really don't have the time logistically to include another 8 players being knocked out, so probably cut the CT spots by 4 and the DT/notrileys qualifiers by 2 each, but that's a minor thing. Looking at the Q-School cohort from two years ago, the people holding their cards are:

Brooks (as he did bink a Pro Tour)

Crabtree (although probably only because he got the Dev Tour Slam spot)

Sedlacek (who looks clearly good enough and was very unfortunate to lose his card in the first place)

Hopp (who we know's been good enough historically)

Hood (although where he'll be in twelve months when that worlds run is off is a different question)

That's it, out of 29 people who got a card, only 5 rank to hold them right now. Kuivenhoven is extremely close assuming he holds everything.

2 - Increase the size of Pro Tour events to 144 runners and modify the prizes

This is pretty much directly related to the previous one. With more card holders being guaranteed the size of the Pro Tour has to go up as well. But why 144 you say? This does two things - it gives a lot more spots to the Challenge Tour, as you're always going to need eight players from that, although one thing I would do in conjunction with this is to say if you win an event on one of the major secondary circuits (ADA, Asian Tour, SDC, CDC), that also qualifies you to play one Pro Tour event. The larger field will allow this to happen without majorly affecting anyone else.

Now the increase needs a change in format - basically you require an additional "round zero" game on each board to get to the existing 128. That's sixteen boards, so needs 32 players to play in it. Anyone who isn't a tour card holder has to play in it, then the remainder come from card holders outside the top 64 on the Pro Tour rankings at random. The top 32 (of those entered obviously) are seeded as they are, and then the next 32 are exempt into the first round and drawn at random as presently. This adds maybe 20-25 minutes on each board, possibly less if something's one sided and the players are quick, which logistically isn't a huge deal.

I'd also modify the prize money. I'd drop last 64 money back to a grand, and then with the £8k that frees up, I'd add £250 for losers in the first round. Now that is £16k so we're only half way there, but you would think that as prize money continues to increase, this would not be impossible. If not, then trimming the money at the top slightly could be done alternatively. Going to £12k for a win, £8k for a runner up and £6k for a semi final gets you three quarters of the way there and I don't think that would really damage the bottom line of players typically getting there. There's certainly been some talk of how things at the bottom end are still very tricky for some players, and adding something that should at least cover expenses would likely go a long way for those at the bottom end of the card holder list.

3 - Make the Matchplay a 40 player field

As the size of the worlds has gone up, and the size of the Slam is going up, it's somewhat natural to think that the Matchplay (and the Grand Prix) should be the next in line. While I think that there's certainly a strong argument to keep these as events for the truly elite, and that watering down the field makes things less prestigious, I think there's enough depth here that this isn't a factor as it might have been even ten years ago. Look at the eight who are missing the Grand Prix as last players out - Reyes, Huybrechts, Sedlacek, Schindler, de Graaf, Greaves, Gurney and Veenstra. That's hardly a shit lineup. How I would add the eight players however, is not to just extend either of the existing lists, it would be to have a "year to date" Pro Tour list, so only everything after the most recent Q-School counts. This truly creates a level playing field for new card holders - everyone's on zero for this. Then, in terms of tournament logistics, you just have a Saturday afternoon session that plays out exactly like a European Tour session, with the eight from this new list facing numbers 9-16 from the ordinary Pro Tour list. That you can go on a heater like Reyes and Greaves have done as new (or, to be pedantic, returning) holders and not make the Matchplay (or, for that matter, the Grand Prix) is a bit crazy. Of course, part of that is thanks to the god awful Euro Tour changes, but we'll come to that.

You can expand the Grand Prix the same way, although there I think there's less of an argument against just making it 1-24 on the current Pro Tour list given how large a percentage of the season is already done. But I think adding an extra session where it's by far the hardest place to get tickets for would be first in line for me.

4 - Scrap the World Series finals

Honestly, who cares about this? The individual events, fine, whatever, they don't really interest me but I can see they hold them (although the locations and invites are clearly open to question). But this finals event? It sucks. Basically any big name that was invited gets in, and anyone that is a local player in either Australasia or Asia that gets into both the relevant events gets in. Anyone that catches a PDC main tour invited player on a bad day and sneaks a win gets in. Until you don't get a visa then you don't get in. I figure the only reason it exists is to give the Netherlands a "big" event, as they don't have anything else apart from one Premier League night and one Euro Tour, which compared to the amount that Germany gets (heck, even Belgium has more) is weaksauce, but that could be rectified. Why not have the European Championship rotate around places? It's been in places other than Germany before (heck, again, it's been in Belgium more than it's been in the Netherlands). There's no reason why, if they're not going to move back to Dublin (and I can't see that they can with developments at the Citywest), why it needs to be in Leicester forever. Move something around.

5 - Modify the European Tour events

Everyone thinks the current incarnation sucks. The European Championship field last season, outside of Springer, was depressingly vanilla. The current race looks terribly similar to the other major 32 man events. In short, they've made too many of the Euro Tours look the same and the EC finals, seeding order aside, looks like just the other majors. How would I do it? I would cut the straight invites back to 24 - the top sixteen in the Pro Tour order of merit, and then the top 8 on the main order of merit not otherwise qualified. Seeding is then the top 16 from the Pro Tour - if any of the PL players have a cry that they're not seeded, and rushing from one very well paid gig to another in 24 hours is too hard, that's on them for not playing enough floor events. That then frees up eight slots - I'd give six back to the Pro Tour qualifiers (so they now have 16 total, or basically a one in seven chance of getting in any given event), restore one slot for associate members (probably just have one big qualifier in conjunction with the first CT weekend), and give an additional slot to the home nation qualifier. That should give a good enough combination of "star power" and giving the rest of the tour a much fairer shot of getting in than they are at the moment.

6 - Have the first Challenge Tour weekend be the one with four events, not the last one

This is something I've definitely said before. The first weekend always draws a lot more players and the events take forever. Just for the sake of limiting the amount of time anyone's playing on any day, switch it up. Play CT1 in full on day one and CT3 down to the last 128. Play CT2 in full on day two and CT4 down to the last 128. Then finish the remaining two events on the final day. Trying to go through two entire 300+ player tournaments on back to back days and then a fifth on the last day is all kinds of crazy. In a perfect world, I'd have said try to collaborate with the WDF/NDB and have this at the same time as the Dutch Open back to back (something I've said previously as well), but they've moved it just about late enough in the calendar that this isn't really feasible. Maybe you could try this with some other large non-PDC event at another time of year to cut down on a flight, but I do appreciate that a lot of the Challenge Tour players will be by no means professional and can't/won't want to budget too much holiday time to darts out of a given year, even if it did cut down the average expenses per event.

7 - Change the worlds to a flatter bracket

While last year's event wasn't quite as much of a dumpster fire in terms of one sided games as I thought it might have been, I do maintain that even matches make for better sport, and I would do what I said before they announced a straight 128 man bracket as they did last time - have top 32 into round three, next 32 into round two, and the other 64 into round one. Last year we had 22/32 seeds win 3-1 or better, and half the others go through. Only five went out in the first round - Smith and Menzies you could see to some extent given their draws (Harrysson, Manby), while Edhouse and van den Bergh were in some danger against a lot of opponents. The only real shocker was Munyua beating de Decker. Second round was a bit better but still had eight 3-0's (nine if you count the walkover Clayton got), and while there were quite a few seeds dropping, these are basically the same matches as you'd get in round three of a "flat bracket" as I'd do instead - they're both the last 64 as is. And looking at those results you got, would anyone say that any of the seeds that lost were in a spot you were like "nah, that's never going to happen" - probably not. You could argue that Price and Nijman losing were surprising given how well they were playing, but Plaisier and Clemens aren't exactly mugs. Even Merk beating Wright I don't think can really count just based on how badly Peter's game has degraded. But yeah, the gist is to trim out the mismatches and give us games which, if maybe not quite so high quality per se, are at least interesting. It's the same sort of reason why the Premier League gives out parachute payments - they recognise that if a team comes up and feels it can't take the financial risk to try and compete, it creates for a shit product. I've seen what happens first hand when teams do that and it really, really sucks. Just pick any random section from last time and tell me which would be better - the three games you got as is, or how it would have looked if you got the two "qualifiers" playing, the winner playing the 33-64 guy, then the winner of that playing the seed.

That's the lot for now. I'll be out for the Manchester derby shortly so I won't have any projections for the quarters onwards.

Very quick round of 16 data dump

van Veen/Doets - 49/45/58/51

Searle/Dobey - 40/41/45/42

Joyce/Wattimena - 48/36/37/40

Price/Smith - 60/61/65/62

Wade/Cross - 53/51/51/52

Noppert/Nijman - 48/37/43/43

Heta/Woodhouse - 50/45/48/48

Bunting/Aspinall - 39/33/42/38

Looks like we've got a lot of close ones. Not a huge amount of value that I can see, Nathan maybe being the best. Small bit of rebuilding done yesterday after the clusterfuck that was Friday.

Oh my god that did not just happen. That didn't happen.

That might be the most brutal day I've ever had in terms of punting. Gilding misses a match dart. Burton gets 5-4 up and then Joyce goes into god mode. Menzies, meh, whatever. Barney just did Barney things. Huybrechts FUCKED UP SIX MATCH DARTS IN HIS HOME COUNTRY, this was the worst, I literally after the game just went "hey, let's see how often we can kill 24 in six darts", and I did it 40% of the time, and I'm an amateur that wouldn't take a leg of a Challenge Tour player if you gave me 20 goes. Then Dirk decides to begin and end with legs where he has 21 darts to break and doesn't do it either time. Marvellous. I guess at least the good thing is that we did withdraw the topup we made a bit ago, so as such we didn't lose more than we did? I mean I'm pleased for Bialecki in that he's likely in the Grand Prix now, but jesus, this was a horrific day. Let's rebuild.

Ratajski/Doets - 43/42/42/42

Wattimena/Sedlacek - 48/57/61/55

Schindler/Cross - 40/41/42/41

Noppert/Landman - 76/76/81/78

Searle/Baetens - 62 (only long data on Baetens)

Dobey/Zonneveld - 72/65/62/66

Woodhouse/O'Connor - 65/63/59/62

Smith/de Graaf - 56/55/60/57

Rock/Joyce - 61/67/71/66

Price/Brooks - 69/74/75/73

Wade/Long - 84/86/76/82

van Veen/Clemens - 67/68/76/70

van Gerwen/Heta - 51/56/60/56

Aspinall/Springer - 74/71/69/71

Bunting/Dolan - 77/73/74/75

Nijman/Bialecki - 66/73/73/71

ET13 round one

Been a brutal week for withdrawals from the World Series Finals, making one of the most irrelevant events on the calendar even more useless, but that's a next week problem (and not for me, no ranking no care) so let's pile into the round one games, the quali has started nice and early and Dimitri's already fucked up his home nation qualifier wildcard (yeah running into Baetens isn't nice but it's still a cheap trick to try to pull, at least de Decker looks like he'll get there). Bye bye tour card probably. Here we go:

Zonneveld/Tous - no data on Tous

Mansell/Brooks - 40/46/46/44

Gilding/Landman - 64/68/71/68

Doets/Hurrell - 76/67/63/69

Sedlacek/Hansen - no data on Hansen

de Graaf/HNQ3 - 

Joyce/Burton - 51/47/48/49

Springer/HNQ1 - 

Cross/Reyes - 65/63/57/62

Cullen/HNQ4 - 

Menzies/Clemens - 73/67/67/69

O'Connor/HNQ2 - 

van Barneveld/Long - 67/66/58/64

Heta/Greaves - 52/54/54/53

Bialecki/Huybrechts - 36/33/36/35

van Duijvenbode/Dolan - 71/78/75/75

It has been stated already, but that is an absolutely brutal draw for Reyes. not only does he get one of the hardest seeds available, but Huybrechts getting into the event as a result of four players crying off and drawing Bialecki removes all the permutations of him losing and still making the Grand Prix. One of Bialecki/Huybrechts will overtake him for the last spot so he must beat Cross and then pray. Schindler in round two is at least nice if he still has work to do after that. That said, Sedlacek, although he's going to need a pretty deep run, can't really ask for a nicer draw.

I'll update when the qualifier is done. It shouldn't be too long (they've done 5/8 of the last sixteen already as I type) but I'm AFK for a little bit this afternoon. Looking at the names it's probably de Decker against Springer and Baetens against Cullen (that should be fun) with the rest not having the data to be able to give a projection. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Edit - de Decker hilariously lost so the only HNQ game we have data on is Cullen/Baetens, and that's only long data which leans 51/49 in favour of Andy. Of the other qualifiers, Lankhuizen does show up in my database for one CT quarter about 18 months ago where he was murdered by Ted Evetts, last couple of quali rounds were OK I guess. Caron I only have a 6-0 loss to Clemens in a Euro Tour 2+ years ago but that's it, was a bit better in the quali at least. Jacobs I have nothing. Did scrape over 80 in one quali game but nothing else before being helped by de Decker going at a 93 clip. For the other regional qualifiers I have nothing on either, in the quali Tous got past 85 once, mainly due to a 3-4 leg spell of sunrunning, while Hansen had an alright semi but that was it in a qualifier which only had 16 runners. Yikes.

ET12 quarters

Time to quickly throw this up before the Arsenal game, got away with a big one in the Noppert game for sure:

Price/Smith - 57/60/65/61

O'Connor/Humphries - 28/26/24/26

Clayton/van Gerwen - 57/46/45/49

Noppert/Littler - 16/17/19/17

Couple of games that might be good there. Then a couple of games that don't rate as interesting at all. If Humphries goes through, then it'd be too close to call against Price (and hence around about the same if it was against Smith), while Littler/Clayton would be around the 80/20 mark (assuming the same if it was MvG given how close that quarter is overall, but periodic data might swing it one way or the other ever so slightly).

And if we do get the "dream final" (which we've seen a dozen times this season already), it's probably about 70/30 in favour of Littler. Humphries would be more of a 2-1 shot in longer data, but the most recent form (which is basically Littler crushing the Matchplay and not that much else) is that favourable to the younger Luke that it moves the needle enough that it's smack bang in between 2-1 and 3-1 over the weighted averages.

ET12 round 3

This is another short notice one I know, but long day at the football yesterday. Hopefully next week will be less flustered as I'm at a local home game, but let's just jump straight into the last sixteen. Saturday started out well with decent pick ups on Noppert and Menzies, but then pretty much entirely went to shit. Rock won so we did at least broke even with the many losing bets primarily being minimum plays, but none of the others outside of maybe Bunting were really close.

Price/Menzies - 62/66/71/66

van Veen/Smith - 38/44/58/47

Rock/O'Connor - 55/57/63/58

Humphries/Gilding - 66/76/77/73

Clayton/Barry - 69/62/69/67

van Gerwen/Nijman - 42/44/48/45

Woodhouse/Noppert - 47/57/50/51

Littler/Ratajski - 91/83/85/86

Really not seeing much of value there, except Littler might be oddly undervalued.

ET12 round two

Yikes, that was not nice. Huybrechts missing a match dart, Scutt blowing a 4-2 lead, and then Dirk doing Dirk things, not pretty. Could have been worse for sure, but not really what I was hoping to see. Anyway, let's jump into round two and I don't have a lot of time to do it:

Jermaine Wattimena v Krzysztof Ratajski - 41/50/51/47

Ryan Searle v William O'Connor - 65/60/63/63

Danny Noppert v Kevin Doets - 54/43/48/48

Gary Anderson v Cameron Menzies - 51/68/68/62

Chris Dobey v Keane Barry - 70/70/74/71

Ross Smith v Stephen Burton - 79/71/73/74

Nathan Aspinall v Andrew Gilding - 76/75/70/74

Wessel Nijman v Martin Schindler - 63/66/68/66

Gian van Veen v Jeffrey de Graaf - 45/49/68/54

Jonny Clayton v Damon Heta - 56/51/53/53

Gerwyn Price v Callan Rydz - 51/68/70/63

Luke Littler v Niko Springer - 88/84/85/86

Luke Humphries v Beau Greaves - 56/71/74/67

Michael van Gerwen v Mario Vandenbogaerde - 70/75/76/74

Josh Rock v Ryan Joyce - 62/68/72/67

Stephen Bunting v Luke Woodhouse - 61/45/55/54

Let's rebuild!

ET12 round one

I'll hold on a FRH update until after ET13 I think, as that is the Grand Prix cutoff. Not that those two things are in any way related, it just seems like a more natural place to do it. Anyway, the draw dropped fairly recently, we do have the draw for the quali out and it looks like Sedlacek would be HNQ1 and Gawlas HNQ3 if they do get through things, so I'll do provisional projections for them. Nobody else from Czechia has anywhere near the legs needed, neither does Homola who won the Eastern Europe qualifier (he is in the database, but only for a single Dev Tour quarter run earlier this season). Engstrom has the legs but maybe not for full data sets. Anyway, here we go:

Rydz/Reyes - 72/53/56/60

Menzies/Engstrom - 72 (only full data on Engstrom)

Zonneveld/de Graaf - 35/45/52/44

Cullen/Burton - 66/64/62/64

Joyce/Huybrechts - 28/28/33/30

Gurney/Greaves - 47/44/38/43

Heta/Sedlacek (provisional) - 67/61/65/64

Cross/Barry - 63/64/64/64

van Duijvenbode/Vandenbogaerde - 73/75/74/74

Schindler/Owen - 49/54/51/51

Woodhouse/Scutt - 49/59/56/55

Doets/Evans - 58/65/62/62

Ratajski/Gawlas (provisional) - 60/61/60/60

Note when I say provisional, the numbers aren't going to change (I don't include ET qualifiers in the database, although as the final round is effectively for ranking money, maybe I should include that?), it's only just to saw we are assuming the card holders will come through. If they don't, we have no prediction.

ET11 quarters

Ah, that felt good. Hitting on all of Smudger, Asp and the Aubergenius gives us a very solid 3/3 in the last sixteen, and finally reverse the bankroll top up I did prior to the worlds. Keep running closer than this, and we'll be able to pull back all of the initial investment and be playing completely with house money, but let's not get ahead of ourselves, things can change pretty rapidly but nice to hit an arbitrary milestone at least. Four quarters to come, here's what I'm thinking:

van Duijvenbode/Noppert - 59/60/56/58

Smith/Chisnall - 65/68/68/67

van Veen/Anderson - 39/36/45/40

Aspinall/Dobey - 55/52/52/53

Minorly significant implications for Chisnall, if he can extend what's already been a bit of a surprising run he can solidify a Grand Prix spot, he can't overtake anyone with a win but it would put him more than two second round ET appearances ahead of the last man out with just two Euro Tours left, which may be important given he doesn't appear to be in either of them (although, with Bialecki and Huybrechts only seemingly in one of them each, he may be in an unassailable spot as it is). More critical, it seems as if Anderson prior to this weekend didn't have any European ranking money *at all*, which seems incredible but believable, and yeah, on a quick check this is only his third one and he bricked the first two. He'd need a win to get into the spots, but hey, if he can reach the final that'd put a big chunk into the race as it is.

ET11 day 3

That wasn't great, but it wasn't awful. Woodhouse missing match darts was the kicker, the only loser outside of that who was close was Edhouse, who wasn't really close. Still, at least Aspinall didn't shit the bed and Dirk got the job done, so what was lost today ended up less than what was made yesterday. Let's jump straight into the last sixteen before I pass out:

Dirk van Duijvenbode v Rob Cross - 50/56/58/55

Danny Noppert v Ryan Searle - 47/43/45/45

Jonny Clayton v Ross Smith - 45/42/46/44

Keane Barry v Dave Chisnall - 48/51/48/49

Gian van Veen v Jermaine Wattimena - 54/57/66/59

Stephen Bunting v Gary Anderson - 48/32/38/39

Michael van Gerwen v Nathan Aspinall - 37/43/45/42

Josh Rock v Chris Dobey - 33/43/47/41

ET11 day 2

This needs to be very brief as I have a VERY early start for football tomorrow:

Humphries - van Duijvenbode: 61/64/63/63

Woodhouse - Cross: 43/52/51/49

Noppert - Edhouse: 45/46/56/49

Searle - Springer: 54/59/63/59

Clayton - Kadar: Insufficient data on Kadar

Smith - O'Connor: 64/66/64/65

Razma - Barry: 52/46/50/49

Nijman - Chisnall: 67/70/72/70

van Veen - Major: Insufficient data on Major

Wattimena - Gilding: 54/54/55/54

Bunting - Masalin: Insufficient data on Masalin

Anderson - Ratajski: 61/68/71/67

van Gerwen - Hurrell: 81/67/68/72

Aspinall - Joyce: 83/77/78/79

Rock - Cullen: 48/54/62/55

Dobey - Sykes: 63/62/63/63

Wow at some of today's results.

Oh god, we're back already?

For whatever reason, I didn't think we were diving straight back onto the Euro Tour after the down under portion of the World Series. Nice job by Brody Klinge there looking the best he has done, and good work by Jermaine Wattimena and Luke Humphries picking up titles this week, Littler actually showing up and probably earning ten grand less than he thought he would have, but hey, it's a tough circuit. Anyway, we're back and we're at Hungary. Anyway - August 21. James Wade - bizarre interview about how people need to stop whining about the tournament schedule. August 27. James Wade - withdraws from event after draw was made. Binking a World Series got to him I guess.

Anyway, we do have sixteen games to look at, although as we have no data (or limited data) on all the non-TCH qualifiers, it's down to ten. Might have been more if they'd draw each other but the PDC is very much at we can't have nice things stage so we'll just go with these. As always, these run short-medium-long-composite in terms of data sets:

Cross/Greaves - 63/56/54/58

Edhouse/Scutt - 59/57/51/56

Springer/Kuivenhoven - 71/64/61/65

O'Connor/Price - 72/78/77/76

Schindler/Barry - 61/55/56/57

Ratajski/Rydz - 38/49/48/45

Heta/Hurrell - 77/65/61/68

Joyce/Reyes - 43/41/41/42

Cullen/Leek - 75/76/73/75

Menzies/Sykes - 55/50/53/53

Of these, I'm kind of surprised at the Ratajski line, but there is a bit of a significant consistency thing going on there. Hurrell I don't know what happened why he walked from his Pro Tour game this week, but he is at least here, other than that it's kind of where I'd have thought these would all be to some extent. Maybe Springer looking the best in short form given how well Kuivenhoven has been playing is a bit odd but the general numbers overall don't seem crazy.

Second and Third Division Darts results page

I've not actually started this yet, and given that we're more than half way through the Pro Tour season, I probably ought to start. Fortunately, I realised last year that "hmm, wouldn't it be handy if I had a big database of results that I could filter and look at" rather than just go through each event one by one and read through looking for our guys. Then I realised "wait, I have EXACTLY THAT", so I'll just do that and it'll be infinitely quicker. Just need to manually add in the Grand Prix and then we're good.

D2:

Ross Smith 10.81

Wessel Nijman 10.79

Nathan Aspinall 10.69

James Wade 10.00

Jermaine Wattimena 9.06

Gary Anderson 8.70

Damon Heta 8.46

Chris Dobey 7.56

Danny Noppert 7.47

Ryan Searle 6.47

D3:

Sebastian Bialecki 10.57

Niko Springer 10.48

Connor Scutt 10.07

Kevin Doets 9.79

Callan Rydz 9.16

Niels Zonneveld 9.12

Martin Schindler 8.94

Beau Greaves 8.73

Cam Crabtree 7.00

Bradley Brooks 6.05

Results:

PC1: Wade 8-6 Aspinall (2), Greaves 6-4 Crabtree (3)

PC2: Nijman 7-2 Searle (2), Schindler 6-4 Crabtree (3)

PC3: Doets 6-5 Scutt (3), Doets 6-3 Springer (3)

PC4: Zonneveld 6-2 Greaves (3), Rydz 6-5 Scutt (3)

PC5: Smith 8-2 Dobey (2), Dobey 6-5 Noppert (2), Bialecki 6-5 Rydz (3), Springer 6-4 Crabtree (3)

PC6: Rydz 6-4 Bialecki (3)

PC7: Anderson 6-2 Dobey (2), Searle 7-3 Anderson (2), Bialecki 6-5 Zonneveld (3)

PC8: No games

PC9: Scutt 6-4 Brooks (3)

PC10: Greaves 6-5 Schindler (3), Zonneveld 6-4 Rydz (3)

PC11: Anderson 6-3 Nijman (2)

PC12: Wattimena 6-3 Dobey (2), Nijman 8-5 Wattimena (2), Nijman 6-3 Searle (2), Brooks 6-5 Scutt (3)

PC13: No games

PC14: Nijman 7-2 Noppert (2)

PC15: Schindler 6-2 Brooks (3)

PC16: Springer 6-2 Doets (3)

PC17: Noppert 6-3 Searle (2), Rydz 6-3 Scutt (3)

PC18: Greaves 6-3 Brooks (3)

PC19: Nijman 6-3 Anderson (2), Rydz 6-5 Bialecki (3)

PC20: No games

PC21: Nijman 8-6 Searle (2)

PC22: Scutt 6-4 Doets (3)

PC23: Searle 6-5 Heta (2), Wade 6-5 Anderson (2)

PC24: Scutt 6-3 Zonneveld (3), Scutt 6-4 Schindler (3)

PC25: Springer 6-3 Greaves (3), Springer 6-4 Crabtree (3)

PC26: Bialecki 6-0 Brooks (3)

PC27:

PC28:

PC29:

PC30:

PC31:

PC32:

PC33:

PC34:

ET1: Wattimena 6-5 Noppert (2), Nijman 6-2 Anderson (2)

ET2: Doets 6-4 Crabtree (3)

ET3: Noppert 6-5 Searle (2)

ET4: Aspinall 8-5 Noppert (2), Doets 6-5 Zonneveld (3)

ET5: Aspinall 6-3 Wade (2), Smith 6-4 Aspinall (2), Nijman 6-2 Searle (2)

ET6: No games

ET7: Wade 6-5 Nijman (2), Smith 8-3 Searle (2)

ET8: Heta 6-2 Nijman (2), Nijman 6-3 Searle (2)

ET9: Smith 6-4 Dobey (2), Wattimena 6-5 Noppert (2), Aspinall 6-0 Searle (2), Nijman 7-6 Smith (2)

ET10: Wattimena 7-3 Heta (2), Aspinall 6-4 Smith (2), Bialecki 6-4 Doets (3), Doets 6-3 Schindler (3)

ET11:

ET12:

ET13:

ET14:

ET15:

World Masters: Dobey 6-2 Wattimena (2), Dobey 9-7 Heta (2), Anderson 10-8 Wade (2)

UK Open: Wade 10-9 Dobey (2)

World Matchplay: Wade 10-7 Wattimena (2), Wade 11-8 Searle (2)

World Grand Prix:

European Championship:

Grand Slam of Darts:

Players Championship Finals:

World Championship:

Secondary tour roundup

Had a mad catch up this weekend with not having the time last time out, and we've had Dev Tour, Asian Tour, Nordic/Baltic, ADA, it's been hectic, and then we've had Henry Coates come from nowhere and win a Pro Tour, and of course the Matchplay finished, so here's the latest FRH rankings (Leighton Bennett dropped off the table just now. What a waste)

1 Luke Littler

2 Gian van Veen

3 Luke Humphries

4 Gerwyn Price (UP 3)

5 Wessel Nijman (UP 1)

6 James Wade (UP 2)

7 Jonny Clayton (DOWN 3)

8 Ryan Searle (DOWN 3)

9 Josh Rock

10 Danny Noppert

11 Gary Anderson

12 Ross Smith (UP 3)

13 Chris Dobey (DOWN 1)

14 Stephen Bunting (DOWN 1)

15 Nathan Aspinall (DOWN 1)

16 Luke Woodhouse (UP 1)

17 Krzysztof Ratajski (UP 2)

18 Michael van Gerwen (DOWN 2)

19 Jermaine Wattimena (DOWN 1)

20 Rob Cross

The big moves are obviously down to Price making a final, and Wade/Smith doing pretty well compared to those around them. Heta's got fairly close to getting back into the top 20 following a Pro Tour final, Bialecki after another bink is just outside the top 40 which, if he can close out a Grand Prix run, will jump a fair chunk, Vandenbogaerde after a final from nowhere is back into the top 70 while Coates is just shy of the top 100, but should make that leap pretty quickly.

One thing I want to do is look at the respective secondary/regional tours and see which ones are doing the best. Most are fairly close to finished for the year, the Dev Tour, Asian Tour, ADA and Nordic circuits all have one weekend left, while the Challenge Tour will have one left after next weekend. The CDC is lagging behind a bit but always does so with how it's scheduled. I don't track any of the other secondary tours as the quality just isn't there yet to warrant tracking and throwing the data. Maybe I ought to shove in the Japan events as they do have the quality there, but I'm not sure adding a single country series when there is a more regional event makes sense, as it in effect becomes a third tier of event. I do track the WDF (when I can get the data), but that's not a series so to speak, and I don't track the ADC as their structure really doesn't make sense to me in terms of what levels their events should track at, and a review of their website really doesn't help matters. Maybe I should add the global championship, but probably not, anyone worth tracking is likely playing the Challenge Tour as well. So which are the best?

ADA - Scoring at 84.21. That's a whole bunch of meh which equates to lower end of tour card holder quality. Raymond Smith is leading the pack with an 88 and Brody Klinge's about a point behind, but only Joe Comito and Tim Pusey have over 100 legs won (note for all of these, I only track from the quarter final stages onwards) and neither's actually breaking the tour average by more than a third of a point (heck, Comito is below the average).

Asian Tour - Actually worse at 84.03. There's some talent here, Ryuta Arihara who's had a great weekend just now is leading the way up with an 88 and Motomu Sakai and Man Lok Leung aren't too far behind, but nobody else is really tracking much better than the average, there's several names (which you'd probably guess) who are maybe a point or so above, but yeah, it's not quite as impressive as it might be.

CDC - We're only at six events (they've played seven but one was double in so no bueno), and this is the worst so far at 82.80. Maybe if Jim Long had have played a bit more this might be better but he's doing well on the main circuit so let's not stop him from doing that. Sevada's doing fine with an 87 and plenty of the usual suspects (Smith, Buntz, Cameron) are doing alright but worse than Sevada who's the only player with any sort of decent sample size. Maybe things pick up later in the season.

Challenge Tour - At 86.18. That's kind of what you would expect. The data is HUGELY spread out across so many players that it's hard to get a decent gauge on who's doing well with only Coulson, Hunt, Lishman, Kirk and Morris cracking 50 legs played. All these names are doing just fine (Coulson in particular is breaking 89) but yeah, hard to judge.

Development Tour - 85.65. That's pretty solid. Here you've got a bit more grouping, which is standard given you've got quite a lot of card holders playing these, Bates is doing the best with those over 50 legs, but Self, Gawlas, Bialecki (obviously), Drayton and Weber are all well outperforming the tour average and deserve credit.

Nordic/Baltic - 83.55. Yikes. Now here is where I would expect a bit more. Yes Razma is ranking blocked from playing in these, but Dekker is a card holder and he's only at 85. Labanauskas is the same, but at 84. Haavisto is having a nice resurgence, but again, 84. Larsson is 84. Tingstrom and Lukasiak aren't beating 83 between them. It doesn't seem that long ago that I was very bullish about the region's (and, in particular, Sweden's) darts, but now? Man it's regressed.

So that's the post. The regions are not really developing quite how I think many are hoping these tours would do, and with the worlds set up as is where everyone is fed to a top 64 player, it's pretty hard to see how any progress is really going to be made. We shall see, but I'm not optimistic.

Matchplay final

Didn't say much about the semis, mainly because the data would likely be unreliable, also mainly because I didn't have the time to get everything into the database on the Friday night, but I doubt anything of value was lost. Anyway, we've got a Littler/Price final, which is one of the closer things we could get to not being fucking awful like the Littler semi was, and Littler's now actually played enough legs since April to get a stat. And he rates over that period to win 100% of the time. Well, 99.77%. But that's close enough. The since January mid range data is nearer 81% than 80% and the full data set gives us 78% for Littler, so if we chuck out that short data as being unreliable, that's putting Luke at around a 4-1 favourite level. Am I going to take Price at longer than 8 on the exchange? Hell no. Anyway, that'll do it for this event, there's been a gold WDF event down under that I need to shove into the database, before we all rush off to Germany for a couple of Pro Tours. And when I say all, I mean the 112 card holders that could be arsed with it.

Matchplay quarters

First things first, let's all hope Cameron's alright. It seems from what the PDC posted is that he's OK, so that's good to hear. We've had some great stuff, punts went fantastically, so let's look at the quarters.

van Duijvenbode/Anderson - 33/31/33/32

Littler/Rock - NA/91/86/89

Smith/Price - 52/28/28/36

van Veen/Wade - 32/62/71/55

Oh my god what an absolute shitshow those projections are. The only one that is remotely consistent is the Dirk game, and it's kind of concerning with that "after 12 legs I get bored" interview thing. Unless he was just taking the piss, which is possible. Then again, we're getting to an extended game, and while we've seen Anderson is still capable of handling it, it's not a given. Littler won't have a short data set until the final, but he's projected to absolutely kick the shit out of Rock, which is fine as he should kick the shit out of everyone, but this level of favouritism is kind of wow. The Price one is kind of a repeat, his short data is limited but not great, while the van Veen one is also a bit of a repeat, in that his latter form has not been pretty, but taking out Nijman as he did is certainly promising. That'll do us until the semis.

Matchplay round two

Well that went mostly as expected. Thought that the vast majority of seeds would get through, and called this out on Reddit (and got downvoted by the commies there for piling shit on unranked events but who cares), and that's basically what happened. Dirk over Dobey was a tad fortunate, but I bet on it, and it was something we considered. Cross over Noppert, well that's the only one we actually projected the seed to lose, I still bet Noppert as he seemed undervalued at the actual price, it didn't work (but overall punts have been decent enough), that's fine. Then Cameron Menzies.

Cameron Menzies.

What in the living fuck happened there? And to finish it with a 170 of all things? Well that was something that happened and probably gifts Littler the title, but let's not piss on the tournament as it's not been that bad, and let's just jump into the projections.

Littler/Aspinall - NA/77/79/78

Rock/Bunting - 46/56/51/51

van Gerwen/van Duijvenbode - 61/52/53/55

Clayton/Anderson - 35/26/34/32

Menzies/Smith - 40/32/35/36

Price/Cross - 50/80/79/70

van Veen/Nijman - 29/46/55/43

Wade/Searle - 58/45/43/49

Main thought - oh my god what an absolute form differential in the Price match (and, to a lesser extent, the van Veen one). That said, we can see from the previous post that his sample size was basically an absolute minimum, and that didn't help by playing like complete arse today and only still being in the tournament because Schindler completely fell apart, but it is what it is. I don't see anything hugely controversial here, and as value was kind of to a minimum in round one, I'm thinking we won't see much of anything these next two days either. But we'll see.

Matchplay preview

Alright, we're coming in to the second major of the year, I'll post up all the stats, then give each round one match a quick run down along with the overall projection.

Littler 91-9 Springer - Yes, that is right. Luke has no data whatsoever in my data since just after the UK Open. That's just how much of a shit he gives about the bog standard events. Is this a problem? No, if you can make a cool million in one event, then I probably wouldn't show either, although he could probably do with turning up to at least some Pro Tours soon as he has a grand total of zero prize money in them so is currently out of Minehead. Springer is kind of still living on that Euro Tour he won at the back end of last season which will still make the cutoff for the Grand Prix, although he's the last man in right now. He's got a lot more hit and miss and this one isn't hard to call.

Aspinall 71-29 Cullen - Wow at those consistency stats from Nathan. That's not pretty, although at least we have some sort of idea why, if he's not clicking he just really isn't clicking, but when he's on he's great, Euro Tours don't win themselves. Joe's doing alright and deserves to be here, but this is really about whether Aspinall shows up. If he does, Cullen will be outclassed, if not, then he's definitely in with a shot.

Rock 55-45 Woodhouse - Josh seems to be fading a bit in 2026, yes he's binked a Euro Tour, but so has Woodhouse, and the numerical trends really don't lie, Luke's stayed more or less in the same ballpark while Rock's fallen more to his level. There's pressure on Josh to do something on TV, and the #1 Pro Tour player, at least in terms of earnings if not quality, isn't really the draw you want, and with Woodhouse having got over the no title thing, he's going to be pretty confident and this is almost a free hit.

Bunting 63-37 Zonneveld - Stephen seems to have had a quiet 2026, he's had just the one tour final where he got smoked by Dobey, and the since January numbers are down a fair bit. Since April they look better which is reassuring, but this is a tricky tie. Niels is continuing to progress, but is yet to win a title and is here for the first time. That ought not to faze him but it is an unknown factor, and can't be discounted. That said, he's shown his ability to hang with the best and this isn't the worst draw he could have got.

van Gerwen 70-30 Gilding - Michael's had a bit of a lighter schedule than some here, but nowhere near as light as others, and while he's not at his mercurial best, he's nowhere near as far off it as many think, as we see a rematch of when Andrew took his major title. Gilding's as steady as they come, has got a title this year, and while he is a clear underdog, he certainly knows how to beat van Gerwen on a big stage and stylistically doesn't seem like the best matchup for him, and he does have back to back quarter finals here, so who knows?

Dobey 57-43 van Duijvenbode - This one ought to be good. Chris has probably become a bit underrated despite having picked up another two floor titles this season, mainly because he's really yet to push on at another level, despite having won a TV title, having been in the Premier League and deep worlds runs, he's still looking for a Euro Tour or major title. Of course, so is Dirk, who also seems underrated, although that's more that whenever he seems to be in good form, recurrent injuries put him on the back foot. Performances are surpassing results for sure, and he's one of the Pro Tour opponents that seeds who know what they're doing would have wanted to avoid.

Clayton 56-44 Heta - Jonny continues to put up strong play despite now being solidly the wrong side of fifty, it's not turned into titles this season but remains an extremely steady competitor and someone who's not going to give anyone an easy game. Damon was surprisingly one of the last players in, the numbers have been steady and not dropped too much from his peak where he was a top ten player, the consistency figure over the most recent sample is really strong and points to being a tad unlucky of late, so certainly cannot be written off in this one which rates to be one of the tighter round one matchups.

Anderson 86-14 Joyce - Gary remains one of the strongest players on the planet, although may be having a bit of a quieter 2026 just looking at the figures, but still should have more than enough to handle Joyce, who's one of those players that gets better results than his numbers suggest, primarily on account of being excellent on the outer ring, especially in the bottom left corner. That said, it is not going to be anywhere near enough to bridge the gulf in class between these two, Ryan's one of the weaker players in the event whichever way you look at it and Anderson will I'm sure be very happy with this draw.

Humphries 84-16 Menzies - Luke's another who's picking and choosing when and where he plays, but remains a clear second best player in the world, taking titles at both the Pro Tour and Euro Tour level and being a dangerous opponent for anyone on the planet. That is not a good sign for Cammy, who has maybe the highest gap between their best and worst game of anyone in the field, and even if he is on it, this one might be very one sided. If not, this could become not pretty in a hurry.

Smith 53-47 Doets - Former major winner Smith continues to look darned good, claiming two Pro Tours and a first Euro Tour in his fifth final this season, solidifying a place in the top sixteen to get seeded, combining solid finishing with one of the highest 180 rates on the circuit. But this is not an easy draw in the slightest, Kevin has shown flashes on TV before, particularly at the worlds, and picked his game up well in 2026 to get here for the first time, getting a first tour title, a first Euro Tour final, and being well into the double digits for quarter final or better appearances. Ought to be one of the highlight ties of the rounds, that's just how well Doets is playing right now.

Price 81-19 Schindler - Gerwyn is another player I'm going to describe as underrated - hasn't done a great deal in the last few months since claiming another Euro Tour event, but the numbers do not lie and he remains one of the players that if he is in a tournament, he has a legitimate chance to win it. This is not a bad draw, Martin is not regressing in terms of numbers just looking at the comparisons above, but it feels like he is, not seeded like last year, not really being close to claiming more titles, and he is not qualified for Leicester as of right now, although he should stay high enough to have the opportunities to correct that. This draw certainly doesn't help though.

Noppert 45-55 Cross - Danny's a former major winner and one of the most consistent players on the circuit, however the numbers are tailing off ever so slightly, which is not really a good sign against Cross, who is a former winner here, and picking up form at the right time - the numbers are trending upwards, picking up a Pro Tour and reaching a Euro Tour final just last month, and an in form Cross certainly has the quality to defeat an any form Noppert. Danny's certainly not going to make it easy and rarely if ever has a bad game, but this might be one of the better first round matches with the real chance of a seeding upset, if not an actual upset.

van Veen 62-38 Ratajski - Oh boy, here's one which is very much form based. van Veen, going into the end of 2025, was without doubt one of the strongest players in the world. You don't get to a world final by chance (well, there's been some who were lucky), but since then the form has got worse and worse. Obviously he needed to pull out of a couple of Premier League dates, but I can't think that makes him that far off his best, numbers since April seeing an alarmingly low scoring number with inconsistency through the roof. As such, a matchup against Ratajski, who might be back very close to his best and a winner of another Euro Tour literally two days ago (where he beat van Veen pretty comfortably) could be one of the worst matchups he could get. Krzsyztof is absolutely live in this one.

Nijman 79-21 Chisnall - Wessel seems to be winning pretty much everything he enters, picking up two Euro Tours, six Pro Tours and entering the top sixteen in the world (and much, much higher in the FRH rankings where only the two Lukes and van Veen are above him). The scoring is extremely strong, the confidence must be sky high, now is surely the time to take the form to TV. And he couldn't wish for a better first round opponent - Dave barely scraped into the event, and the numbers he is putting up are the worst of anyone in the event. Even the consistency numbers favour Nijman, which is probably the only reason we're not seeing an even more one sided projection, this feels like a top four game in terms of one sidedness but it actually isn't.

Wade 62-38 Wattimena - James has a really strong record here, being a defending finalist and definitely favouring leg play, previously being a winner of this event and he did add another title on the floor this year, albeit right at the start of the season. The numbers look best in current form, but he has an oddly high consistency number, so might be a bit more swingy than normal. Jermaine's off the back of a first Euro Tour final, and a brace of long awaited titles at the back end of 2025 was a key breakthrough, although the performances were much better for quite some time before that. He's not too far off Wade, but does appear a fairly obvious second best in this one, although not without chances.

Searle 64-36 O'Connor - Ryan has not pushed on quite as much as I thought he might have done after his worlds run. He has got a Pro Tour win, as he seems a lock to get one more or less every year, but spurned another Euro Tour chance, and remains very hit and miss. The same can be said for William, who perhaps surprisingly is here for the first time, and is just that little bit lower in terms of everything than Ryan is, he got to another tour final this year but didn't convert, and he's not got a huge amount results wise outside of that. Of course, with two players who can be up and down, anything can happen, but Ryan is correctly favoured here.

I'll obviously use the round one data to project further, so don't expect anything more until after the World Cup final, but this should give you what you need to make your own mind up on everything.

Leverkusen quarters

Well, that extra time basically killed me, although if this afternoon session was anything like yesterday that's probably for the best, although looking at the actual results, given that we typically like to punt on Dirk, Aspinall and Ratajski, maybe we'd have hit on something. Got to imagine the model would have thrown up Wattimena as well, but we'll never know. What we do know is our quarter final lineup:

Wattimena/Woodhouse - 42/43/48/44

van Duijvenbode/Heta - 56/55/57/56

Bialecki/Wade - 32/34/32/33

Aspinall/Ratajski - 70/60/64/65

Leverkusen round 2

God damnit Willie, pin any of the four (fact check me on that?) match darts you had, and this is a glorious day, as is we get out for a small win, but nowhere near the enormous plus we could have had. Still, we move on, an awful lot of today's games were an absolute cluster but let's look at what we have.

Damon Heta v Rob Owen - 56/60/61/59

Mike De Decker v Jan Schmidt - insufficient data on Schmidt

Luke Woodhouse v Dragutin Horvat - insufficient data on Horvat

Danny Noppert v Sebastian Bialecki - 59/61/66/62

Jermaine Wattimena v Kim Huybrechts - 43/46/52/47

Chris Dobey v Dirk van Duijvenbode - 59/53/52/55

Wessel Nijman v Bradley Brooks - 77/78/67/74

Krzysztof Ratajski v Max Hopp - 63/62/61/62

Stephen Bunting v Ryan Joyce - 72/67/74/71

James Wade v Maik Kuivenhoven - 78/71/71/73

Jonny Clayton v Karel Sedlacek - 64/64/70/66

Michael van Gerwen v Joe Cullen - 62/57/63/61

Gian van Veen v Niko Springer - 54/66/71/64

Martin Schindler v Kevin Doets - 39/36/41/39

Nathan Aspinall v Mickey Mansell - 79/73/74/75

Ross Smith v Niels Zonneveld - 62/61/59/61

Feast on that as you will.

Matchplay field set

Well it was really only going to come down to one of two things - if someone on the fringes made a hero run (they didn't), and if not, who was going to be the one man to miss (Gurney). One thing I'd kind of like to see, given that the Matchplay is the obvious choice to be the next tournament for expansion, is to make it 40 players, and have a day one on the Friday where 9-16 on the Pro Tour would play 17-24 in the Pro Tour to make the event proper (or, for that matter, 1-8 not qualified just based on the Pro Tour in 2026, so that new card holders have more of a chance). Whether you do it as one session first to six kind of like a Euro Tour event, one longer session first to eight, or two where it's first to ten just like the first round as is, I don't know. Probably depends on how many tickets they think they can shift, which right now should be "all of them". That would give us Gurney, Huybrechts, Bialecki, Sedlacek, de Graaf, Reyes, Veenstra and Clemens, which is frankly a thousand times more interesting than the bottom eight who did make it (although the number 9 in Zonneveld is someone who I really want to see how he does on debut), and right now that gives you seven different nationalities in that group, none of them English. Which would be a GREAT Euro selling point, although granted that is quite clearly just circumstances for this year. Let's hope some of those will push on to the Grand Prix - Reyes is in a spot right now at the expense of Schindler, other than that it's just the same field, I really hate how the two hardest to qualify for majors have basically zero churn in them. The Euro Tour doesn't help that and we'll come to Leverkusen in a minute.

I wondered what a field would look like if you went off of my database based on the same qualifying criteria, but instead of money, you went with legs won or averages. Now my database filters down to just the last year (as I use it for betting, and anything more than a year old really isn't relevant), so instead of two years all money/one year Pro Tour, I'll go the full year for the first sixteen, and then just 2026 for the next lot. For scoring, you would get:

Littler, Humphries, Price, Anderson, Dobey, van Veen, van Gerwen, Nijman, Bunting, Rock, Clayton, van Duijvenbode, R Smith, Cross, Aspinall, Wade - Doets, Hood, Heta, Ratajski, Woodhouse, Searle, Zonnveld, Cullen, Noppert, Wattimena, Huybrechts, de Graaf, Greaves, Gilding, Scutt, Rydz

For legs won, you would get:

Nijman, Noppert, Dobey, Doets, Woodhouse, Wattimena, R Smith, Ratajski, van Veen, Clayton, Bunting, Gilding, Wade, Price, Rock, O'Connor - Bialecki, Cullen, van Duijvenbode, Searle, Chisnall, Reyes, Zonneveld, Gurney, Greaves, Huybrechts, Heta, Sedlacek, Bissell, Manby, Springer, Menzies

That second one would be complete carnage, as you'd be missing all of the top four in the world. But hey, if you mail the season in in favour of exhibitions, that's on you.

OK, Leverkusen. As always, numbers are short, medium and long data, with the composite value last.

Joyce/Varila - insufficient data on Varila

Huybrechts/Price - 75/78/74/76

Sedlacek/Griffin - 67/69/65/67

Vandenbogaerde/Horvat - insufficient data on Horvat

van Duijvenbode/van de Weerd - no data on van de Weerd

Wenig/Brooks - 43/49/36/42

Cullen/Manby - 53/58/53/55

Gilding/Owen - 53/54/57/55

O'Connor/Bialecki - 59/61/61/60

Doets/Gruellich - 85/82/80/82

Gurney/Kuivenhoven - 60/55/56/57

Menzies/Schmidt - insufficient data on Schmidt

Mansell/Smejda - no data on Smejda

Zonneveld/Klose - 81/82/81 (no short data on Klose)

Springer/Labanauskas - 65/65/64/65

Cross/Hopp - 70/61/63/65

Of those we have not much on, we kind of know what Horvat and Klose are. van de Weerd is a complete random but didn't drop below 87 in the qualifier and beat Krohne, Roetzsch and Barkhausen, so doesn't seem that bad. Varila's won an SDC tour this year but hasn't really impressed that much. Schmidt played ET4 and took Springer to a decider but didn't look too impressive while doing so. Smejda played a Euro Tour back in late 2024 and was not impressive against Aspinall. Be back Friday evening for round two, the Sunday might be a bit late as I'll be coming off a full day at the football, both live on TV, which doesn't end until gone midnight.

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