The only thing I can do in relation to yesterday's betting is direct you to Bobby Roode's current entrance music. It was glorious.
So for round 2, what do we have? Thanks to the snap election and me being awake at gone 4am yesterday, I'm fresh and can look at the lines right now:
Gurney/Hendriks - Hendriks might well be a live dog here, but I question the stats I have, simply because he's all over the place. Will leave it alone.
Norris/Kantele - Kantele just doesn't seem good at all. Alcinas should have finished him easily but couldn't get over the line, while I only have nine winning legs on Kantele which is a small sample, those legs reckon Norris wins 90% of the time, and a losing leg average of barely over 80 doesn't convince me at all. 1u Norris 2/7
King/North - North managed to swat aside Mansell with relative ease, which I found really surprising, and is installed as a 2/1 dog against King, and while I should probably recommend a King bet, I lack enough real data on North to want to bet.
Smith/de Decker - de Decker's now actually shorter against Smith than he was against Hopp, which seems borderline retarded, but there you go, Smith should win this comfortably but the stats I have indicate that de Decker might just pull it out enough to not bet the match.
Reyes/Aspinall - Interesting game this one, and I'm going to ignore it. This is because my sample has Aspinall firing in so many five visit leg wins, that it reckons he should be the favourite. It also has him up at 89 on losing legs, which isn't a bad number, and I've got 24 winning legs which isn't that small a sample, so maybe there's a point? If it was more than 2/1 then I'd come out swinging, I think I should regardless, but will refrain from doing so.
Huybrechts/Hudson - This is almost a Huybrechts bet, and I wouldn't say no to sticking him in your accumulators, but he doesn't have quite enough at 2/9 for me to start piling on against someone who just did a 6-1 job on a top 32 player.
White/Jacques - Not sure why White's so long here. Jacques struggled against Dobey, relying on many missed match darts, and the value is here - 1u White 4/9
Cullen/Pipe - Got good data on both of these, Pipe looked fairly good in beating Ratajski, and it's a 4/7 - 7/4 game. The numbers disagree with this, and by a good margin - 0.5u Cullen 4/7
Whitlock/Hamilton - Schindler really should have finished the Hammer, but oh well, he's long odds against versus Whitlock, and it's not long enough for my liking - Hamilton really shouldn't be able to hang here at all - 1u Whitlock 2/7
Chisnall/Wilson - Just going straight to the data here, it reckons Chisnall is correctly the favourite, but by around the amount that the odds suggest, Wilson didn't have it all his own way in round 1 so I'm not going to rush to try to bet the underdog.
Suljovic/van Duijvenbode - Mensur's consistency should easily be enough here, but I'm not rushing to pile on at shorter than 1/5 against a potentially dangerous opponent who I've already backed this weekend.
Wade/Anderson - Kyle's weekend doesn't get much easier. The figures actually suggest that Kyle should be the favourite though, yet he's around a 2/1 dog. Wade clearly crushes on consistency, but regardless of that I think it's an obvious bet - 0.5u Anderson 7/4
Klaasen/Bunting - Not touching this with a bargepole because of Klaasen's surgery.
Wright/Michael - Michael used all his lives against Tautfest. Too short to bet on Wright though.
van de Pas/van der Voort - If you didn't watch it, watch the Adrian Lewis game, that was fantastic entertainment. The figures I have reckon this is much, much closer to a flip than the odds suggest, and Vincent managed to get over the line having run up a 5-0 lead in the face of a ferocious Lewis comeback, which is often the main reason why we don't bet on Vincent - if he's done it against Adrian Lewis, Benito should be a good shout - 0.5u van der Voort 15/8
van Gerwen/Henderson - LOL
Friday, 9 June 2017
Hamburg day 1
Home qualifier is in the books, the German World Cup team made it, along with Mike Holz, who made a couple last year, of most note getting a first round win before losing 6-3 to Suljovic, and Erik Tautfest, who's a complete unknown (and seemingly has three entries on dartsdatabase). Let's look at bets:
Hudson/Dolan - Hudson looks like a punt here, Dolan's been struggling and didn't look great in Frankfurt and we're getting odds, Dolan's not outearned Hudson by much so far this season - 0.25u Hudson 17/10
North/Mansell - North's on debut it seems and Mansell is actually the underdog here, which is odd as he played good darts last weekend and will have more stage experience. I have no stats on North, who although getting into my adjusted top 100, has done it entirely on the Pro Tour. Mansell seems to be an OK play - 0.25u Mansell 11/10
Ratajski/Pipe - Even money basically, the Pole actually has fairly similar stats to Pipe, so while he's clearly got a solid record and should have chances, I don't think there's enough to bet.
Hamilton/Schindler - Martin looked OK under pressure in Frankfurt, Hamilton really needs this to try to rebuild his career, it's evens each way which doesn't look too far off.
Bryant/Wilson - I know little about Bryant, who so far in the PDC looks to be making up the numbers, which puts Wilson as more than 3/1 on. James is very solid and had a good run on the Pro Tour last time up, so I think this should be value - 1u Wilson 2/7
Kantele/Alcinas - More or less even money, Alcinas we know more of, Kantele really didn't look good when he qualified for one last time out, the Spaniard should get home here - 0.25u Alcinas 10/11
de Decker/Hopp - Hopp shouldn't be 4/1 on against anyone, period - 0.1u de Decker 37/10
Jenkins/Hendriks - Jimmy looks hit and miss on paper, Jenkins should be more solid, odds are tight and this should be tight.
Quantock/Aspinall - Two young players here in a close one, Quantock looking to consolidate a good 2017 while Aspinall's looking to rebound following an off year after the world youth final. Aspinall, if firing, should have a small edge, but that's a big if right now and not one that I want to push at around evens.
Webster/van Duijvenbode - Dirk's quite a bit odds against here, Webster had one good run last time out on the Pro Tour but seems a bit off the peak Webster we saw six months ago, Dirk has qualified for a lot of these and looks to be back close to the form that saw him get to the 2016 worlds. Let's go for it - 0.25u van Duijvenbode 5/2
Henderson/Holz - I think John should come through here in one that's hugely important for his Matchplay hopes, Holz did beat a couple of people we know in qualifying but his chances seem slim and this is reflected by the odds.
Jacques/Dobey - An important game for Chris, who's not been as on fire this year, particularly since the UK Open. He's a small favourite against Jacques who shouldn't be without chances, so I'll leave this alone.
Neyens/Bunting - Kenny literally got deleted off my ranking sheet for not cashing for two years last week, and I wouldn't blame you for going small value against a spluttering Bunting, but I wonder if this long off the stage will affect the still developing Belgian, whose best work has been on the minor tours and in the last world youth.
van der Voort/Lewis - Not the draw that Vincent wanted I think, but we have big, big odds against Lewis, who has been up and down a chunk, plenty of times Adrian runs away with this but there's enough times that he doesn't - 0.25u van der Voort 7/2
Tautfest/Michael - The home qualifier is unknown, Michael should have enough but I'm not touching this needing 80% equity to bet the Greek.
Anderson/Kist - Big clash to close things out as both look to secure Matchplay spots, Anderson seems the better natural talent and is a 60/40 favourite, but Kist seems to be on an upward curve so should maintain order and may be able to pull it out enough.
Hudson/Dolan - Hudson looks like a punt here, Dolan's been struggling and didn't look great in Frankfurt and we're getting odds, Dolan's not outearned Hudson by much so far this season - 0.25u Hudson 17/10
North/Mansell - North's on debut it seems and Mansell is actually the underdog here, which is odd as he played good darts last weekend and will have more stage experience. I have no stats on North, who although getting into my adjusted top 100, has done it entirely on the Pro Tour. Mansell seems to be an OK play - 0.25u Mansell 11/10
Ratajski/Pipe - Even money basically, the Pole actually has fairly similar stats to Pipe, so while he's clearly got a solid record and should have chances, I don't think there's enough to bet.
Hamilton/Schindler - Martin looked OK under pressure in Frankfurt, Hamilton really needs this to try to rebuild his career, it's evens each way which doesn't look too far off.
Bryant/Wilson - I know little about Bryant, who so far in the PDC looks to be making up the numbers, which puts Wilson as more than 3/1 on. James is very solid and had a good run on the Pro Tour last time up, so I think this should be value - 1u Wilson 2/7
Kantele/Alcinas - More or less even money, Alcinas we know more of, Kantele really didn't look good when he qualified for one last time out, the Spaniard should get home here - 0.25u Alcinas 10/11
de Decker/Hopp - Hopp shouldn't be 4/1 on against anyone, period - 0.1u de Decker 37/10
Jenkins/Hendriks - Jimmy looks hit and miss on paper, Jenkins should be more solid, odds are tight and this should be tight.
Quantock/Aspinall - Two young players here in a close one, Quantock looking to consolidate a good 2017 while Aspinall's looking to rebound following an off year after the world youth final. Aspinall, if firing, should have a small edge, but that's a big if right now and not one that I want to push at around evens.
Webster/van Duijvenbode - Dirk's quite a bit odds against here, Webster had one good run last time out on the Pro Tour but seems a bit off the peak Webster we saw six months ago, Dirk has qualified for a lot of these and looks to be back close to the form that saw him get to the 2016 worlds. Let's go for it - 0.25u van Duijvenbode 5/2
Henderson/Holz - I think John should come through here in one that's hugely important for his Matchplay hopes, Holz did beat a couple of people we know in qualifying but his chances seem slim and this is reflected by the odds.
Jacques/Dobey - An important game for Chris, who's not been as on fire this year, particularly since the UK Open. He's a small favourite against Jacques who shouldn't be without chances, so I'll leave this alone.
Neyens/Bunting - Kenny literally got deleted off my ranking sheet for not cashing for two years last week, and I wouldn't blame you for going small value against a spluttering Bunting, but I wonder if this long off the stage will affect the still developing Belgian, whose best work has been on the minor tours and in the last world youth.
van der Voort/Lewis - Not the draw that Vincent wanted I think, but we have big, big odds against Lewis, who has been up and down a chunk, plenty of times Adrian runs away with this but there's enough times that he doesn't - 0.25u van der Voort 7/2
Tautfest/Michael - The home qualifier is unknown, Michael should have enough but I'm not touching this needing 80% equity to bet the Greek.
Anderson/Kist - Big clash to close things out as both look to secure Matchplay spots, Anderson seems the better natural talent and is a 60/40 favourite, but Kist seems to be on an upward curve so should maintain order and may be able to pull it out enough.
Thursday, 8 June 2017
Average inflation
One of the first posts, if not the first post, I made on here was relating to averages going up when you play a better player, even if you throw the exact same darts. I thought I'd try to quantify this by looking from a BDO to PDC switch perspective. Glen Durrant averaged 93.48 in his final vs Danny Noppert, Wikipedia reliably informs me. How would he have averaged had he not faced Noppert, but instead faced Michael van Gerwen? This isn't too hard to calculate, we just need a model for van Gerwen. My stats say he's killing in twelve darts on just over 30% of occasions, and in fifteen darts 80% of the time. This then becomes easy - shove 1-10 into a random number generator, if it rolls a 1-3, van Gerwen hits a twelve darter, if it rolls 4-8, it's fifteen darts, 9 or 10 gives us eighteen darts.
I then took the Darts for Windows PDF, gave van Gerwen the throw as Noppert did, then looked leg by leg, using the first leg available where the player who should be on throw in my virtual match is throwing first. Most of the time this is the next leg, some times I needed to pop ahead (for example if Durrant had made it 2-2 in the first set, I'd need the next leg in which van Gerwen throws first, which as Durrant won the first set against Noppert in four legs, wouldn't be the opening leg in set two of the BDO final, as Noppert was on throw and not Durrant). I'd also skip a leg where I don't have enough information to determine whether Durrant would win a leg - this happened once where Noppert went out in fifteen darts on throw, while in my sim van Gerwen took eighteen darts, without a reliable way to see if Durrant would have finished the 72 he had left, I'll use another leg and come back to this one later.
Firstly, van Gerwen bagelled Durrant, dropping just four legs in the entire simulation - Durrant's best chance was in virtual set 2, where with the darts he took a 2-0 lead in legs, but then couldn't finish in 18 with van Gerwen taking the same, and allowed van Gerwen to break in fifteen darts in the deciding leg.
Secondly, Durrant's average was 97.32, nearly a whole four points higher than in the actual final. Now as van Gerwen won the sim quickly enough that I didn't even need to go into the eighth set to grab data, we should have a quick look at what wasn't used to see if there's any major discrepancy. We didn't use leg three of set six, where Durrant kills in 18, or legs two and three of set seven, where Durrant kills the two legs in 29 darts - an average a shade under 96 for those legs, nor did we use any of set 8 (average 91, five legs), set 9 (average 95, four legs) or set 10 (average 94, five legs). If anything, these sets were slightly better in terms of averaging than those which were actually used in the sim, in any case we can't say that Durrant's average is higher in the sim because he played better in the early stages of the real match.
Wednesday, 7 June 2017
Dutch courage
One thing I briefly touched on in the previous post was the distribution of locations for the European Tour. While I get that Germany is a huge market and breaking it would mean a lot for the PDC, it's surely getting very, very close to the stage where it's oversaturated there and the only way it can continue to grow is if they have a player truly step up to top 20 level (let's not get ahead of ourselves and talk about Premier League level). Germany's never had a player reach even the last 16 of either World Championship (I'd think that someone could do so in the BDO system were they to try right now, but with the PDC throwing as much money at the European Tour as it is right now it'd be financial suicide), or even make it out of the first money round at anything other than the European Championship.
So why exactly do they now have nine European Tour events (as well as the World Cup in terms of hosting events), while the Netherlands, Austria and Gibraltar have one a piece? The Netherlands is surely more deserving of at least having one of the extra two events added this year. Of the 56 spots given to European qualifiers, the Netherlands have hoovered up 31 of them - easily more than half, which is remarkable considering that none of Michael van Gerwen, Jelle Klaasen or Benito van de Pas need to take part in them, and Raymond van Barneveld hasn't taken part in any of them (the one he did qualify for, he did through the UK qualifier). Of the current tentative qualifiers for the European Championship, the Netherlands account for six out of thirty-two, compared to Germany's none, the closest being Martin Schindler, currently missing out on countback. I'd think it'd sell out easily - if they can sell out the Premier League in a matter of minutes, then a European event shouldn't be too much hassle.
It's not like in the two events which have the European qualifiers already that are hosted outside of Germany have been lacking in German qualifiers - Schindler and Eidams made both events, with Blum making the last qualifying round for Austria to join Hopp, Horvath and Puls as those four who missed out at the final hurdle for Gibraltar. So they can certainly get there, but not do much once they do qualify - first event Germans went 0-4, second one they went 3-4 (Marijanovic was somehow eligible for this one), the third one they went 2-4, the fourth one they went 1-4, and in the last one they were 1-2. I wouldn't necessarily expect a winning record - that'd require, as a minimum, every qualifier to make round 2 and have one of them knock out a seed, but it does seem fairly poor, especially when you factor in who their victories collectively came against - Andrew Gilding, Robert Owen, Joe Cullen, Josh Payne, Brian Woods, Zoran Lerchbacher and Callan Rydz.
They can certainly spread things around without unnecessarily halting the German cash cow - moving one to the Netherlands, perhaps moving Gibraltar to the Spanish mainland (and keep the Gibraltar lads eligible for the home qualifier), and have one in Belgium - with Ronny Huybrechts and Dimitri van den Bergh to go along with the seeded Kim Huybrechts, there's certainly enough talent that we know can make a run in one of these things to add to the likes of Mike de Decker, Kenny Neyens, along with others on the Development Tour that could get vital stage experience. How about one in Ireland, now that there isn't the boost those players got from the Grand Prix spots?
I'll likely run a full top 100 of the adjusted rankings following Hamburg, to give everyone an idea of how various players are progressing in the last six months since I listed a full ranking. There's quite a lot of newer players like Peter Jacques, Steve Lennon, Chris Quantock and Richard North to go with the more obvious Rob Cross who have cracked the top 100, as well as Ratajski who will likely move into the top 100 as a result of his qualification for Hamburg.
So why exactly do they now have nine European Tour events (as well as the World Cup in terms of hosting events), while the Netherlands, Austria and Gibraltar have one a piece? The Netherlands is surely more deserving of at least having one of the extra two events added this year. Of the 56 spots given to European qualifiers, the Netherlands have hoovered up 31 of them - easily more than half, which is remarkable considering that none of Michael van Gerwen, Jelle Klaasen or Benito van de Pas need to take part in them, and Raymond van Barneveld hasn't taken part in any of them (the one he did qualify for, he did through the UK qualifier). Of the current tentative qualifiers for the European Championship, the Netherlands account for six out of thirty-two, compared to Germany's none, the closest being Martin Schindler, currently missing out on countback. I'd think it'd sell out easily - if they can sell out the Premier League in a matter of minutes, then a European event shouldn't be too much hassle.
It's not like in the two events which have the European qualifiers already that are hosted outside of Germany have been lacking in German qualifiers - Schindler and Eidams made both events, with Blum making the last qualifying round for Austria to join Hopp, Horvath and Puls as those four who missed out at the final hurdle for Gibraltar. So they can certainly get there, but not do much once they do qualify - first event Germans went 0-4, second one they went 3-4 (Marijanovic was somehow eligible for this one), the third one they went 2-4, the fourth one they went 1-4, and in the last one they were 1-2. I wouldn't necessarily expect a winning record - that'd require, as a minimum, every qualifier to make round 2 and have one of them knock out a seed, but it does seem fairly poor, especially when you factor in who their victories collectively came against - Andrew Gilding, Robert Owen, Joe Cullen, Josh Payne, Brian Woods, Zoran Lerchbacher and Callan Rydz.
They can certainly spread things around without unnecessarily halting the German cash cow - moving one to the Netherlands, perhaps moving Gibraltar to the Spanish mainland (and keep the Gibraltar lads eligible for the home qualifier), and have one in Belgium - with Ronny Huybrechts and Dimitri van den Bergh to go along with the seeded Kim Huybrechts, there's certainly enough talent that we know can make a run in one of these things to add to the likes of Mike de Decker, Kenny Neyens, along with others on the Development Tour that could get vital stage experience. How about one in Ireland, now that there isn't the boost those players got from the Grand Prix spots?
I'll likely run a full top 100 of the adjusted rankings following Hamburg, to give everyone an idea of how various players are progressing in the last six months since I listed a full ranking. There's quite a lot of newer players like Peter Jacques, Steve Lennon, Chris Quantock and Richard North to go with the more obvious Rob Cross who have cracked the top 100, as well as Ratajski who will likely move into the top 100 as a result of his qualification for Hamburg.
Monday, 5 June 2017
World Trophy quality
Afternoon,
Oddly got a spike of a couple of hundred visitors a few days ago, oddly all from that hotbed of darts, Israel - got to assume that it's some sort of botnet, but if not, cheers for the impressions.
So I was listening to Alex and Burton's podcast yesterday running over the World Trophy (which also had an interesting interview with Mark Webster which is worth a listen), commenting on how it was decent quality and it's a shame that nobody bothered to turn up for it. It did look a bit of a rubbish venue and Barry's not exactly the entertainment capital of the world, but that aside, how good was the quality?
What I'll do in this post is compare it to a certain level of PDC event - the European Tour. I'll take the first round of each European Tour event (16 first to six matches) and compare it with the first round of the World Trophy (also 16 first to six matches). I'll then take the remainder of the World Trophy (15 matches, eight of them first to six with the quarter finals onwards being a bit longer) and compare to the second round of the European Tour (same format as round 1). So what I'm doing in the first instance is comparing the elite of the BDO (it's their entire top 22 plus ten qualifiers who, given they include the eventual winner, a previous Lakeside finalist, the current Scottish Open champion, isn't exactly a list of mugs) against a mixed bag of PDC players - this features none of the top 16 in Pro Tour rankings, and as they haven't yet been to the Netherlands, can feature some decidedly ropey home nation qualifiers and plenty of not even B-list domestic players. In the second instance I'm letting all the PDC players have one game only, while the BDO gets to have everyone with a win play and all the good players pad the stats for them by taking more than one of their matches.
Firstly, the opening round stats:
4 visit leg percentage:
Sindelfingen 8.72%
Jena 8.11%
Hildesheim 7.59%
Gibraltar 4.90%
Saarbrücken 4.86%
World Trophy 2.70%
Oddly got a spike of a couple of hundred visitors a few days ago, oddly all from that hotbed of darts, Israel - got to assume that it's some sort of botnet, but if not, cheers for the impressions.
So I was listening to Alex and Burton's podcast yesterday running over the World Trophy (which also had an interesting interview with Mark Webster which is worth a listen), commenting on how it was decent quality and it's a shame that nobody bothered to turn up for it. It did look a bit of a rubbish venue and Barry's not exactly the entertainment capital of the world, but that aside, how good was the quality?
What I'll do in this post is compare it to a certain level of PDC event - the European Tour. I'll take the first round of each European Tour event (16 first to six matches) and compare it with the first round of the World Trophy (also 16 first to six matches). I'll then take the remainder of the World Trophy (15 matches, eight of them first to six with the quarter finals onwards being a bit longer) and compare to the second round of the European Tour (same format as round 1). So what I'm doing in the first instance is comparing the elite of the BDO (it's their entire top 22 plus ten qualifiers who, given they include the eventual winner, a previous Lakeside finalist, the current Scottish Open champion, isn't exactly a list of mugs) against a mixed bag of PDC players - this features none of the top 16 in Pro Tour rankings, and as they haven't yet been to the Netherlands, can feature some decidedly ropey home nation qualifiers and plenty of not even B-list domestic players. In the second instance I'm letting all the PDC players have one game only, while the BDO gets to have everyone with a win play and all the good players pad the stats for them by taking more than one of their matches.
Firstly, the opening round stats:
4 visit leg percentage:
Sindelfingen 8.72%
Jena 8.11%
Hildesheim 7.59%
Gibraltar 4.90%
Saarbrücken 4.86%
World Trophy 2.70%
5 visit leg percentage:
Hildesheim 52.41%
Sindelfingen 52.35%
Saarbrücken 42.36%
Jena 41.22%
Gibraltar 38.46%
World Trophy 36.49%
6 visit leg percentage:
World Trophy 89.19%
Hildesheim 88.28%
Sindelfingen 85.91%
Jena 83.78%
Saarbrücken 81.25%
Gibraltar 76.92%
Losing leg average:
World Trophy 85.18
Sindelfingen 84.23
Hildesheim 84.07
Saarbrücken 82.55
Jena 81.86
Gibraltar 80.78
Secondly, the European Tour round 2 vs World Trophy last 16 onwards:
4 visit leg percentage:
Gibraltar 14.29%
Hildesheim 13.87%
Jena 10.60%
Saarbrücken 10.53%
Sindelfingen 10.00%
World Trophy 9.43%
5 visit leg percentage:
Hildesheim 63.50%
Saarbrücken 57.89%
Gibraltar 55.19%
Sindelfingen 54.67%
Jena 49.01%
World Trophy 45.91%
6 visit leg percentage:
Sindelfingen 94.00%
Saarbrücken 90.98%
Gibraltar 90.91%
Hildesheim 89.78%
World Trophy 88.68%
Jena 86.09%
Losing leg average:
Saarbrücken 87.65
Hildesheim 87.63
Gibraltar 87.47
Sindelfingen 87.14
Jena 86.92
World Trophy 85.30
So in five out of eight stats, the World Trophy finishes bottom, and in a further one it finishes second to bottom. However, in the other two stats it finishes top! How can we explain that? I think it has to be the nature of the entrants - the BDO isn't good quality, but the make up of the World Trophy field is such that the chances of both players in any given leg both making enough of a hash of it to not finish in eighteen darts is fairly slim, whereas in the PDC, there's enough bad UK based and home nation qualifiers in the mix that they can run into each other fairly often, and them both messing up a leg can happen quite a bit. It's a similar tale for the losing average - if there's complete dross that qualifies for the European Tour, you're getting six legs worth of stats. The BDO losers will do the same, but they'll usually keep decent enough order - an average of 85 is around eighteen darts.
Busy PDC weekend, with European Tour 6 as well as the fourth weekend of the Challenge Tour, which may give us a better idea of who'll likely join Wayne Jones in gaining a tour card for 2018. Should be able to have betting analysis up for the Hamburg on Friday morning.
Sunday, 4 June 2017
World Cup
I have very little time to bother about non-ranked events - I don't include any of them in my statistics, but the World Cup is often one that I try to pay casual attention to, mainly because the format allows us to see certain players on TV that we don't normally see outside of the worlds, and that might give us some indication as to what's going on.
The problem is the format. As I alluded to on 2+2, for those that read the darts thread there, pairs is a hugely different format - you get no ability to gather any cadence or rhythm which you would do in a singles matchup. It's incredibly easy for a player to be knocked out of their play just in singles - Gerwyn Price seemed slightly tilted against Oreshkin earlier today, although it made no difference to the end result, multiply that by adding two extra players in, even accounting for one being your team mate, you aren't able to draw much at all from it.
So what can we look at? Not much. I guess we know Paul Lim and Larry Butler can still hang at the top level, but class is permanent, and the main nations can still choke if given the opportunity to. Scanning through the results, the Greek player that isn't Michael didn't seem awful, albeit inconsistent, Oreshkin is much like we've always thought, great peaks but bad troughs, Koltsov seems similar, the Brazilians look bad, whoever wasn't Petersen for South Africa doesn't appear good.
I honestly don't see why they don't run with the same format as they do in round 2 onwards for round 1. You'd need to open up the Thursday and Friday for afternoon sessions, but hey, that's more potential ticket sales.
The only other thing I feel worth mentioning is the format in terms of doubles order - from what the TV commentators made out, whoever opened up in the first singles game needs to start each doubles leg. Not only is this incredibly stupid, but if it is the case, surely unless you have a situation whereby you're a weaker nation and your best player might beat the opponent's second player but clearly lose to the main guy, you just put out whoever is better at finishing first? The typical leg is won in fifteen darts - if so, each player in the pair has two scoring visits. It really doesn't matter that much which order the first four visits are in, you're going to end up in more or less the same spot. But from there, I clearly want whoever is better at cleaning up to take the fifth visit. Say Lewis got his usual case of can't be arsed to play on the continent and Wade was drafted in as a last gasp replacement. Who would you want to finish some high two figure/low three figure shot if the tournament depended on it? I'm guessing it's not going to be Dave Chisnall.
The problem is the format. As I alluded to on 2+2, for those that read the darts thread there, pairs is a hugely different format - you get no ability to gather any cadence or rhythm which you would do in a singles matchup. It's incredibly easy for a player to be knocked out of their play just in singles - Gerwyn Price seemed slightly tilted against Oreshkin earlier today, although it made no difference to the end result, multiply that by adding two extra players in, even accounting for one being your team mate, you aren't able to draw much at all from it.
So what can we look at? Not much. I guess we know Paul Lim and Larry Butler can still hang at the top level, but class is permanent, and the main nations can still choke if given the opportunity to. Scanning through the results, the Greek player that isn't Michael didn't seem awful, albeit inconsistent, Oreshkin is much like we've always thought, great peaks but bad troughs, Koltsov seems similar, the Brazilians look bad, whoever wasn't Petersen for South Africa doesn't appear good.
I honestly don't see why they don't run with the same format as they do in round 2 onwards for round 1. You'd need to open up the Thursday and Friday for afternoon sessions, but hey, that's more potential ticket sales.
The only other thing I feel worth mentioning is the format in terms of doubles order - from what the TV commentators made out, whoever opened up in the first singles game needs to start each doubles leg. Not only is this incredibly stupid, but if it is the case, surely unless you have a situation whereby you're a weaker nation and your best player might beat the opponent's second player but clearly lose to the main guy, you just put out whoever is better at finishing first? The typical leg is won in fifteen darts - if so, each player in the pair has two scoring visits. It really doesn't matter that much which order the first four visits are in, you're going to end up in more or less the same spot. But from there, I clearly want whoever is better at cleaning up to take the fifth visit. Say Lewis got his usual case of can't be arsed to play on the continent and Wade was drafted in as a last gasp replacement. Who would you want to finish some high two figure/low three figure shot if the tournament depended on it? I'm guessing it's not going to be Dave Chisnall.
Tuesday, 30 May 2017
BDO World Trophy
Lest anyone begins to think this is a PDC blog, let's look at the BDO major that took place the last four days. The standard was, shall we say, not great. 300+ legs in the men's, and the combined players couldn't get 20 twelve dart legs between them, and the fifteen dart percentage of the tournament was at a fairly weak 41%. Comparable PDC players would be the likes of Justin Pipe, Zoran Lerchbacher, Keegan Brown - so not exactly the A list. Machin, your winner, did manage four of the 19 twelve dart legs of the weekend, but was allowed to win all of his matches while getting half the legs needed in 16 darts or more (except the Adams match, where he finished 4/7 in fifteen or less).
Probably the most impressive result was from Harms, slotting in two twelves and a further three fifteen dart legs against Durrant, rallying from 4-0 down to win 7-4. Durrant didn't let up - he averaged over 100 in the last seven legs of the match, so Harms had very little room for error, and was arguably the best player in the event. Was disappointed with McGeeney, for all the talk of him being the form player (and the #2 seed) he sure didn't play like it. Mitchell wasn't that impressive either, winning just 3/9 legs in less than fifteen darts and averaging just 86 in losing legs. There was plenty of comedy - Labanauskas missing more darts to win the critical leg than I take to finish any leg, Gulliver having 10 world titles and still not knowing that going for 19's with one dart in hand and 184 left isn't the greatest of ideas (although, as she averaged 63 in that game, maybe she thought she wasn't checking out regardless, so who cares).
Was good to see the event get TV time, although the concept of TV is close to a dead one in the internet age, and that they were streaming it in multiple places was good to see (that said, don't leave the comms mike open when you're on adverts...) and hopefully they can keep this going moving forward.
Probably the most impressive result was from Harms, slotting in two twelves and a further three fifteen dart legs against Durrant, rallying from 4-0 down to win 7-4. Durrant didn't let up - he averaged over 100 in the last seven legs of the match, so Harms had very little room for error, and was arguably the best player in the event. Was disappointed with McGeeney, for all the talk of him being the form player (and the #2 seed) he sure didn't play like it. Mitchell wasn't that impressive either, winning just 3/9 legs in less than fifteen darts and averaging just 86 in losing legs. There was plenty of comedy - Labanauskas missing more darts to win the critical leg than I take to finish any leg, Gulliver having 10 world titles and still not knowing that going for 19's with one dart in hand and 184 left isn't the greatest of ideas (although, as she averaged 63 in that game, maybe she thought she wasn't checking out regardless, so who cares).
Was good to see the event get TV time, although the concept of TV is close to a dead one in the internet age, and that they were streaming it in multiple places was good to see (that said, don't leave the comms mike open when you're on adverts...) and hopefully they can keep this going moving forward.
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