Matchplay pod 5 - Chizzy! Chuck! King! Kim!

Dave Chisnall (World rank: 5, FRH rank: 4, match odds: 1/3, tournament odds: 33/1) v Mervyn King (World rank: 20, FRH rank: 20, match odds: 3/1, tournament odds: 250/1)

The highest ranked player in the tournament not to have won a major, Chisnall sets out on what would be a very tough run - King's one of the players you wouldn't want to be facing, his next round opponent wouldn't be pretty either, the quarters might be OK but he's in the same half as van Gerwen again, if he gets that far. Chisnall's not had a particularly good 2017 so far, getting drawn against Peter Wright early in the UK Open, and only having the one ranking final to date, losing out to Adrian Lewis. He had a pretty good Premier League after a slow start to end up fifth, and hasn't been doing too badly in other non-ranking events, but he's outside the top 10 for qualifying for both the European Championship and Players Championship finals, so he could be doing better.

King has been playing some of his best darts for years of recent, in reaching the final of the last European Tour event he was spectacular, only coming unstuck against Peter Wright, and while he's not done too badly this season (actually leading Chisnall in form points), he might have wanted his UK Open game against Tabern over again, and could easily have taken out Rob Cross in a Pro Tour final, and there's been a few deep runs where he's lost to players in the 11-20 ranking bracket, who I guess he thinks he should beat.

I think this is a lot closer than the odds make out. Looking at the graph, King is not that far off Chisnall's numbers in all aspects, while Chisnall's better in all aspects, it's not by much. This seems like a clear play given the odds we're offered, I'd probably still bet this at 2/1 - 0.5u King 3/1

Kim Huybrechts (World rank: 13, FRH rank: 13, match odds: 4/6, tournament odds: 150/1) v Alan Norris (World rank: 19, FRH rank: 16, match odds: 13/10, tournament odds: 250/1)

In a season where Kim Huybrechts is looking to push on to the top 10, he's been a bit disappointing. Finishing bottom of the Premier League in the circumstances isn't a big deal, but he's only made the one final so far this season, additionally he's made two semi finals. This is a rematch of the UK Open, where we bet Huybrechts at almost exactly the same odds, only for it to all go wrong in the deciding leg. He'll look to push on here and start to accumulate serious ranking money, which someone with his quality should be doing - it's just a case of doing it leg on leg, and not letting the pressure off.

Norris in contrast does have a tour win, taking the opening Players Championship over Peter Jacques. Since the UK Open though, his form has declined, with just the one semi final and two quarter finals, and a string of last 32 exits in Europe to qualifiers such as Jamie Bain, Dimitri van den Bergh and Jan Dekker. Similar opening losses on the Pro Tour to Robert Owen, Andy Jenkins, Ted Evetts and Tony Newell are also questionable results.

Both of these players are often inconsistent and see a big dip in average when they're not winning legs, but Huybrechts is still doing more when losing than Norris is by three points on the averages. Both are in the sixties for five visit finish percentage (Norris low, Huybrechts high), but the Belgian finishes in four visits considerably more often, a full 18% of winning legs being good for the fifth best in the field. He is that good, and I'm going to try to rectify the UK Open loss. The model has Kim winning 75% of the time - 1u Huybrechts 4/6

In round 2, Huybrechts would project as favourite against either opponent - a small one against Chisnall and 2-1 against King, while Norris would be around a 60/40 dog to King and a similar size dog to Chisnall as he is here. I have to think that round 2, if Huybrechts makes it, will be another Huybrechts bet.

Matchplay pod 4 - World champ vs world champ! Floor specialist vs floor specialist!

Adrian Lewis (World rank: 4, FRH rank: 15, match odds: 1/3, tournament odds: 40/1) v Steve Beaton (World rank: 25, FRH rank: 25, match odds: 5/2, tournament odds: 500/1)

We conclude the first half of these previews with an interesting section, in that the top seed, Adrian Lewis, who on his day can be absolutely unstoppable, has been withdrawing from tournaments left, right and centre, recently due to some undisclosed injury, and later on this year as his wife is expecting. As such, it's hard to get a decent read, but that the FRH rankings are disregarding over 70% of his World Championship final money, and that other players in the lower half of the top 16 are stepping up their game, he's dropped a chunk. Another victim of Paul Hogan at the UK Open, he's been indifferent when he has played, making the final of the first UK Open qualifier and getting a Pro Tour win in April, whilst going out early in floor events to Mickey Mansell, John Bowles, Zoran Lerchbacher (twice), Jan Dekker, Richard North - players he should be beating with little trouble.

Beaton has had an excellent last month, getting a Pro Tour victory with wins over Chisnall, Cross and Anderson in the final, and making a semi final in the next weekend of tournaments. UK Open qualifying was consistent with three quarter finals, he's hit a nine dart finish this year, although he's been a bit disappointing in Europe, failing at the last qualification hurdle three times and only getting one win once he has made it. But with the recent form and Lewis's unknown playing capabilities, does he have the game to challenge the twice world champ?

Lewis is better on every statistic, but Beaton can smash in four visit legs frequently enough to compete against Adie's specialty. It's the five visit legs that are the problem, he doesn't really throw enough of them and will let Lewis off too often in all likelihood. The model gives Lewis as an 80/20 favourite, and I can't see Beaton's form being enough to reach a point where I want to bet him. It's enough that I don't want to bet Lewis either, he only needs to be dragged down to 75% for it to be a no bet, which isn't an unreasonable guess.

Ian White (World rank: 12, FRH rank: 11, match odds: 11/8, tournament odds: 250/1) v Rob Cross (World rank: 49, FRH rank: 31, match odds: 8/11, tournament odds: 66/1)

White's usually good for a ranking win or two per year, and while he's not done that, he's come close a few times - twice a beaten finalist, once to Gary Anderson, and the other to his opponent here, Rob Cross. He should have made a first TV semi final at the UK Open but fluffed his lines against Gerwyn Price, but generally he's putting in the work, making the last eight of ranking events eight times outside of those mentioned already. He'd certainly have favoured almost any other opponent in round one here, as he defends a quarter final from two years ago.

Cross's hype has got to the stage where the bookmakers make him a small favourite in his opening match, but substantially shorter to win the whole thing compared to White, which seems a bit counter-intuitive, but let's ignore that for now. Two ranking titles in your first season is unbelievable, and they're clearly not flukes, backing it up with a further eight quarter final or better appearances, and it took Peter Wright to stop him in the UK Open at the last sixteen stage. With wins over everyone up to and including Michael van Gerwen, he's clearly a danger to anyone, so we bet him here, right?

Well, no, not really. The model has this as a coinflip for all intents and purposes, White's impressive ability to get the key legs in four visits being a weakness in Cross's game, at least on what's been televised. White maintains pace with Cross on the other stats, only 3% behind on five visit legs, only a point behind on losing average, this is going to be very close. While I don't think it'll affect him in the slightest, Cross does lack a bit of TV experience as well, and while he did get the win over Ian in one of his finals, White has won their other three matchups this season, including one last weekend. Think there's some small value here, so 0.5u White 11/8.

In round two, if Beaton does pull off the upset, the stats put him at very close to even money against either potential opponent. Naturally, the stats thus give Lewis a similar chance of winning against either opponent as he does against Beaton in round 1, albeit with all the same caveats mentioned above, but at that stage we'll have seen Lewis play and be able to adjust appropriately.

Matchplay pod 3 - Scotland versus debutants

Peter Wright (World rank: 3, FRH rank: 2, match odds: 1/10, tournament odds: 6/1) v James Wilson (World rank: 35, FRH rank: 28, match odds: 6/1, tournament odds: 500/1)

Peter Wright managed to secure a first major title this year with an impressive victory in the UK Open, nearly added the Premier League, and will be very much looking to add to that tally with what looks to be a favourable draw through to the semi finals. Wright's managed to win seven ranking titles this season, but outside of the wins there's been some questionable results - a loss to Kim Viljanen in Austria, a loss to Wayne Jones in round 1 on the floor, some moderately early exits to players he'd expect to beat elsewhere such as Paul Rowley, Paul Nicholson, Christian Kist and Vincent van der Voort.

Wilson's had a really poor season and made it here as the twelfth Pro Tour qualifier, a quarter final in Gibraltar and a semi final in Milton Keynes being enough to make him safe, but most of his ranking money came from the run up to last season's Grand Prix, where he made almost half of his money in the rolling Order of Merit in August/September. Aside from those two scores this season, which happened within a week of each other, he's not even reached the last 16 of an event. He only just qualified for the UK Open and didn't cash, while he's done well in European qualification he's lost in the first or second round, only beating Lee Bryant outside of the Gibraltar run.

Wright is a big favourite here like the other top three seeds, but unlike them he's actually a prohibitive favourite - only getting to 89% win chances, which isn't enough at 1/10. He's a much better player than Wilson, the big difference being the number of legs won in fifteen darts, which Wright does in 70% of legs to Wilson's 50%, which is a level of consistency that Wilson will find hard to combat, given his twelve dart percentage is down in the single digits. Over a race to ten I can't see a winning path for Wilson, at least not often enough to even think about backing the underdog in this one.

Robert Thornton (World rank: 15, FRH rank: 21, match odds: 21/20, tournament odds: 250/1) v Cristo Reyes (World rank: 28, FRH rank: 22, match odds: 10/11, tournament odds: 250/1)

A very close first round matchup looking at all the stats above, while there's a big difference in the official rankings, everything else is fairly close apart from Reyes doing a lot better when losing legs, a full six points higher than Thornton, but as we all know, Thornton is very hot and cold, so we can expect this. Robert has had some decent runs on tour since a real mullering by Joe Cullen in the first money round of the UK Open, making a semi final and a quarter final in one weekend at Wigan in June, and also making a run to the final at the same venue in April, results that were just enough to keep him in the seedings. On the other end, he's now needing to qualify for Europe and has only hit twice out of nine attempts, and has first round losses on tour to Richie Corner, Paul Rowley and Steve Lennon.

Reyes makes his debut here, and the bookies rate him as a small favourite. Now doing well enough on tour to be seeded for quite a few of the European Tour events, where he's been able to make some of his best runs since joining the PDC, with two semi finals in June. While he's not been able to get that far this season on the Pro Tour, he has an incredible number of last sixteen and last 32 performances, grinding out £1000 or £1500 each time, and in other European events he only slipped once as a seed to Ulf Ceder, picking up three grand on another four occasions.

Thornton is a slightly more explosive player, but Reyes isn't too far behind in terms of twelve dart percentage, only 2-3 percentage points, while Reyes is five points ahead in fifteen dart percentage, and a similar level in eighteen dart percentage. What he's doing when losing was mentioned earlier. Reyes can close to match Thornton in his only real advantage and is a lot more consistent everywhere else, and while Thornton's come into a little bit of form, Reyes is also in form and has gained a lot more confidence on stage. This is more like a 60/40 game than the coinflip the bookies suggest, so 1u Reyes 10/11.

In round 2, Wright should be around a 3-1 favourite against either opponent, both times projecting in the 70's for win percentage (the high end vs Thornton, the low end vs Reyes), so if Wright is as short relatively in round 2 as round 1, then particularly there may be chances for a Reyes bet. If Wilson pulls off the shock, he should be live against Thornton, but would still need 2/1 to bet on him, while against Reyes he'd be outmatched - Reyes projecting to be a 75% favourite.

Matchplay pod 2 - No Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman go double Dutch

Gary Anderson (World rank: 2, FRH rank: 3, match odds: 1/9, tournament odds: 5/1) v Christian Kist (World rank: 38, FRH rank: 36, match odds: 8/1, tournament odds: 750/1)

Our next set of matches see the two time world champion Gary Anderson, looking to add to his title haul with a Matchplay win, an event where he's not even reached the final, up against another former world champion in Christian Kist, who is on debut here as he's building up a bit more consistency in the PDC. Anderson has the third best form points stat in the field behind the other players in the top two, which is impressive given he's ignored the European Tour completely and certainly hasn't played much of the Pro Tour, but when he has played he's looked incredible, winning three events, making the final of three more, as well as looking strong in unranked events, the only blot is really the UK Open (Hogan though) as well as the comedy that was the World Cup, but who cares about unranked pairs matches.

Kist has a huge task ahead of him, and while he's getting better, hasn't really been doing much, not having made a quarter final since the Players Championship finals back in November. Not completely safe for this until the final weekend, he's mostly here on the back of a good end to 2016, including one Pro Tour final, and consistently qualifying for European Tour events, having played in seven but never getting more than one win in any of them.

Anderson absolutely dominates Kist in every stat going - Kist has the lowest losing average in the field, while Anderson has the highest, and Kist cannot produce enough good legs, only getting a twelve darter once in every seventeen legs, not finishing in fifteen more than half the time, and having an overall record of more legs lost than won. Anderson, according to my projections, has the greatest winning chance of any player in round one - better even than Michael van Gerwen. As we went with that match at shorter odds than this, I think we need to go even bigger here - 3u Anderson 1/9

Benito van de Pas (World rank: 14, FRH rank: 14, match odds: 6/4, tournament odds: 250/1) v Daryl Gurney (World rank: 16, FRH rank: 9, match odds: 8/11, tournament odds: 150/1)

This one looks close on paper, with two young players who've been mentioned in dispatches as possible Premier League players in the next couple of years, going up against each other for the right to likely face Gary Anderson in round 2. After a very good 2016 on the floor where he collected three Pro Tour titles, but couldn't really do it on TV, albeit he did play great stuff at the worlds when losing to Anderson, Benito hasn't been truly at his best this season. The run to the final of the German Open aside, the Dutchman hasn't been able to make it past a quarter final all season, had a relatively early exit at the UK Open to Alan Norris, and has dropped multiple first round games in the European Tour to further hurt his ranking money. It's generally thought that while his floor game is up to scratch, it's lack of TV quality that's holding him back, but if the floor game is wobbling a bit, that's a big concern.

Gurney is exactly the sort of player to capitalise from this. He finally made his breakthrough to the elite level this year, following his World Championship quarter final, he made the semi finals of the UK Open, and then broke the title duck in April with a good win in Barnsley against Kim Huybrechts. This seems to have taken the handbrake off - since then he's made three further finals, and has a current streak of eleven singles events where he's made at least the last 16.

The stats have the two lined up very, very closely - Gurney comes in as a favourite, but it's not even 52/48 on the raw numbers. On current form, I think that needs to be pushed up a bit, probably to the point where it's a no bet situation. If Gurney continues playing the way he is and if Benito can replicate some of what we know he can do this will easily be the match of the round.

Looking at the second round, Kist would be around a 3-1 dog against either opponent, but it's likely to be Anderson who's up. Anderson should be the favourite against either, in the high 80's percentage wise. I'm high on Anderson, but especially if he faces Gurney, it'll be very interesting to see what the books do in terms of pricing, especially if Anderson doesn't look completely convincing.

Matchplay pod 1 - two world champions and men down under

Michael van Gerwen (World rank: 1, FRH rank: 1, match odds: 1/16, tournament odds: 4/5) v Stephen Bunting (World rank: 22, FRH rank: 23, match odds: 12/1, tournament odds: 400/1)

First up we have the reigning and defending champion of just about every relevant title in darts, and the greatest player of all time, Michael van Gerwen, opening his defence in what looks to be a comfortable opponent in Stephen Bunting. van Gerwen's not played close to every event as he did last year, and hasn't looked as completely invincible as he did in 2016, but he's still managed to collect six ranking titles so far, including three European Tour wins, and also won the Premier League. There's still no question he's number 1, but other players are getting closer to his level in a lot of situations - but not in terms of pure unbeatable legs, his stat of 30% of legs won in twelve darts or less is so far ahead of anyone else, it's unbelievable (of this field, only Gary Anderson even has above 20%).

Bunting, meanwhile, continues to struggle and is having a quite awful fourth season in the PDC - the pressure ought to be off now as he's now not defending what he made in his debut season, but he's simply not playing anywhere near as well as we know he can. Following his first round World Championship exit to Darren Webster, he didn't even make the money at the UK Open (neither did van Gerwen, so at least he matches him on something), and has made one quarter final all season. Bunting, oddly, did win the last matchup between the two in Barnsley on the floor last year, but their last TV matchup, in the unranked 2016 Masters, van Gerwen won 10-1.

I think that we see something of the same here, Bunting would be outclassed even if he was to turn on his best form, the question is at such short odds, do we bet van Gerwen? The numbers reckon that based on how quickly they finish legs, van Gerwen wins this over 95% of the time - more than enough to justify a bet, it'd be very easy to go crazy and put lots of units on, but I'll be somewhat restrained and just look for a small gain with 2u van Gerwen 1/16.

Simon Whitlock (World rank: 17, FRH rank: 12, match odds: 4/6, tournament odds: 200/1) v Kyle Anderson (World rank: 31, FRH rank: 26, match odds: 11/8, tournament odds: 300/1)

An all-Australia clash is up next, with Simon Whitlock barely holding on to the number 16 seed (as you'll see, if the cutoff was the middle of last week, he wouldn't be seeded), against the occasionally brilliant Kyle Anderson. Whitlock has continued the resurgence in his career well into his fifth decade, picking up two UK Open qualifier wins, reaching the quarter final of the event itself, and another Pro Tour win the weekend after, but since late April his form has dipped quite a bit - first round losses on the floor to Matt Clark, Jon Worsley and Richard North, an early loss to Steve Hine, and he's bricked the first round of three European Tour events for no (official) ranking cash.

Can Anderson capitalise? Visa issues caused huge disruption to him late last season, but he's back now looking to make the breakthrough to push higher in the top 32 - he's going to be in a false position for a while as a result of no World Championship cash, so come the end of 2018 he'll be in a position to skyrocket, but here and now he's doing OK if not really making the inroads he is capable of. A semi final last weekend is the best he's done this year, but then ruined the weekend by losing in round 1 to Wes Newton the day after, so while the form may be inconsistent, the possibility of hitting peaks is there. Four quarter finals, including one in Europe, are keeping things ticking over, his whole dartsdatabase record is a steady string of four figure cashes.

My projections have this as a 57/43 matchup, which is very close to what the linemakers have it, so I won't be betting on this one - the questions are mainly can Whitlock halt what appears to be a downturn in form, and which Anderson will turn up. If one plays badly and the other doesn't, then that should decide things quite comprehensively, if they both play well, Whitlock should just have enough to grind it out over a longer format than on the floor, if both play badly it could be a trainwreck. That it's a matchup between World Cup partners also adds dynamics that further lean me to avoid things from a betting standpoint.

Briefly on round two, I have van Gerwen only not making the quarters one time out of eight, being more than a 90% favourite against either potential opponent, with Whitlock being the slightly tougher opponent, in that he should win about 9% of matches as opposed to 7% or so. If Bunting shocks the world then he would come in as an underdog against either as of the stats right now (around 30% versus Whitlock, 37% against Anderson), but if he were to do so that'd likely push his numbers up a chunk, although probably not enough to push him to favourite status.

Early warning - limited coverage of European Tour 11

Afternoon,

First few matchups of the Matchplay are being written up this afternoon, but I'm posting advance notice that there'll be next to no coverage of the European Tour event in Riesa in late September, as I'm on holiday. That said, said holiday is booked in, er, East Germany, so I'll be at the last 16 session. I have a table.

Matchplay first round writeups coming this weekend

Quick filler post to explain what I'll be posting in each writeup:

- I'll list their current (official) world ranking as of when I pulled the data (Wednesday), so it doesn't exactly reflect the seedings when the draw was made
- I'll list their current FRH ranking, as detailed in a post way back towards the start of the blog (i.e. money won starts decreasing gradually after a few months, rather than not at all and just disappearing after two years)
- I'll post a series of 100% stacked bar charts detailing some stats, namely frequency of finishing in four/five visits of fewer, losing average (these three stats are normalised so that the score of the lowest ranked player gets 10 points, the highest ranked player gets 30, and everything else scales linearly in between, so the most dominant stat you'll see here is someone having 75%), and something I call 2017 form points - in ranking events dating back to the worlds inclusive (so Phil doesn't get a zero), you score 1 for a last 16 finish, 2 for a quarter, 3 a semi, 5 for runner up and 8 for winning, with your best five scores counting (so the best you can get here is 40).
- Then I'll get into the analysis and any bets that I'd recommend.

Interesting to see that the big names from the States didn't make the end stages of the qualifiers over the last couple of days - would have thought one of Young, Butler, Part or Smith would have made it through, or at least made it through countback. Especially Smith, who I was glad to see played and has seemed to be the best of the bunch that have made TV regardless of code, but he was the only one of those four to even make a semi final. Pity really, would have been fun to see him challenge one of the big PDC names.