Matchplay day 4/5

Moderately disappointing first round. Both in terms of betting, where we dropped quarter of a unit, and in terms of interest, with the only seeds dropping out being two we bet against, and the one everyone was picking to go out. So we've got an awful lot of seed on seed action, and even one of the non-seeds has just got himself back into the top sixteen as a result of his win.

Anything we like today? Rydz is close to being worth a sniff, I think 5/2 is a little bit unkind as I'm seeing him as winning ever so slightly more than one in three, but he was so mediocre in the first round that I couldn't consider it. How much of that was Durrant pulling Rydz down to his level, I don't know. We're not going with it though. Humphries and Ratajski should be a nailbiter. Looks like the market has Krzysztof as the tiniest of favourites - this seems fine, I see it at around 55/45 in his favour as well. Maybe this'll be the first tie breaker we get. Hopefully. Clayton is extremely close to a bet. I've got Price as the favourite, but he's not quite 55%. 8/5 doesn't need that much win percentage for Jonny, but it's not quite there. Finally we've got van den Bergh/Chisnall. This, to me, seems exactly the same. I was thinking a Chisnall bet, again at 8/5, but the betting model does actually throw Dimitri out as a favourite. Again, it's small, not quite 55%. Can't quite pull the trigger.

May as well look at day 5 as well. I think we can go Jose again - 0.25u de Sousa 4/7. That needs 64% to break even, I see 75%. He's just that good right now. Anderson/Aspinall is priced as a flip in the market, but I think Nathan's just about good enough to fire - 0.25u Aspinall evs. I'm getting a shade over 60%, so for even money, that's worth it. Ando's a little bit more consistent, but Aspinall still scores more. Can't be wrong. van Gerwen/White looks just fine, it's priced with MvG winning 75-80% of the time, maybe it's a little less than that, but picking White to win this one with that small an edge seems suicidal to me. Finally it's Wright/Cullen, which looks just about right again. Joe's probably undervalued a little bit, I'm seeing just over 40%, but with him priced at 7/4 I need a bit more than that. I'd probably take it if we saw better than 2/1, but that's it.

Matchplay tips

RIP Andy Fordham

Alright, will go through in bracket order, briefly it's a shame that Suljovic withdrew, but you would surely think that whatever has actually caused him to withdraw was known about at the time he opted not to play the last Super Series? It may potentially have made somewhat of a difference in what people think they need to do, and alter the amount of pressure. Oh well, it's not going to affect anything.

Price/Wattimena - Got to think Jermaine is close to drawing dead in this one. The master computer does give him about a 20% shot, so he can't have been playing as badly as thought, so the near 1/5 that there is on Gerwyn is no value at all. Probably slightly less chance for Jermaine taking consistency into account, but nowhere near enough to consider a bet.

Clayton/van Duijvenbode - This is going to be fun, there's a lot of high quality matchups in round one but this is likely the pick of them. Dirk's well respected in the betting and is only 8/5, this seems like it should be Clayton at around 1/2. Close to value but not enough.

van den Bergh/Petersen - 8 months ago this would have been a great matchup, but Devon's had a pretty mediocre 2021, it's dropped off a cliff to the point where he's scoring less than 90 per turn, sandwiched between Ron Meulenkamp and Joe Murnan. 2/5 on Dimitri is really close to value, it should be 2/7.

Chisnall/van der Voort - Both of these have been fairly quiet in 2021, Dave obviously had a great worlds though, although Vincent's done enough to get here comfortably - looks fairly safe for the Grand Prix right now so it can't all be front loaded. Another one where the line looks good, it's exactly a Chisnall winning two in three, which give or take a percent or two is how I see it as well.

Wade/Humphries - In terms of overall quality, this is probably a top three game in the first round. James has been playing very solid stuff, but Luke's outplayed him this season - scoring a point and a half more per turn with greater consistency. I'm predicting that he'll avenge the UK Open final, just, with about a 56% chance. That's enough for me to go 0.25u Humphries 11/8.

Ratajski/Dolan - If the above match was top three, this is above it, only behind the Clayton game. We've talked about Brendan quite a bit, regular readers will know that we find him hugely underrated, but Ratajski's probably there as well, he's not got results in 2021, but nobody outside of Clayton, de Sousa, Price, van Gerwen and Wright is scoring more than Krzysztof in 2021. As such, I've got him at 56% to take it, which with him being slightly favoured results in no bet.

Cross/Smith - Probably quite a few people will be sniffing at Ross here at odds against, having won recently and with Cross seemingly been quiet. It seems fair enough, and I am very, very close to taking a small stab - the prediction model says it's a coinflip, so 7/5 would ordinarily be right on the margins, but Rob has a fair bit better consistency, which is enough to put me off. If there's money coming in on Rob and Smith drifts to better than 6/4, then I'll add something on, but I really don't see that happening.

Durrant/Rydz - This is a bit one sided in the market. Callan's nearly as short at 1/3. Is that fair? I think so. Glen was able to get a couple of wins, but is still a long way off the pace, nowhere near where he was at when he won the Premier League. I've got Rydz at 72% so yet again I think the line looks alright.

Wright/Noppert - Wright won the last title and is looking in decent form, fifth in scoring in 2021, but Danny continues to play solidly under the radar, with top ten level scoring. As such, he's got a great chance of repeating what he did last year where he dumped out a top three seed in the first round - 40% looks good enough to take 0.25u Noppert 11/4, that's more than a 10% difference between what I'm seeing and what the market is seeing, so we'll go for it. Would probably have talked about Noppert more but he's seeded in Pro Tours in such a way that he usually gets bad sections.

Cullen/Dobey - We're going to go for another bet here, and it's going to be on the underdog - 0.25u Dobey 11/10, now that he's crept into the field by finally winning a title, he's got to be full of confidence, whereas Joe, who's had a good season with two Pro Tour wins, seems to be slightly off the boil (although still playing extremely well). The two player's scoring ratings are basically identical, but Dobey's is weighted a bit more towards winning legs and is checking off in fifteen at a much higher rate than Cullen. Only de Sousa is doing that more often. That's enough for me.

Smith/Searle - Market has this fairly close. Searle's 11/8, Smith's 8/11. This feels extremely like the Cross/Smith game to me - the master computer says it's a flip, so Ryan's not quite long enough when I factor in that Michael has a touch bit better consistency, enough to put him about half a point up in overall scoring. Don't hate a Ryan bet, but it's not there for me.

de Sousa/Clemens - Jose's the best player in the world right now. Clemens, while scoring over 90 this season, hasn't done much in terms of results and is quite possibly not even the second best player in Germany right now. Jose should take this with minimum fuss, 0.5u de Sousa 1/3, I'm seeing better than 85%. This looks extremely safe.

van Gerwen/Heta - Much has been talked about Michael not having won a title yet this season, but he is not playing badly. Not at all. He's third in scoring. That said, Heta's less than a couple of points behind and playing well. I see slightly better than a 1 in 3 shot, kind of between that and 40%. We can get 3/1, so I'll take a punt, 0.25u Heta 3/1. Only needs to be right 25% of the time to break even. It should be more than that.

Gurney/White - Huge game for both players in the context of plenty of things, with both hovering around the top 16 and both not with a great Pro Tour record to the point where the Grand Prix would not be a banker if they don't get in through the OOM. Bookies can barely separate them, but I've got White at 58%, so 0.25u White evs, he's scoring a clear point higher and Daryl seemingly has next to no power game with less than 8% of won legs being in twelve or better.

Anderson/Bunting - Seems extremely close on paper. Most metrics between the two have very little separation and it looks like a genuine coinflip to me. Stephen's 11/8. That's close, especially given he has won a title recently. Wouldn't hate a bet on Bunting, but it's another game where I think it's too close to call and the market is just about in line enough. If Gary shortens, lay him.

Aspinall/King - Mervyn's quietly going about his business and is scoring well enough to be comfortably within the top 20 on that metric, scoring heavier than Aspinall whichever way you look at it, enough to give him a 60/40 edge. Nathan's only really favourite on name value, so 0.25u King 11/8, that might be the best bet of the round.

I'm off to put these on, good luck everyone.

Super Series 5 done

Pretty interesting set of events. A bit disappointing on the betting front, notably me switching off Dolan for day 3 because of a draw change and the de Sousa missing eight championship darts, but that was quite a list of winners. Bunting for the first time since forever and Dobey for the first time ever, forcing their way into the Matchplay field at the expense of Razma (who bricked all four events) and Wattimena (who bricked three and made one board final), then Ross Smith nicked a first title, before a pretty chalky fourth event saw Wright defeat van Gerwen to keep MvG without a title in 2021.

Also had quite a few European Tour qualifiers - quite a few big names in from there, and quite a few missing out on all of them. Cross and Whitlock made it through all three, as did Florian Hempel (who played alright on the Super Series as a whole, picking up three grand, being by far the lowest ranked player to cash all four events) and Keane Barry, who'll surely do very well from getting a bunch of stage experience with crowds. No Chisnall for any of them is quite the surprise.

So the Matchplay field is complete - I'll chuck out some betting tips nearer the time, although at a first glance nothing jumped out as huge value. Biggest name to miss out was obviously Whitlock, but there's quite a few big names not there. Wattimena dropped out as mentioned, but there's no Lewis, no de Zwaan, no Hughes, Barney couldn't work his way in, Beaton misses out for the first time since forever... there's a lot of new faces.

New FRH rankings (incorporates minimum Matchplay cash, without this move Whitlock up three places):

1 Gerwyn Price

2 Michael van Gerwen

3 Peter Wright

4 James Wade

5 Gary Anderson

6 Jose de Sousa

7 Dimitri van den Bergh

8 Dave Chisnall

9 Michael Smith

10 Joe Cullen

11 Jonny Clayton (UP 1)

12 Dirk van Duijvenbode (DOWN 1)

13 Krzysztof Ratajski

14 Nathan Aspinall

15 Stephen Bunting (UP 1)

16 Devon Petersen (UP 3)

17 Mervyn King (NEW)

18 Daryl Gurney

19 Simon Whitlock (DOWN 4)

20 Glen Durrant (DOWN 3)

Rob Cross is out of there. Dobey is back into the top 30 after his title, while Smith is one place outside of the top 32, a first round win over Cross (which doesn't seem an unreasonable ask to be honest, although Cross is correctly the favourite) will get him there. Petersen jumping that much is more down to the struggles of Whitlock and Durrant to be honest. Elsewhere, Dolan's final moves him to #26, a good series from Scott Mitchell gets him into the top 70, while surprise package Chas Barstow is one place outside the top 100. Also at some point in the last month, Corey Cadby finally dropped off the rankings completely. How good it would be to see him back, even if not firing completely on all cylinders.

Scanning through the list of players, it's still the "big three" with de Sousa and Clayton that make up the top five in scoring, but after that there's still some great each way value to be had in the Pro Tours. The next two down are Ratajski and Humphries, Krzysztof's had a bit of a quiet 2021 and is dropping to around 40/1, which is probably worth a punt these days, Luke's 50/1 generally. Noppert's up into the top ten and is frequently triple digits. Dobey's up to tenth as well but may have lost some of the value having binked just this past week. Then we've got some players like Heta, Smith, Dolan, van Duijvenbode, Cross, King and Searle, all of whom may be worth the shot on any given tournament. Schindler seems to remain an auto punt, as does Huybrechts, but I'll chuck out another name - James Wilson is scoring over 92 this season. That's sandwiching him between White, Aspinall, Rydz and Ross Smith, which isn't bad company at all (right behind those five is Ando as well). He's somewhat of a forgotten man but if he's got over some injury issues (I think he had injury issues at least) and is back to his best where he was pushing towards the top 32, then I don't think it's unreasonable to look at a potential semi final run from him at some point.

I'm going to check out what's happening outside the PDC - looks like there's been some CDC action this weekend, but take a quick look at the Grand Prix race. Normally you'd only see a couple of changes between the Matchplay and Grand Prix in terms of field, but right now, Gurney is out, Petersen is out (and not particularly close on the Pro Tour rankings, I guess the Euro Tour he binked drops off before the cutoff?), White's only safe by a couple of grand, Kleermaker and Labanauskas are provisionally in, while Barney's less than a grand away. That might be a surprisingly interesting race to follow. May all come down to when they schedule remaining Euro Tours?

Actual darts!

Good to see the Challenge Tour underway. Really pleased to see Matt Campbell get most of the cake, with the amount of bullshit that Jeff Smith's had to go through because lol Canada, it'd not be unreasonable to think he might give it a miss, but he won two events and did decently in another, so fair play. Puts him in a great spot to make the worlds, and also to perhaps grab a tour card. Hopefully he can nick a Euro Tour spot tomorrow, with some of the other winners rushing straight to Coventry (Doets has gone, as have both of the Rodriguezes) maybe he can do it.

And we do have the Euro Tour back. Hungary and Gibraltar so far, you might have thought they could have got one or more on in August, but it is what it is. They might hold August for more Pro Tour events. Hungary's irritatingly timed for associates with it being on the same weekend as the Challenge Tour (both streams) and the Dutch Open, so maybe they could have looked to do that a little earlier, but I don't know what the venue has in terms of availability. Maybe they announce a couple to take place before then, but I doubt it. There's a big hole in October where they can do some, maybe they just have to have the European Championship held a fair bit later than usual, although the Grand Slam is yet to be scheduled. A midweek Euro Tour would be a sexy option, there's lots of large cities in the Rhine/Ruhr region where they could host with just a day's break between the two and minimal logistical problems.

We do finally have a list of entries for the Super Series. Let's look for value. Here's the seedings as we expect them to be, seems like a full field except for no Suljovic:

1-32-16-17: Cullen, Bunting, Cross, Chisnall

8-25-9-24: Wade, R Smith, Petersen, Rydz

4-29-13-20: van Gerwen, Kleermaker, Noppert, Clemens

5-28-12-21: Price, Wattimena, Heta, Humphries

2-31-15-18: de Sousa, Razma, Aspinall, Gurney

7-26-10-23: Clayton, Searle, Ratajski, King

3-30-14-19: Wright, Joyce, Dolan, White

6-27-11-22: M Smith, van den Bergh, van Duijvenbode, van der Voort

First thing we want to do is to look at the scary players and see if there's any bunching. These are usually the players that are going to be short prices, too short for each way value. de Sousa and Clayton are 1/2 and in the same quarter. Price, van Gerwen and Humphries are 3-4-5 and all in the same quarter. We may still consider Humphries given we can usually get at least 50/1 (we actually can), but having to come through potentially both Price and van Gerwen, as well as Heta on his board, means we'll probably look elsewhere.

So basically we're looking in quarters 1 and 4 for our value punt. We'll just scroll down the scoring to date this year after those first five. Wright is next and doesn't have a bad section, but is going to be too short. Ratajski has potential, but getting through Clayton and de Sousa, along with King being a dangerous floater on his board, means we may go elsewhere. Next is Cullen, who's a decent punt on paper, but has become too short. 25/1 was fine before he binked in the last Super Series, but he's too short now. Looking at Betfair right now, he's 12/1 fifth favourite behind the "big three", and Clayton/de Sousa. Value's gone. Then we have three players from quarter four - Smith (Michael), van Duijvenbode and Dolan. I don't mind the very bottom eighth, and we can get 25/1 on either of the first two, but I think Dirk's probably shortened a bit too much. Smith may be being slept on though, he does have a bink and a final, so that's worth looking at. Dolan however may be better at 66's though. It's actually shorter than White, and I don't think it's that outrageous to say he's value there. Then we've got Heta, who runs into the same problem as board mate Humphries. Both are 50/1, but I'd much rather take Dolan than either. Continuing to scroll, van den Bergh is too short to be value, King would be a tempter at 80/1 if he wouldn't likely have to come through three top top players to get paid on, White is the longest I've seen him in a while, but for good reason as he's just not getting results (and clearly I'm taking Dolan from that board). Cross is next at 40/1, but on that board is Chisnall, who's only two places lower and at 50/1, which is surely better. Noppert sandwiches those two but is in the MvG/Price section, although 100/1 is well worth looking at if he shifts at all - if he were to drop to Dolan's spot, we should take a look. We'll keep scrolling, Wade's the first player we see from boards 3/4, 33/1 is probably alright. Dobey's next up, but unseeded, 80/1 seems OK, but it all depends on where he drops, Rydz is to follow, and at 100/1 can't be too bad value.

As such, I think I'm going to go for a plan of attack of Michael Smith, Brendan Dolan, James Wade and Callan Rydz. We need to look for dangerous unseeded players, some of which may be worth a look in their own right. Schindler's doing better numbers than Aspinall and we can get 250/1 and is probably worth backing if he avoids a really awful draw. Soutar's dropped back to 150/1 after the initial hype. Kim Huybrechts is 200/1 and we know he can win these. Hopp's not doing too badly but for some reason isn't quoted. Ross Smith 150/1 anyone?

Matchplay race etc

So with a rush of Euro 2020 related stuff to look at, I didn't get chance to post up anything here to walk through what I'd do to find each way value. Which is a shame, as I picked out Cullen at 25/1 to bink the first event, which was a nice little pick up. That really wasn't too difficult just looking at the draw - the top quarter seemed much, much less stacked compared to the others - I took Wade as well at 33/1 (who made the quarters, so a profit was locked in at that stage) as well as micro punts on Rydz and Boulton as insurance. Betfair's each way terms are 1/4 top four, so you just need a bit of decent distribution of the elite players to find some good spots. Second quarter pulled together van Gerwen and Wright, third quarter had de Sousa, van Duijvenbode, Clayton and Ratajski, so the current top two in points per turn in 2021, as well as numbers 7 and 9, while the bottom quarter accounted for the remainder of the top ten in Smith, Wright and Humphries. With just Cullen from the top ten in the top quarter, that seemed easy enough. You just need to look after the draw to make sure that anyone you see doesn't hit a dangerous unseeded floater like a Gary Anderson, Raymond van Barneveld, or even someone like Chris Dobey, Martin Schindler or Alan Soutar (if you're not targeting these players yourself given the correct draw, although at least in the case of the Scottish guys you've not had good value on Anderson for years and the market overcorrected on Soutar hugely)

Plenty of other great value spots if you just ignore the big names and look for players who are undervalued. That you can still get Callan Rydz at 150/1 when he has course and distance this year is unreal. Naturally with the last day being an early start, I didn't actually get on during the final day, so some value was left on the board with him and Humphries, who you can typically get at at least 50/1 if not longer. Just looking through the ratings I have for points per turn - the top 3 (de Sousa, Clayton, Price) are all on 95, but there's a lot of players on 92+ that are worth investigating - Ratajski's been drifting enough that he's now available at 50/1, which is quite absurd. Dolan, Heta, King and Noppert are all on 93 and usually offer a decent price, then on 92 you've got the likes of Dobey, Rydz and Schindler who all seem capable. Schindler in particular you can get 250/1 on usually, which is quite absurd. He's playing so well and is incredibly under the radar.

Good to see that there's ranked WDF stuff going on - unfortunately getting any useful statistics out of New Zealand is impossible, so there's nothing to add to the database at the moment.

New FRH rankings:

1 Gerwyn Price

2 Michael van Gerwen

3 Peter Wright

4 James Wade

5 Gary Anderson

6 Jose de Sousa

7 Dimitri van den Bergh

8 Dave Chisnall

9 Michael Smith

10 Joe Cullen

11 Dirk van Duijvenbode (UP 3)

12 Jonny Clayton (UP 1)

13 Krzysztof Ratajski (DOWN 2)

14 Nathan Aspinall (DOWN 2)

15 Simon Whitlock (UP 2)

16 Stephen Bunting (UP 3)

17 Glen Durrant (DOWN 2)

18 Daryl Gurney

19 Devon Petersen (UP 1)

20 Rob Cross (DOWN 4)

No change in the top 10 despite JdS binking two titles - he's that far behind Anderson. Worlds money being so top heavy is a huge advantage, although Jose's now within 40k. Wright is within 10k of van Gerwen, although it's hard to tell who's deteriorating quickest. Durrant's out of the top 16 after bricking the first three events and withdrawing from the fourth, and Cross was momentarily out of the top 20 going into the last event, but held on from King for now.

Lower down, Humphries' final gets him into the top 25 above Suljovic, Searle (another player I should list in the value section at just under 92 for the season) holds a top 30 spot with his final. Heta is one spot outside of the top 30. Lewis having a decent run at a few events this week puts a few points on the board but he still remains outside the top 32. Also, right at the bottom, in less than two weeks we'll see Corey Cadby finally drop off the list. Shame.

So, what of the Matchplay race? We've got four events left, and looking at the race table for the seeds, I think everything pertinent has been decided from 11 up - Chisnall and DvdB are very close for 8/9 but that doesn't affect the draw at all. 13-15 are Ratajski/Gurney/Cullen and are all within 2k of each other, and Durrant's only about 10k above them, that's going to be a big one as getting Wade as opposed to getting Wright/van Gerwen is a big bonus. But who's going to get in on the Pro Tour?

I've taken this off dartsrankings.com, any errors here are mine for not double checking their work. Experience tells us that we should think that Searle upwards are going to be safe. Of course, it's not mathematical, but for Searle to drop out it'd need Wattimena to play solidly enough (which is questionable - he's not even got 10k in the 16 Pro Tours so far this season, and is scoring under 90 in 2021), and then two below him to put together either a deep run or multiple solid runs of a board final or better. And that's assuming Searle adds nothing, Ryan's added on 3k in every series as a bare minimum. Chasing 7k rather than 4k in a four-Pro Tour series is a hugely different equation.

So can anyone push in? Let's look at the average scoring of everyone in that 15-26 bracket. Nobody's above 92. Barney, Lennon and Darius are on 91. Bunting and Razma are just below them separated by just a hundredth of a point. Boulton, Meulenkamp and Hughes are all over 90, while Wattimena, O'Connor and Hunt are all on 89. Of those not mentioned, Kleermaker is deceptively low down at 87 - partially fuelled by quite a few legs off and a pretty bad losing average down under 85. Boulton, for example, is scoring higher overall than Martijn is doing when he's winning. Kleermaker making it would be a great redemption story from when he got screwed out of the worlds, but I really don't see it happening on form, and nobody just below, with the possible exception of Barney, is really doing anything that makes me think they can hit a final and force their way through. That Barney's actually done it this season is a bit of a factor, although given he's only actually reached his board final twice outside of his win, and he only won one of those, is it too early to say that title was a fluke?

Anyone else further down that could bink one? Whitlock's the next man down, and could, but he's not scoring well enough for me. Hopp's shown some signs and is scoring well enough, but probably put himself out of contention by not showing up this week. Adie would be the obvious choice for a long shot, he's only down 6k, had a good series this time and scoring of 91 isn't terrible. Huybrechts if anything is scoring better, but looks a touch down on where he was at the back end of 2020, and just isn't getting results. I think the last realistic name is Chris Dobey, he certainly has the scoring being in the top 20 in 2021, but down over 8k on Razma, you think he really has to bink - which is something he's never done.

I suppose the most exciting thing that I've seen is that they're adding another day onto the next Super Series to hold some Euro Tour qualifiers. We need to get some of these on, and I think there's enough places right now that it's viable to do so. It's my betting bread and butter, so sooner rather than later please? As mentioned earlier, front loading all the Pro Tours (20 before the Matchplay) should allow them plenty of opportunity to have free weekends to hold these.

Not sure when I'll be back - I may pop down some notes on the Euro Challenge Tour, which is something I'll definitely be paying attention to as it could give us very good reads for said Euro Tour events. Next Super Series is straight after, so I'll have to be quick I guess.

Catch up

Been a pretty long time since a post, so what's gone on since then?

I've updated the second/third division darts page following Super Series 3. Barely any games given the number of players that chose to give it a miss, nothing to see here. Oddly more games played in division three than two.

They've announced details of the Challenge Tour and Development Tour. It's a shame they've had to split it into two as they have done, as that'll massively dilute the quality of the fields, but I'm not sure what else they could realistically do, and it at least gives certainty to players below the Pro Tour level as to what sort of PDC darts they can expect to get in. Six events in three days is a tad ambitious, but with the field size effectively halved, I think they can get away with it.

Still nothing on the European Tour. At this stage, there's realistically nothing before the Matchplay going to happen, but it would be nice if they could tentatively schedule something. I can understand them not wanting to play hokey-cokey with moving events around, but it is a little bit irritating. For this reason, I've not added any of the German Superleague stats to the database - first, I'm still undecided as to the overall quality (it dragged Clemens' stats down a bunch last season), second, by the time I can actually use it for anything useful (which would be to get a line on domestic European Tour qualifiers), the data is going to be somewhat stale.

Good news is that we've got some WDF stuff starting soon. It's mostly Oceanic stuff through until the Dutch Open, but ranked events is a big bonus. After that though, there's at least enough scheduled for things to really pick up - October in particular looks packed with stuff from round here. Hopefully sanity will have prevailed by that stage.

I've been watching a few Youtube videos from someone who makes a living trading on Betfair, and was thinking of chucking down some thoughts on if there's anyone that we can make speculative punts on in order to lay back later in the worlds, but I don't think I will. Simply, there's no liquidity in the market. That said, checking some of what has been matched, if you're the punter who got MvG at 17.5 or Wright at 80 (!), then good job. It's all very well me thinking that Keane Barry's got the quality to bink something and shorten, but if there's only four quid available at a price that's shorter than I can get on the sportsbook, then going on the exchange for the exchange's sake seems like a pointless play. If I want to trade it, I want to pick someone who has the capability of binking something big, or at least going extremely deep, which will shift the public's perception enough that the price plummets. All the value in the usual suspects of de Sousa and Clayton has long gone. Maybe someone like a Cullen (50/1) or Heta (80/1 on Boyles, 66/1 elsewhere) has a chance, but how much damage would they have to do in a major to shift the price down heavily enough before the off that it's worth it? Similar with Humphries, van Duijvenbode, but they're even shorter right now. Dolan at 250/1 outside of the exchange looks tempting, as does Noppert, but what would they need to do to drive the price down to double digits?

What I will do on a similar subject though is revisit the thought process that goes through looking for Players Championship each way value. The next event runs Monday to Thursday, so I can have a look on the weekend before and that should hopefully give plenty of time to walk through a plan of attack.

Super Series 3

OK, well that was a thing - four different winners in de Sousa, Smith, DvD and DvdB, but nobody you wouldn't expect to bink. That said, there were plenty of people making surprising runs in the absence of quite a lot of big players (and the biggest player there doing next to nothing, winning his board just once and getting some shock wins). If I scroll up from the bottom of the rankings, we had Berry van Peer making a semi final. Multiple Dutch associates getting paid every day in Christian Kist, Kevin Doets and Luc Peters. Aaron fucking Beeney made a semi final. Alan Tabern made a quarter. Krzysztof Kcuik made a semi. Robert Thornton made a semi and made the board final every single day. Ritchie Edhouse made a quarter. Scott Mitchell made two. Rowby John Rodriguez won three boards. Kleermaker made a final. Ross Smith made a final. Fun times for everyone, pity that with real life I didn't have the time to really put in to exploiting each way value, but if you look at the finalists, Humphries and DvD wouldn't have offered value, Kleermaker wouldn't have been on the radar, so that leaves Ross Smith, who's always been in the back of our minds but hasn't really done anything to put himself into the true value range given the prices we're usually quoted.

A few people didn't have great weeks - van Gerwen seems the obvious one, especially considering the players he lost to, but there's several in and around the fringes of the top 16 in the FRH rankings that really didn't do much of anything. Ian White in particular continues to look way, way off where he was recently, and it's a fun question as to who's now the best player in Stoke given how much Lewis has dropped off recently.

In terms of year to date scoring, it's de Sousa who's leading the way right now, just ahead of Clayton and Price in that order, but all are separated by less than a sixth of a point. Cullen and Ratajski round out the top five, just ahead of Humphries - van Gerwen and Wright aren't even in the top six, while the finalists in PC12 round out the top 10. Perhaps it's a surprise, after mentioning White in the previous paragraph, that he's still in the top 16. But here's some fun names to throw out who are in the top 32 of scoring - Scott Mitchell is up there at 23, sandwiched by two Premier League players. Jason Lowe is still hanging around. Schindler's up there (note that I've not added any of the Superleague into the stats yet, and I'm still uncertain as to how much I will add in). Lennon is still up there. Note that Soutar isn't any more.

New FRH rankings:

1 Gerwyn Price

2 Michael van Gerwen (UP 1)

3 Peter Wright (DOWN 1)

4 James Wade

5 Gary Anderson

6 Jose de Sousa

7 Dimitri van den Bergh

8 Dave Chisnall

9 Michael Smith

10 Joe Cullen

11 Krzysztof Ratajski (UP 1)

12 Nathan Aspinall (DOWN 1)

13 Jonny Clayton

14 Dirk van Duijvenbode (UP 4)

15 Glen Durrant (DOWN 1)

16 Rob Cross (DOWN 1)

17 Simon Whitlock (DOWN 1)

18 Daryl Gurney (DOWN 1)

19 Stephen Bunting (UP 1)

20 Devon Petersen (NEW)

Ian White's gone. Not even #21, King's above him. van Gerwen and Wright are basically neck and neck still. Ratajski actually scored less than Aspinall this week but clearly has less degradation on his ranking money right now. van Duijvenbode making two finals is enough to see him jump a lot, and it's that close that less than 25,000 points separate Cullen from Durrant. Petersen only jumps in by 25 points over King. Lower down, Humphries didn't really climb but did solidify his top 30 place, Adrian Lewis is out of the top 32 and plummeting, Ross Smith is one place outside the top 40 (currently propped up by Labanauskas who had a mare of a week), while Kleermaker hits the top 50, which finally sees Hendo depart.

They've announced another two sets of Super Series before the Matchplay. I like this idea - front load as many of the Players Championship events as you can to get the floor tournaments where you're not having fans out of the way, and then try to get some semblance of a Euro Tour in afterwards. This is kind of what Porter is alluding to - I do wonder if he could have had the second set of events have one day run two lots of Euro Tour qualifiers for a first two events in, say, Germany to be scheduled - you could then book one venue for ET1 with the qualifiers already worked out, then have Tuesday/Wednesday be Pro Tour events, Thursday be the normal associate/home nation qualifiers, then have ET2 straight after. It might make it an easier sell for the bigger names to travel if you know you can block book a week+ and know you're going to get 4k prize money minimum (if you are a Euro Tour seed) and be able to add Pro Tour money in between. We'll see, although I can understand the reluctance to hold a qualifier while there's still uncertainty as to what they're holding. That said, with the amount of boards they have, it wouldn't be too tough to tack on the tour card holders qualifier for the first event at the end of the series?

Not sure when I'll be back again, it's been a big break since the last post, and there is nothing ranked until mid-June. One thing I will say though - it's really, really hard to be interested in this seniors event that's doing the round when there's at least five players who, were it not for being ineligible for being tour card holders, who'd smack the whole field up from a great height. Does anyone really think that any one of Wright, Anderson, Whitlock, King or White wouldn't smash the field?