Hungary draw thoughts

Feel sad for Noppert, perfectly understandable he's withdrawn, as one of the few players that remain in our Betting Circle of Trust, it's a potential missed opportunity but darts takes a back seat at this sort of time. Hope we see him back for Gibraltar. Also a shame that, given they did the home nations qual in advance, we've got a first round bye to O'Connor, but hey! The European Tour is back! Let's analyse!

Cullen v Nentjes/de Vos - Geert on Geert violence! You love to see it. Seems a pretty close one on paper, Nentjes looks like he has the slight edge, 10/11 for him would appear to be a fair line. Joe's got to be reasonably happy with this draw. If he were to face Nentjes, he'd be an easy 2-1 favourite.

Cross v Strbik/Smith - Rob got the last minute seed callup, and has a particularly tricky opponent - assuming Ross Smith gets through Peter Strbik. We don't know a great deal about Peter, looks to be a Euro Tour debut, no signs of any form anywhere. Got to think Ross cruises through, and from there, it's a dead coin flip.

Wade v O'Connor - Can go straight to round two here. Willie's been a bit quiet this season, but it's a decent opportunity here, nick this one, and it's not unreasonable - Wade's 65/35 - and he's in with a very good shot of getting to a major. James probably thinking this to be a middle of the road draw, sounds about right.

Petersen v Humphries/Razma - Luke probably the strongest player in the first round, so it's a bit unfortunate for Madars to get this draw, especially given the fuck up in communication re: the World Cup "yeah, Latvia are in, oh, wait". Luke a bit stronger than a 2-1 favourite, and he'd be about the same against Devon, so I guess Petersen is hoping for Razma to pull the upset?

van Gerwen v van der Voort/Gurney - Nice looking section here. First round game seems too close to call, seem to have comparable form, and you'd think that both would be treating this as a final. You'll probably get tips to go against MvG in round two, but it's all going to depend on the price. Michael should still win this two times out of three.

Dolan v Soutar/Rucska - Was an interesting interview with Jozsef on the Weekly Dartscast this morning, and he got the draw he wanted. Don't think Alan's quite the same player from when they played previously, and as such should advance easily enough. Dolan in round two should be a great match up, definitely excited to see this one, Brendan ought to have a 60/40 edge there.

Price v Veenstra/Brown - Another exciting debut here, this time for Richard Veenstra, and it's a decent test against Keegan Brown. We've got a bit on Veenstra from the Challenge Tour, pity he has to miss weekend two (maybe if he loses he can dive into events 9-12?), and Keegan probably deserves to be maybe a 60/40 favourite? Price should be extremely comfortable in round two, something like a 4-1 favourite.

Heta v Whitlock/Webster - Boy, this first round match would have been pretty spicy five years ago when Webster was having his second wind, now maybe not so much, he's declined a fair bit while Simon's not quite at the same level but certainly hasn't had the same amount of dropoff. 70/30 for Simon. Round two, if Whitlock does win, has a lot of automatic story, Damon should have the edge, but not by a huge amount, approaching 60/40.

de Sousa v Vegso/Murnan - We've seen Janos a couple of times previously and he's looked alright, albeit not in the sort of form which we think will cause Joe serious problems. Murnan's been throwing at a 90 clip all season and should be a solid favourite. Against de Sousa, not so much, that's another 4-1 type of match.

Aspinall v Lewis/Brooks - Decent opportunity for Adrian here, who needs the ranking points for multiple reasons. Bradley managed to pick up a Development Tour and should be full of confidence, but Adrian's been playing substantially better. Bradley's got next to no twelve darters and can't finish in fifteen anywhere near often enough. Adie should be something like 1/4, and actually a slight favourite against Nathan.

Clayton v Krcmar/Gawlas - This is a real interesting first round game. Krcmar has been around for ages and looked really good in the time where he's taken steel tip seriously, whereas Gawlas is at the other end of his career, showing flashes but still fairly inconsistent. Actually seems quite close on paper, Krcmar has the edge but it's not by much at all. 55/45. Clayton ought to take the next round three times out of four, so a strong favourite as you'd expect, but not automatic.

Ratajski v Jagica/Williams - Another domestic qualifier I don't know anything about. Not on dartsdatabase. Complete random. Williams has looked a fair bit better than I thought he would do this season, and is probably not drawing dead against Krzysztof - it'd be a big ask, but one in three doesn't seem unreasonable?

Wright v Hempel/Jones - Jake really seems to mostly be making up the numbers on tour having won his tour card, having a huge string of first round defeats and mediocre scoring. Shame, maybe he's more of a second year guy, but he is here, albeit going to be a huge dog to Florian, who should take this more than three times out of four. Wright ought not to have huge trouble, but I can't see this being priced as the 2/5 that I think it ought to be, especially if Florian gets dragged down to Jake's level, so could be a bit of an underdog shot on Saturday?

Suljovic v Engstrom/Borland - Johan's been around for a while, hasn't looked great this year. Borland should have no trouble. Suljovic we're a bit clueless on, as he's been absent for so long, so maybe there's a fair bit of rust that needs shaking off? I don't see Mensur as much better than 60/40 in any case, so this could be one to monitor.

Smith v Beaton/Michael - Steve could do with picking up cash here. Michael much the same, albeit for different reasons. Steve should be too strong, but John's doing enough to have a bit more than a one in three shot. Michael on the other hand just needs to do his job and he should reach the last sixteen, Steve would have a bit more than a one in four chance, but not by much.

van Duijvenbode v Lovely/Barry - Big shot for Keane here, Lovely got through the associate qualifier but hasn't done much on the Challenge Tour and just plodded at low-mid eighties in orthodox averages. No trouble for Keane. Keane against Dirk is incredibly interesting, Dirk's got somewhere between a 60% and a two in three chance, but that should have great pace and be a preview of late round major matches for years to come.

Bets will be up once lines are posted. Can only see outrights at this stage.

So what's happened in August?

RIP Kyle Anderson is the main thing. Incredibly sad, made a great impression on the game but was unfortunately just on the wrong side of a couple of razor thin matches which could easily have seen him break into the big time. He'll be missed, had plenty of time to return later on after his returning his card but we'll never know.

Womens' Series was cancelled. Can't say I blame the PDC, the take-up on the continent was incredibly poor and they didn't really have too much of a choice in the matter. At least they are keeping the options open in terms of events by extending the two in the UK, but this has got to be disappointing for them.

Last Super Series was a bit chalky. Searle the only real surprise, and even then he already had course and distance and wasn't too far off the top players. Price and Wright will claim the other two and the plaudits, but van Gerwen actually had the highest scoring, by nearly two clear points. Probably getting close to the stage where we can freely back him for value. Schindler again put up some great performances, averaging in the top 10. We're backing him each way until further notice.

UK Challenge Tour was all about Jim Williams and Adam Smith-Neale. Jim's been fine for quite some time, but it's great to see Adam back throwing near his best after the injury issue god knows how long ago now. Outside of them, it was all Scotland, everyone binking doing fine, but generally the overall standard was a bit hit and miss. Quite a lot of players getting to the latter stages but not scoring brilliantly once there. Second weekend for both starts on Friday, which is going to be a huge weekend with the European Tour back as well.

It's also incredibly frustrating that they've not been able to find a time or venue to play a third European Tour event. That they only have half the events compared to last year is quite ridiculous, albeit 99% it's going to be outside of the PDC's hands. Maybe if they binned off the Nordic World Series event and the World Series finals, they could have found the time? The European Championship also, as a result, has the huge potential to be a joke - albeit one that could have betting opportunities.

Development Tour was super fun. Rusty-Jake was killing it. Almost certainly winning young player of the year here. Dom Taylor had a great weekend in the UK, although playing nowhere near the same standard. Zonneveld, Brooks, Doets, van Duivenbode, Kay, Colley and Springer amongst others all outperformed Dom over a decent sample size, but hey, it's a results business.

I'll be back Thursday evening for Euro Tour bets. It's been a while.

I'm still here, honest

I was going to post quickly after PC 21-23, but got distracted with a few real life things which put me off. I was then going to post after the Challenge Tour, but then thought "well they'll surely be posting something about the Euro Tour/Euro Championship soon", so I'll wait for that. Then it's close enough to the Development Tour, so I'll wait for that. So what I'll do early next week is do an uberpost collating a bunch of thoughts about what's happened in August and what's going on soon, before we get into the countdown of the European Tour. It's still incredibly disappointing that it looks in all likelihood we're only going to have two events on there - how that works with the European Championship, which I assume is happening given it's been listed as a qualifying event for the Grand Slam, who knows. Maybe they could take the top 16 from the two events and then invite the top player from each country not yet qualified to get a big range of players?

I will post up new FRH rankings as they're long overdue:

1 Gerwyn Price

2 Peter Wright

3 Michael van Gerwen

4 James Wade

5 Dimitri van den Bergh

6 Gary Anderson

7 Jose de Sousa

8 Dave Chisnall

9 Michael Smith

10 Krzysztof Ratajski

11 Joe Cullen

12 Jonny Clayton

13 Dirk van Duijvenbode

14 Nathan Aspinall

15 Stephen Bunting

16 Devon Petersen

17 Mervyn King

18 Simon Whitlock

19 Daryl Gurney

20 Ian White (NEW)

Only change is White dumping Durrant out of the top 20, but with Humphries now less than 2500 points behind him in 22nd, White is surely back out again son. Searle is up to 27 after his second bink. van Gerwen is nearly as close to Wade as he is Wright, which might surprise you, while Dimitri and Gary are fairly close.

Matchplay aftermath

It's in the books, congrats to Peter, Dimitri couldn't quite retain but has got to be somewhat happy with the way he's played, moving himself out of the trickier seeds and into the nice 4/5 spot. The upshot of the final is that Wright's now got the second highest scoring of the season (de Sousa is still higher), and Dimitri sits nicely in seventh behind the "big three", de Sousa, Clayton and the ever impressive Ratajski.

New FRH rankings:

1 Gerwyn Price

2 Peter Wright (UP 1)

3 Michael van Gerwen (DOWN 1)

4 James Wade

5 Dimitri van den Bergh (UP 2)

6 Gary Anderson (DOWN 1)

7 Jose de Sousa (DOWN 1)

8 Dave Chisnall

9 Michael Smith

10 Krzysztof Ratajski (UP 3)

11 Joe Cullen (DOWN 1)

12 Jonny Clayton (DOWN 1)

13 Dirk van Duijvenbode (DOWN 1)

14 Nathan Aspinall

15 Stephen Bunting

16 Devon Petersen

17 Mervyn King

18 Simon Whitlock (UP 1)

19 Daryl Gurney (DOWN 1)

20 Glen Durrant

Yes, oddly, Whitlock moves up a spot above Gurney, despite not playing in the event and Gurney picked up first round prize money. Weird how that works but it is what it is. The big mover lower down was obviously Callan Rydz who hits number 33, but now the hard work comes with the big names just above him.

Dropped a quarter of a unit betting wise. As mentioned previously, there wasn't too much value at all after the first round, especially given how chalky the first round was - I'd still take de Sousa again, only reason there was value there was people still don't realise just how good he is, and would obviously take Aspinall again over Anderson, as people still think he's an elite player, rather than someone who, this season, isn't even in the top 25 of scoring. No real qualms with any of the first round bets - if offered the same odds today I probably wouldn't take Noppert over Wright (it's still close), and I might tone down the Heta sizing a bit, but would still go Dobey over Cullen at odds against.

We're back on for another Super Series from Monday - worryingly, there's an extra event slotted in rather than further European Tour qualifiers. Quite how we're likely to get less Euro Tours this season than last is just a statement on how quite mad governments are nowadays - there should have been plenty of time to plan more than three events. That said, there simply isn't the calendar space, and that's the real issue. I've got to assume they go with ET3 on the weekend after the Grand Prix. There's no other space to put it. But what on earth do they do with the European Championship? Doing it on Euro Tour money was already a joke last year, but with even less events? That's not going to be pretty in the slightest. Then again, they're still holding the World Series of Darts finals. Madness.

Matchplay final - still no bets

Think the line's a little bit harsh on Dimitri, but nowhere near enough to bet. At a best price that I can see that's no better than 6/4 (oddschecker is doing some strange stuff), I'd need Dimitri to be a favourite. But he's not, I'm seeing 55/45 for Wright. As such, maybe the line should be a little bit tighter, but it's nowhere near enough edge to consider a bet on this one.

Congrats to Lourence Ilagan, who's managed to bink the Phillipines qualifier and will be back at the worlds next winter. Always good to see players from that region, it's just a shame that when they were starting to really get the opportunities to play more competitive darts via the Asian Tour, they've kind of taken a step back, but we'll see how this one goes.

Matchplay semis - we still have no bets

This is kind of what I thought we would see given that there were no bets in the quarter finals, and additionally that there were just the two bets in the second round - and the factors that I think gave us the bets in the second round (people still not realising quite how good de Sousa is, and people still thinking Anderson is better than he is) went away.

That said, Ratajski's fairly close to a punt. Very, very close. I don't hate it if you want to go with it at 2/1 - I'm seeing Ratajski at 39% to take it, which is close on its own, but when you factor in that Krzysztof is playing with much greater consistency than Dimitri (only just over two points lower on losing legs than winning, compared to Dimitri at nearly six), the Pole's actually scoring more per turn overall. I'm not going to recommend it as a bet, but I'll have a bit of it for funking power. Also a bit of an intangible in that Dimitri has been here before and is defending, and this is uncharted waters in a major for Ratajski.

Wright/van Gerwen really is too close to call. The market will give you 5/6 on Wright and 21/20 on MvG - I have Wright at 52.7%, so there's no value. They're incredibly evenly matched, fourth and fifth in scoring overall this year separated by only a fifth of a point, their scoring in winning legs is separated by less than a tenth of a point - Wright being higher, but a bit lower on losing legs giving van Gerwen the higher overall scoring. Wright being ever so slightly faster to finish in four and five visits gives him the tiny edge.

It's going to be a great session, I would not be surprised if we got a match of the year candidate out of this one.

Matchplay quarters

Pity about de Sousa. Thought he was going to be a lock to win at more than one stage of the match, but fair play to Smith for getting through it. Would be great if he finally breaks his major duck, would probably be the player I want to win from his half of the draw (would take whoever wins from Ratajski/Rydz in the other half).

Quarters ongoing, the Ratajski/Rydz line looks spot on, Krzysztof's been playing more than well enough to justify his price, I'm getting it spot on 75/25, so nothing of value there. Price/DvdB is close to the same story, Price is correctly favourite, but he's not a 4/6 (only available on one obscure book) favourite. It's a 55/45 matchup. Sadly, nowhere's offering anything like long enough to make the defending champion any sort of value.

Tomorrow starts with Wright/Smith, I've got Wright as a bit better than 60%, but not quite a two in three winner. The market agrees. Which just leaves the van Gerwen/Aspinall game - I thought Nathan hadn't played well enough this season that 4/9 on van Gerwen might be considered value, even accounting for MvG playing better than results, but it isn't. It's more or less a perfect line.

As such, nothing can be recommended, and I doubt we see anything for the semis or final if the market's assessment of everyone that's left is as accurate as it appears right now. Maybe, just maybe, if Ratajski comes through he becomes undervalued, but we'll wait and see.