Gib first session bets

Bookmakers are being cowards and not putting up lines for the domestic qualifier matches, but as mentioned in the previous post, I doubt we see any value in them, so let's whack through the other first session games. Bit short of time, so will do the evening session on my lunch.

Harrysson/Barry - Hard to know where he's at really given he didn't travel to Iceland for the Nordic Tour.  I like Barry, but I don't think he's quite at a level where we're taking a best price of 1/3 against someone who will have come through a qualifier of a reasonable standard.

Kleermaker/Murnan - Two matches between understated players here, Martijn has quietly been getting fairly close to major qualification, while Joe has got a decent record as well, most notably at Q-School. We can get 13/10 on Joe here on 365 which looks a little bit of an outlier (others have it closer to evens, only looking at three books as oddschecker haven't got their shit together), I have Joe as a slight favourite but not really enough to take it. I'd be all over 6/4.

Hunt/Nentjes - Adam's not particularly young now but definitely a player on the rise, Geert has a bunch of potential but yet to really show it, I'm getting Geert as a very solid near 2-1 favourite here, and Adam is the favourite in the market, so 0.25u Nentjes 13/10 on 365.

Murray/Evetts - Bookies can't separate them. I can't either. No value, but should be a decent watch.

Kovacs/Cross - Rob is a best price of 1/16 lol

Henderson/Krcmar - With the World Cup being unranked and mostly pairs, Hendo's decent form isn't in my database, so it is showing Boris as a tiny favourite. We can't get better than 6/5, so this is less of a bet than Murnan should be.

Expect later tips around 1330 UK time.

Gib stuff to come later

I can't find any details about the HNQ, so I'll wait to see who comes up there before making a fuller post. There's lines up for the other 12 games, hopefully oddschecker will get in gear later today. Given who the HNQ's have got, I wouldn't be entertaining a bet against either Mervyn King or Callan Rydz. Probably not against Adam Smith-Neale given the competent level he's played at on the Challenge Tour. Kenny Neyens I might think about, but just checking his Challenge Tour stats, he looks to be playing at a decent enough standard to keep the other guy down.

Some real spicy first round ties. Murray/Evetts could surprise. Searle/Schindler is obscenely good, with the winner to play Ratajski who needs the points after losing first round last time. Koltsov/Huybrechts might not be bad if Boris turns up. Bunting/Hempel might be a dark horse for match of the round. Hunt/Nentjes might end up being surprisingly entertaining as well. Not interested in his first round game, but Cross getting MvG in round two ought to not be bad. Assuming he gets through as well, Keane Barry getting a good test against Danny Noppert should give us a decent indicator of where Keane's stage game is at. Hendo/Krcmar has a lot of potential, Humphries/Clemens is a nasty draw for both but one with a lot of potential against one of the weaker seeds in Petersen in round two. Not a bad draw at all.

Expect some bets later this evening.

Bit of a break

Been a while since a post, been busy with other projects, but quickly new FRH rankings:

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 Michael Smith (UP 1)

9 Dave Chisnall (DOWN 1)

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 Luke Humphries (NEW)

Grats to Gerwyn for some great darts where it mattered to bink Hungary, Smith's final moves him up to eighth, Humphries' semi pushes him well above White (would have been above with a first round exit, but still), while de Sousa is extremely close to Anderson now and is within striking distance of the top five. A good run in Gib may be enough. Dolan is up to the top 25, while Lewis Williams is in the top 100 for the first time, Gawlas isn't far behind. Adam'll be there after the European Championship for sure.

Scotland won the World Cup. Real feel good story for Hendo, as well as the Austria team, going to be fun seeing them all in the Grand Slam for sure. Some decent games, but there's been some right stinkers as well. They really need to expand the field to 40 and add an extra session for a prelim round to both allow more teams in, as well as to filter out those who we want to see there, but really can't cut it. China and Italy didn't even get darts at a double, let alone win a leg. Can we not expand the field to include a returning New Zealand, Latvia, France (Tricole +1 wouldn't be horrible) and some other emerging nations? At least if you trim off the worst, you don't get horrible mismatches in the last 32. All talk about making it pairs only, I don't know, I'm on record as not being a fan of the format, but for a one-off event like this, I think it'd be fine to do it, although you do miss the backstage shots of the guy who isn't playing in the singles right now.

Can't see decent quality results anywhere immediately for the England Open. Looks like Brian Raman got most of the cake, would be good to see him at Lakeside. Real shame for the WDF that they've had to kick the Masters down the can for another year but with the Netherlands being an idiot country then I don't think they have too much choice.

Won't be watching any of the Nordic Darts Masters. Busy this weekend, not ranked, nothing of real interest. Bring on Gib.

Any quarter final value?

Probably should have gone for those two marginal shots, oh well

Cullen/Humphries - Nope, nothing here. Line has Joe as a small favourite, this looks spot on.

Dolan/Price - Great win for Brendan earlier, but it doesn't get any easier, Price is nearly a 75% favourite in the market, which is a little bit too short (I've got Dolan at 32%), with the vig in the market we can't consider betting on Brendan though. Maybe if you see him win the bull and you can get on some sort of handicap?

de Sousa/Gawlas - Yeah, probably comes to an end for Adam here, but he's played some really great stuff and if the vig levels off, it's not too far off a speculative tiny punt. Jose didn't play great earlier, or yesterday for that matter, if he's only in second gear and pacing himself then fine.

Wright/Smith - Hope nothing's seriously up with Borland, but we won't speculate. Smith was meh against an equally meh Barry, this looks about 60/40 in favour of Wright on paper, oddschecker has literally just put the line up and it looks to be shaded a bit more in favour of Wright, but nowhere near enough to consider taking Smith.

If we look at semi finals, Price should be about 4/7 against Cullen, 1/2 against Humphries, if Dolan does pull the upset then the semi is going to be extremely close either way. Maybe shade Cullen as 10/11 against evens, the other way around against Humphries. de Sousa against Wright ought to be 4/5 JdS and 5/4 Wright, whereas if Smith were to advance Jose should be 8/15 perhaps? Could be sneaky Jose value. We'll see.

Quick last 16 post

Thanks Adam Gawlas!

Cullen/Cross - Priced fairly even with Cullen having a tiny edge. This seemed fair at a first glance, and is fair looking at the numbers, 52/48 in favour of Cullen.

Wade/Humphries - We've seen this one quite a few times this year and always gone with Luke, who is 11/10, which I think is enough of a line correction not to bet it. Luke should be the tiniest of favourites, but it's even closer than the match above, so there's not the value despite him being odds against.

van Gerwen/Dolan - MvG's pretty short here at a first look, shorter than 2/5. This is quite close to be honest, Dolan is 5/2 which relates to a fair win chance of 29%. I think it's more like 37%, but I'll hold off on pulling the trigger only on account of Michael looking good yesterday, that gives me just enough pause to think he might outperform the model slightly which would remove any value.

Price/Heta - Pretty similarly priced matchup here, I'm not quite sure what that says about Heta in relation to Dolan, or Price in relation to van Gerwen for that matter. This one looks fine though, Price should win this just over two in three.

de Sousa/Aspinall - This is again fairly close to a bet. 4/7 on de Sousa implies about a 64% chance to win, I see it at 70%. There's not quite enough of a combination of the market still not liking de Sousa and still liking Aspinall (who's still fine, just not in the top 25 of scoring this year) to go for the bet though.

Gawlas/Williams - Huge opportunity for both here, line is thinking 60/40 in favour of Lewis. That might be a little unfair on Adam, but not enough to be betting it, should be more like 6/5 instead of 6/4.

Wright/Borland - This one does look priced correctly. Borland's done us good this weekend, and if you ended up taking a flier on Mensur being rusty as well, you got rewarded, but Borland 5/1 appears on the money. I see 19%, that's close enough.

Smith/Barry - Probably a highlight this one as long as Keane shows up. Not for betting though, I see Keane as having a little less than a one in three shot, and he's 9/4, so meh. No thanks.

Should be back for quick quarter thoughts before the football.

Hungary round 2 bets

We went 2/3 yesterday, although the third one (and the first one to be fair) were a lot closer than they needed to be. Keegan didn't do it, you can't afford to be giving anyone three legs in more than eighteen darts, come on lad.

Today:

0.1u Gawlas 9/2, he looked good yesterday. 96 average, every leg in fifteen darts or less, sure this is a big longshot ask and I'm only seeing him at 25%, but the performance yesterday makes me think he might be able to nick it enough to make this value.

0.1u Hempel 5/1, this is kind of similar, a speculative long shot, I'm seeing Hempel just shy of 30%, so 5/1, what the hell. He's going to need to up his game a lot from yesterday, but clearly can.

That's it. No real value at all. Just a couple of long shots where they seem to be overvaluing the favourites. Don't expect these to work too often, think we end up 0/2 quite a lot of the time, but we only need to hit one to make a solid profit, and it's all about picking players we think win more than the odds suggest.

Hungary bets

Disappointing lack of lead time to pick out bets, I know the draw was a bit later than usual, but they knew the home nation qualifiers in advance so there's no excuse for the bookies. Quickfire round it is:

0.25u Borland 1/2, this seems a bit of value, William's extremely underrated and Johan isn't really that good

0.25u Brown 10/11, only seems like small value given where I think Richard is at, but this is a big event for Veenstra, and maybe he's half thinking of hightailing it to Niedernhausen?

Gawlas seems really close. If you see 7/4 then go for it, I'm only looking at two books because loloddschecker and can't see better than 13/8.

0.25u Hempel 4/9, not quite as close as I'd thought but still enough value to take the bet.

The rest look pretty much on point, disappointing lack of value but there we go.