Another quick rankings update and some brief World Cup thoughts

Scott Williams binked a title. Wait what?

New FRH rankings:

1 Peter Wright

2 Gerwyn Price

3 Michael Smith

4 Michael van Gerwen

5 James Wade

6 Rob Cross

7 Jonny Clayton

8 Luke Humphries

9 Danny Noppert

10 Jose de Sousa

11 Gary Anderson

12 Ryan Searle

13 Joe Cullen

14 Dimitri van den Bergh

15 Dirk van Duijvenbode (UP 2)

16 Nathan Aspinall (UP 2)

17 Damon Heta (DOWN 1)

18 Krzysztof Ratajski (DOWN 3)

19 Dave Chisnall

20 Callan Rydz

Bit of an unfortunate set for Ratajski, he didn't actually play bad and made a quarter, but just had two finalists right behind him, as well as Heta accumulating a bit more. Smith extends his lead over van Gerwen with his bink, he now looks to be within a Matchplay bink of getting past Price, although that'd involve getting a big monkey off his back. His current seeding is pretty good to make a deep run though... Williams hits #82 after his bink, scanning through other performers in the lower echelons, Dobey had a good weekend and climbs to just outside the top 25, Huybrechts is real close to getting back in the top 30 and may get there by the next Euro Tour with White not having done much recently, Keane Barry is getting closer to the top 32, Martin Lukeman's cracked the top 60, Durrant is now out of the top 50, Hendo's had a first good spell in a while to stay in the top 80, Josh Rock made a semi and is up to 88, while new card holder John O'Shea is up into the top 100.

World Cup starts tomorrow. Don't think it's anywhere near the best lineup they could do, but we have what we have, it's always useful to see where some of the more fringe players are at, let's quickly go through the draw:

England/Czechia - Sedlacek and Gawlas (despite Karel not looking great these past couple of days) would be very live against most teams, but despite England not having anywhere near their best lineup (Smith is arguable, Wade not so much), they've got a real tough ask.

Latvia/Hungary - Should be Razma's to lose this one. His partner doesn't feel like he's much weaker than either of the Hungarians, it's a bit of an odd lineup from them.

Scotland/Hong Kong - Wright just needs to stay steady I think. Hendo as mentioned above got a few results and clearly loves the format, it's a weird lineup from Hong Kong with no Lam or Leung (the latter certainly couldn't play the qualifiers). Easy to call I think.

Portugal/Italy - Think this is easy to call. de Sousa's not playing his best and his partner's always a bit of a rando, but Italy look the worst team in the tournament on paper (how France didn't get in ahead of them is beyond me) and I can't see them seriously challenging.

Belgium/Japan - Appears easy as well. Dimitri and Kim are going to be a super tough pairing to beat by anyone, and this doesn't look like Japan's strongest lineup by any stretch (FDI says it's Japan's #8 and #13 lol) and they are all surely lacking match practice.

Poland/USA - Could be interesting. Ratajski and Bialecki could be an interesting mix of youth and experience, USA have gone with their card holders, would think Poland will take it though as Ratajski seems clearly stronger than either and Bialecki feels stronger than at least van Dongen.

Australia/Lithuania - One sided again. Heta is playing at an elite level and Whitlock isn't going to make many mistakes. Labanauskas is admittedly out of form, and there's a fair drop off in quality to Barauskas.

Sweden/South Africa - Intriguing. Two years ago you'd think Petersen would carry SA to the win, but then the last two years happened, his partner is unknown really, Larsson and Engstrom have got a lot of matches under their belt and may well nick this.

Wales/Philippines - The Welsh are surely tournament favourites, I don't think any team has one player as good as Price or Clayton, so to have them both, oh wow. Ilagan will throw alright and I'd punt that the other guy isn't going to be too bad, but this is just too hard a draw. Chuck in peak Malicdem and it'd have been interesting.

Austria/Finland - Austria are going with Suljovic and Rowby which looks to be their strongest pairing, and both seem to be playing solidly better than either Kantele or his partner, who's a little bit of a weird selection given the number of options they have. Can't see whoever they'd pick as an alternative would have much of a chance though.

Germany/Spain - Going to be weird seeing a team without Hopp, but Clemens/Schindler is their best pairing, and you'd argue to pick Hempel over Hopp. Spain roll with Justicia and Martinez, they'll play solidly enough and could potentially cause an upset if Schindler doesn't produce, as Clemens isn't exactly in the greatest form he's ever had.

Denmark/Singapore - Maybe the hardest game to call so far, Lim/Lim have all the experience in the world, and Anderson/Jorgenson aren't the strongest pairing that they could have come up against, Vladimir's not done a great deal and Andreas seems nothing more than steady. Probably the game to watch.

Netherlands/Brazil - Danny and Dirk give us a new look Dutch lineup with van Gerwen resting up an injury, but that's not a bad pairing to have who'll easily have way too much for Portela and someone else.

Ireland/Canada - This one might also be pretty tight, and maybe a better watch than the game two above. O'Connor and Lennon seem fairly similar and neither are going to do a great deal wrong, while Smith and Campbell have both finalled Pro Tours and can play up to their level. The Irish maybe have the slight edge, but could see this one going either way.

Northern Ireland/Gibraltar - Gurney and Dolan pick themselves, neither are going to be spectacular but neither are going to fuck anything up either, so it's hard to see how Hewitt (nice to see him selected) and Galliano will get much change out of this one.

New Zealand/Switzerland - Good to see two returning teams here. New Zealand go with Robb and Parry - not really sure what the situation with Cody Harris is, seemingly not played since 2020, but we know what we're going to get with those selected, Switzerland go with the expected lineup of Bellmont and Junghans, who we've seen on the secondary and European Tours a fair bit and I think are worthy of a spot. This bottom half of the draw's got a fair few interesting games, and this is another.

Overall underwhelmed. Pairs does not help at all. If, as suggested previously, the first round was 25-40 with an expanded lineup, it would be a lot, lot more interesting than these are. Oh well.

Rankings update

Bit delayed, I know - Michael Smith took the ET down, eliminating Danny Noppert in a decider, then a couple of wildcards in Rydz and Gilding getting through to the semis. Real wild tournament overall, only two seeds made the quarters with more than half losing their opening game. So, new FRH rankings:

1 Peter Wright

2 Gerwyn Price

3 Michael Smith

4 Michael van Gerwen

5 James Wade

6 Rob Cross

7 Jonny Clayton

8 Luke Humphries

9 Danny Noppert

10 Jose de Sousa

11 Gary Anderson

12 Ryan Searle

13 Joe Cullen

14 Dimitri van den Bergh

15 Krzysztof Ratajski

16 Damon Heta

17 Dirk van Duijvenbode

18 Nathan Aspinall

19 Dave Chisnall

20 Callan Rydz

No actual changes in the rankings. Noppert is only a few hundred points behind Humphries, who missed the last Euro Tour, so may be able to nip back into the top 8. Cross gets a bit more of a buffer over Clayton just by turning up, then lower down the order it's pretty interesting - Heta and van Duijvenbode are separated by less than 1k, and Ratajski's less than 2k above Heta. Rydz puts a bit more of a gap between him and King, although with Mervyn reaching the quarters, it's not as much as he'd have liked. Whitlock is up to 31st following his run, Krcmar edges up a bit to just outside the top 50, Gilding is up to 70 and will continue to rise pretty quickly. Oddly, there's now exactly 300 players in the rankings who've had a ranking cash in the last two calendar years, and it's former world youth champion James Hubbard making up the final slot.

Now to revisit something I did back in March, and that's to give a power ranking - simple sort by scoring, filter down to the last 180 days and 180 legs played. Here we go:

1 Michael van Gerwen

2 Peter Wright (+2)

3 Michael Smith (+4)

4 Gary Anderson (+8)

5 Damon Heta

6 Luke Humphries (+8)

7 Jonny Clayton (-1)

8 Krzysztof Ratajski (+9)

9 Rob Cross

10 Gerwyn Price (-8)

11 Ryan Searle (+5)

12 Josh Rock (new)

13 Dimitri van den Bergh (-3)

14 Dirk van Duijvenbode (-1)

15 Andrew Gilding (new)

16 Joe Cullen (+6)

17 Martin Schindler (+6)

18 Danny Noppert (+3)

19 Chris Dobey (-16)

20 Dave Chisnall (-1)

21 Nathan Aspinall (-13)

22 Ryan Joyce (new)

23 Callan Rydz (-12)

24 Brendan Dolan (+1)

25 Jose de Sousa (+3)

26 Jim Williams (new)

27 James Wade (-1)

28 Stephen Bunting (-10)

29 Raymond van Barneveld (-2)

30 Adrian Lewis (-1)

31 Scott Williams (new)

32 Willie O'Connor (new)

So we have five new players - some like Rock and Gilding simply wouldn't have had enough legs at the back end of 2022 to get on the last time, others have climbed a fair bit such as Joyce and O'Connor. Dropping off the list are Suljovic, White, Huybrechts, Ross Smith, Sedlacek and Gurney - Daryl being in the top 16 at the last point of data we have. I've also just posted an image up to Twitter plotting overall scoring against consistency. Hard to believe that Jim Williams has actually scored more per turn in the legs he's lost than those he's won.

Dev Tour and Swiss Open this weekend. I hope I can get stats to the latter, it's not listed on Dart Connect but hopefully we can get some sort of data to work with. Looks like Rafferty's got the cake in the first Dev Tour, grats to him. Interesting video from Edgar went live recently, does a little bit of a look into the Matchplay race, think that's well worth the look.

Any last 16 value?

OK, looks like lines are finally up, and I think there's three players that are close to plays. Gilding's the first of them, I'm thinking he should be 6/4 and we can actually get 2/1, albeit only on Unibet. This is very close, and I wouldn't hate the play if you can get the Unibet price - anywhere else isn't good enough. Second is Heta - we can get slightly odds against when I think he should be about a 4/5 favourite. 13/10 that's available on 365 and Betfred is extremely close to being value and I should probably recommend the play, but Smith looked extremely good yesterday and Heta had some pretty average legs even outside of the clownshow one where all the doubles were missed (he wasn't exactly scoring heavy then missing like a dozen in that one, he wasn't on a finish after fifteen), so I can just about prevent myself from pulling the trigger. Last one is Dobey, but this one isn't as close as the others. 1/2 I think would have been about right, he is only 4/6 on one minor book and 8/13 generally available, Dobey looked good in defeating our tip yesterday, but King's just got a big win which might spur him on, so I can pass on that. So nothing here, but if you want to take those three, they still represent plays that aren't bad. Off work tomorrow, so should come back with ranking updates then.

Zwolle last 16 thoughts

Word in advance, I definitely will not be able to get anything into play for the evening session, looks to me that most books are being incredibly lax in terms of getting lines up for the afternoon session, so I'm just going to post up where I'm expecting the lines to be for now, then will make a quick post in the morning hoping they've caught up.

Meikle/Krcmar - Straight coinflip

Wright/Noppert - 6/4 Noppert

Whitlock/Larsson - Who knows, real lack of data on Larsson

van Gerwen/Rydz - 9/4 Rydz

Chisnall/van Duijvenbode - 5/4 Chizzy

Searle/Gilding - 6/4 Gilding

Heta/Smith - 5/4 Smith

King/Dobey - 2/1 King

I'm not entirely sure looking at that what will represent value, but I'm thinking Dobey might be the play, possibly Heta as well. We'll see in the morning.

Zwolle day 2 bets

Two out of three yesterday, the main Meikle play came home which made the other two a freeroll, split those one each to break even on them. Marginal stuff we looked at but didn't fire on didn't work out, but hey, we showed restraint so it didn't cost us. Going to be rapid fire again, I will try to be a bit more in depth on round three after the Champions League final.

Ratajski/Gilding: 0.1u Gilding 13/8, I really want to go a quarter of a unit here as the edge is there for it, but the consistency makes a big difference, Gilding's is moderately high and Ratajski's is pretty low. This was kind of in play in the Meikle game as well, but I didn't notice until afterwards, whoops.

Searle/Smith: no bet.

Heta/Waites: no bet, but it's kind of close to a play on Damon.

van den Bergh/Krcmar: 0.1u Krcmar 11/4, it's a long shot underdog so only going small, but Boris is playing well enough that he projects to win around 40% of the time, compared to under 30% which these odds represent. Wouldn't hate a quarter unit play.

Aspinall/Larsson: no bet, feels like it's a bit too favoured towards Nathan but with limited data on Daniel I'm not going to say 5/1 is great or anything. Average yesterday was only 88 after all.

Dolan/Rydz: no bet.

Schindler/Noppert: this is kind of similar to the Gilding situation, except here Noppert has an extra few percent, plus the home field advantage, so I don't think I can fire on Schindler despite projecting a bit better than the 13/8 that's available suggests.

de Sousa/Chisnall: no bet.

Cross/Meikle: no bet, but it's close on Meikle again. It should be a bit tighter, would be more confident if we've seen Ryan get a couple of good back to back games more often, which is what he will need.

Cullen/Whitlock: no bet.

van Duijvenbode/Mansell: no bet.

Wright/Wattimena: no bet.

van Gerwen/Klaasen: no bet.

Price/King: no bet.

Smith/Jansen: no bet.

Dobey/Edhouse: 0.1u Edhouse 9/5, that's on Unibet, 7/4 also generally good, Edhouse has been playing deceptively well and, while there's a little bit of a consistency issue, does project at nearer to 45% than 40%, so with these odds representing 35% chances coupled with Dobey seemingly lacking a few results of late, I think it's worth a stab. Would have been nice if Edhouse got an actual win rather than a bye for "momentum" (did Jim miss his flight?), but we'll just go with this.

Round three when available.

Zwolle day 1 bets

Oddschecker is actually working, it's a miracle. On short notice here so will blast through with minimal commentary:

Krcmar/Lennon - no bet.

Williams/Edhouse - no bet, but kind of close to going Edhouse.

Boulton/Meikle - 0.25u Meikle 10/11, looks a good favourite here.

Scutt/Waites - no bet.

Burness/Smith - no bet.

Gilding/Plaisier - no bet, model says no, head wonders if this isn't Gilding as I don't know if Plaisier's level of play is sustainable.

Larsson/Vandenbogaerde - no bet, lack of data on Daniel but he's looked a bit better of late.

Bialecki/Klaasen - no bet.

Mansell/Zonneveld - no bet, real close to Zonneveld. Odds against and not evens and we probably go.

Wattimena/Eidams - no bet, no real data on Eidams but Jermaine's not really good enough to justify a near 3/1 on punt.

Bellmont/King - no bet, but pondering Bellmont. Can get 7/2, not looked too bad in limited showings, King not having a great year. Wouldn't hate a small flier.

Whitlock/Hughes - 0.1u Hughes 11/10, this is kind of close to the Zonneveld/Edhouse situations but we're getting just enough in terms of odds to go small.

Kleermaker/Rydz - no bet.

Noppert/Konterman - no bet, but 6/1 on someone who's come through a Dutch associate qualifier at least has to be considered. Pity it's versus Noppert.

Jansen/van der Voort - 0.1u Jansen 5/4, pretty much the same scenario as above but slightly better. Somewhere's offering longer odds than this but oddschecker is 404'ing the breakdown. If you can get wherever is saying 27/20 then maybe crank it up to a quarter unit.

Chisnall/Razma - no bet.

Post-Stuttgart update

Good god, Humphries is absolutely destroying it, three Euro Tours in the bank now, two in two weekends, Cross now with an unbelievable 0-7 record in Euro Tour finals. Surely he gets one soon, he's playing well enough. FRH ranking update:

1 Peter Wright

2 Gerwyn Price

3 Michael Smith

4 Michael van Gerwen

5 James Wade

6 Rob Cross (UP 1)

7 Jonny Clayton (DOWN 1)

8 Luke Humphries (UP 5)

9 Danny Noppert

10 Jose de Sousa

11 Gary Anderson (DOWN 3)

12 Ryan Searle (DOWN 1)

13 Joe Cullen (DOWN 1)

14 Dimitri van den Bergh

15 Krzysztof Ratajski

16 Damon Heta (UP 2)

17 Dirk van Duijvenbode

18 Nathan Aspinall (DOWN 2)

19 Dave Chisnall

20 Callan Rydz

Clearly Luke is the big gainer, but back to back finals for Cross has seen him get above Clayton for now. Ando's continued absence from the Euro Tour sees him drop outside of the top 10, while Heta's steady accumulation has got him up into the top 16. Lower down, people who've got at least 5k over the last two Euro Tours include Dolan (#22), Gurney (#25), van der Voort (#26), Ross Smith (#30), Schindler (#37), Lewis (#40), Rowby (#43) is making big gains with back to back final sessions, Lukeman (#65) will hit the top 64 probably tomorrow on continual adjustments, Gawlas (#67), and finally Mansell (#86).

It's a real interesting question as to how many players are better than Humphries right now. I've got him at fifth in scoring in 2022, behind van Gerwen, Anderson (albeit he's not even played 250 legs, Humphries has LOST more than that), Heta and Wright. I'm pretty pleased that Luke, at least on the book I placed my each way punt on a couple of weeks ago he's now 20/1 compared to 33/1 which I've got. Mushnt grumble.