World Champs - Day 2 - Friday

If Thursday got us going with Rob Cross and the fun of an opening night, Friday is all about starting to grind through the opening round matches. We've got six first round matches, and a brace of 2nd round games to look forward to.

Barnard v de Sousa

Here we have the 21st Pro Tour qualifier versus the South and West European Qualifier. It's unlikely to be a heavy scoring match, with Barnard notable by his incredible low 180 rate - running at marginally below one for every ten legs of darts he plays. It shouldn't stop him beating a worse player, and the bookies make him a 1/3 shot, and if he dispatches de Souse quickly, then the 180s could well go under the lines posted up. You can get 8/11 on him hitting two or fewer in the match, and you'd expect to collect in all probability in any match going under five sets.

He's such a low maximum chucker, that even on a limited set of data, we'll be backing de Sousa to out-max him. He's available at 6/4 and it looks a reasonable price on a man who shoots about 0.16 180s per leg.

Finally, consider a bet on the match winning CO number in this match. Barnard is 1/3 to win the match, and is a religious follower of the D20 when it comes to finishing. He finishes over 50% of his legs on Tops over our sample of 50 legs. While that is unlikely to continue at such a ratio, the 5/2 available with Corals or Ladbrokes is certainly tasty enough for this one.

2.2pts Barnard to hit Under 2.5 180s at 8/11

1pt de Sousa most 180s at 6/4

2pts Barnard v Sousa match to finish on D20 at 5/2

Tabern v Smith

These two play off for the opportunity to be embarassed by MvG in the second round, and again our main route in is around the 180s angle. We're expecting a 180 rate of around 0.14 per leg from Tabern and 0.1 per leg from Smith. Both pretty low therefore.

Let's assume we see a match of around 17 legs as the spreads predict. If that happens, we're expecting Tabern to hit something in order of 2.38 180s, and Smith to contribute around 1.7. So all in, around 4 or so on average.

You can get 5/4 on there being under 4.5 in this match, which looks tasty enough to us to get involved, while the 13/5 on Under 3.5 is worth a gamble in case this is over in three sets.

1pt Under 4.5 180s at 5/4

1pt Under 3.5 180s at 13/5

Burness v Nicholson

Paul Nicholson will be a familiar face for older darts fans. He used to mix it with the best regularly, but has dropped off in recent years. He takes on qualifier Kevin Burness this week, and while we expect Nicholson to win this one, the 180s counts could be close. The bookies make the Aussie a strong favourite to put in the most maximums - as short as 1/2 in some places, but their data suggests it could be a close run thing, and we prefer the 3/1 on Burness hitting the most (we lose the bet if its a draw).

1pt Burness to hit the most 180s at 3/1 (Betfair/PP)

#Darts