Skybet World Grand Prix Betting Preview
Posted on October 4th, 2009
“Dubl-In” – The Skybet Grand Prix in Dublin with it’s lightning fast opening round format and double required to open the leg, spells one thing – shocks from the off. The UK Open is known as the FA Cup of darts but in an ode to the golden days of the FA Cup, shocks are more likley to abound in the Grand Prix. With the messy format, this tournament has proven to be a bookmakers benefit for many punters in the past, the bookies love to take on those four, five and six player accumulators on short priced favourites with the giant-killing factor in their favour.
The Grand Prix is the one tournament on the PDC calendar, with it’s double-in, double-out format where you can’t afford to be struggling to checkout. Bearing that in mind, let’s take a look at who’s hot and who’s not on their doubles. For this, I have looked at the last two televised PDC tournaments, The Las Vegas Desert Classic and the World Matchplay. It is admittedly a small sample but with similar qualities, under the glare of television cameras and players having to deal with the heat onstage.
At the top of the statistical tree surpsrisingly, is young Dutchman, Michael van Gerwen, though this statistic can mostly be ignored as “Mighty Mike” only won three legs from playing in one of the tournaments against Raymond van Barneveld, taking out 75% of his doubles.
Barney himself shows up best of those having played a sufficient amount of legs to get a reasonable result from, along with Mark Walsh, at just under 50%. Barney took out 45% of his doubles in Vegas and 51% in Blackpool.
Kevin Painter is fourth on the list with 47%, Phil Taylor close behind on just over 45% with “The Pieman” Andy Smith also on the same figure. Again, Smith’s stats are skewed by the fact he played a minimal number of legs over only the one tournament. The other player in the so called “Big Three”, James Wade sits on a healthy 44%, matching strides with John Part.
Right in their rear view mirror is Gary Anderson on 43%. That figure may surprise a few of the darting fraternity including Phil Taylor himself who has admitted “The Flying Scotsman” has the scoring power but needs to tighten up on his doubles. The likes of Jamie Caven and Mark Dudbridge are going to have to up their doubling in Dublin to have any chance of a run in the tournament sitting on 33% and 32% respectively.
In the relegation zone lie Colin Osborne, Andy Hamilton and Wayne Jones with 29, 28 and 26%. These boys really need to find their touch early or their stay in the “fair city” could be short lived. Though as I write this, Andy Hamilton has just had a superb warm-up for the Grand Prix by reaching the final of Saturday’s Players Championship, beating Phil Taylor 6-3 en route, which again highlights the dangers of betting over the short format.
Although a small sample size of only the two events, the Grand Prix really does live up to the old adage of trebles for show – doubles for dough.
A look at those heading the betting at the top of the outright market and there’s no escaping Phil Taylor, over the longer formats he simply has looked unstoppable this year. The biggest danger to him keeping his title this year is in all liklihood the first round.
The torment of Raymond van Barneveld has been a talking point for a considerable spell of time, yet in the Desert Classic final he trumped Phil Taylor on the maximums eight to six and as the stats show, recently his doubles have been of a higher standard than Taylor’s. This seems to illustrate that it’s not particularly his game that’s not in the best of health.
James Wade had his own darting health called into question in the South African Masters, enduring a problem with the index finger on his throwing hand., though it didn’t stop him reaching the final and he should have extended his recent unbeaten run against Taylor, missing three arrows at double 12 when looking to take a 5-4 lead with his own throw to come for the match. All being well “The Machine” should be set for a big tournament, though his dislike for playing agaisnt his first-round for Dennis Priestley and his deliberate throwing style are documented.
Looking at other players on Skybet’s winner market, Mark Walsh is one arrowsmith they don’t want to take on, sitting at 28-1 with the Harrogate based layers, yet as big as 40s in the high street.
With regards to the first round format and it’s tricky fast format, the slow starting Gary Anderson looks short enough at 1-5 against the veteran John Magowan though Anderson’s so called double-troubles seem to have been over-estimated on recent stats.
Phil Taylor at 1-20 against Brendan Dolan is a price bordering on the ridiculous. Dolan will have the crowd behind him and there are safer and easier ways to make some money from your punting. Adrian Lewis against Robert Thornton looks a “pick-em” affair, certainly tighter than the layers odds would suggest.
James Wade with his previously mentioned dislike for playing Priestley looks too short at 1-3 even though “The Menace” has been a little off the boil recently.
With regards to the “stats” markets, note that the number of maximums are low in this tournament in comparison to other events with the double-in format removing the possibility of two maximums on every leg. Likewise any potential nine darter is 20 points bigger to attain.
This should be a superb tournament though it is one of the more difficult on the calendar to gain a profit from. Stay away from those accumulators the layers love, look for value outsiders in the shock laden opening round and decide before Taylor faces Dolan whether you want 4-6 for Taylor on the outright, as if he does the business in the opener, this darting magician will make those odds disappear.
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Tags: Betting Preview, World Grand Prix
Filed under PDC, World Grand Prix |
