TOURNAMENT DETAILS

The four semi finalists for the 2007 Holsten Premier League have been finalised after Roland Scholten failed in his quest to win his last two matches. Two wins for Tripod, coupled with defeats for Dennis Priestley, could have seen the Dutchman through but although Priestley did indeed lose to Peter Manley, Scholten could not capitalise and defeat to Barney saw Priestley through to a guaranteed £30k payout.

The final night saw Phil Taylor keep up his extraodinary unbeaten record, beating van Barneveld 8-5 to set up a semi final date with Dennis Priestley. Barney will take on Terry Jenkins in the other semi. One point to note is every player finished on different points in the league - after 14 hard fought weeks, they could be seperated. But who would have predicted debutants Priestley & Jenkins making the semis at the first time of asking?

THE opening night of the 2007 Holsten Premier League Darts will feature a repeat of last year's final, with defending champion Phil Taylor meeting Roland Scholten at the Plymouth Pavilions. The tournament begins on Thursday 1 February in Plymouth, with the third staging of Premier League Darts seeing an increase to eight players and £265,000 in prize money.

World Champion Raymond van Barneveld will be in action in the opening game of the 2007 event, when he meets debutant Adrian Lewis at Plymouth. The league's two other newcomers - Dennis Priestley and Terry Jenkins – face off in the night's second game, and Colin Lloyd takes on Peter Manley before Taylor opens his title defence against Dutchman Scholten.

Scholten reached last year's final with a stunning semi-final win over van Barneveld, but lost 16-6 to Taylor in the final as the 13-time World Champion picked up the trophy for the second successive year.Taylor, who has yet to be defeated in Premier League Darts, meets old rival Priestley at Wolverhampton on the second week of the tournament.

Van Barneveld takes on Colin Lloyd at the Wolves Civic, in a repeat of one of the matches of the tournament at the Ladbrokes.com World Darts Championship last month, when the Dutchman came from three sets down to win 4-3 - a precursor to his epic triumph against Taylor in the final. Taylor and van Barneveld will meet in World Championship rematches at the Hallam FM Arena in Sheffield on 1 March and at the Birmingham NIA on the final league night, on 3 May.

Over 90 percent of tickets for the tournament have now been sold, for remaining availability visit www.planetdarts.tv and visit the Ticket Info section.

The tournament will be screened live on Sky Sports across the UK, as well as on Sport1 and SBS6 in Holland and DSF in Germany.

Tournament Information

Each player will play every other player twice.
Matches to be billed home and away, indicating who will throw first in each match.
Matches to be played over 14 legs of 501 in the league section of the event. The first player to win eight legs will be deemed to be the winner of the match and no further legs will be played after this point.
Four matches will be played per night for the 14 league nights.
The top four players in the league table after the completion of the 14 league nights will progress to the play-offs in Brighton. Semi-Final matches to be played over the best of 21 legs and the Final to be played over the best of 31 legs.