One of the best ways of playing the early stages of the Grand Slam of Darts from a betting point of view is to attack the group betting. Various markets have been priced up for all eight groups heading into the competition and as there always is, there is plenty of value to be had this year.
Some of the groups are pretty self-explanatory and offer little in the way of value and some are like a jigsaw puzzle to solve so we’re not going to go through every group but there are three we fancy bets in and we’ll go through those here.
Group B
If there is a wide open group of the eight then this is probably the one as the PDC seeded player Robert Thornton is in the middle of a wretched run on the TV. He looks incredibly vulnerable going in here especially against a talented bunch.
Scott Waites, Gerwyn Price and Dimitri van den Burgh are the three men opposing Thornton in this group and I like the former champion Waites, the BDO world champion. It would be fair to say Waites had a couple of quiet years by his high standards but he broke out of those in style at Lakeside at the beginning of the year and having made the final on two occasions we know he goes well here.
I’ve a feeling that this group format suits the BDO players as they are used to short formats and Waites is a regular winner on that circuit. At 2/1 he’s the value in this group.
Group F
For me this is the most interesting group of the lot. That might not be in terms of the big names in it or even the quality of darts that will be played but I’m intrigued by the rise of Mensur Suljovic and we’ll get another sample of whether he belongs at this level or not.
The evidence thus far absolutely suggests he does but if you are to succeed at the top of the game then you need to beat the best regularly and keep the lesser players at bay so this will be a good test. I think it is one he might fail though because Raymond Barneveld likes this tournament. He plays well here and having spoken recently about the need to go well in the ranking events I’m expecting him to come here with his best game. At 13/10 he’s the value for me in the group.
Group H
Adrian Lewis will look at this group and fancy his chances of coming out of it. Really he’ll be expected to win the group but his past record here doesn’t suggest he enjoys the best of nine sprints and as such he’s nothing like a certainty to win the group.
Even if Lewis does make it through there will be someone else who qualifies with one of Scott Mitchell, Benito van de Pas or Chris Dobey getting that position and for me the value lies with the BDO man. We saw last year that Mitchell can perform on this stage. He happened to be in the group of death last year but he performed credibly and even best Dave Chisnall along the way.
He has a more comfortable route here and while he isn’t as established in the mainstream world as Lewis or van de Pas he is a quality player in his own right and the 2/1 on him to qualify is just plain daft. That’s my bet in this group.
Tips
Back S.Waites to win Group B for a 3/10 stake at 3.00 with Bwin
Back him here:
WON – Back R.Barneveld to win Group F for a 4/10 stake at 2.30 with 888sport
Back him here:
Back S.Mitchell to qualify from Group H for a 3/10 stake at 3.00 with Coral
Back him here:
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