The second day of the European Championship darts event is quite a busy one as the first round concludes and the second round gets underway across the two sessions of play in Hasselt on Friday.
The bottom half of the draw plays their first round in the afternoon session while the evening will see the top half coming back out for their last 16 matches so by the end of the day we will know one half of the quarter final line up.
Afternoon Session
We get underway when Jonny Clayton takes on the one remaining Belgian left in the event in the shape of Dimitri van den Bergh. Dave Chisnall is next onto the stage as he plays Cristo Reyes before the all-Dutch clash of Benito van de Pas and Vincent van der Voort. The World Grand Prix winner Daryl Gurney follows them when he plays Steve Beaton.
Michael Smith gets the second half of the afternoon going when he plays fellow youngster Nathan Aspinall. Rob Cross then takes on Martin Schindler before two good games round off the session. Joe Cullen faces Stephen Bunting and Peter Wright meets the World Masters champion Krzysztof Ratajski.
Evening Session
We are up to the best of 19 legs for the evening session which begins with Jelle Klaasen facing Kyle Anderson for a place in the quarter finals. Simon Whitlock bids for another major quarter final when he plays Alan Norris before Michael van Gerwen is back on the big stage. He faces the potentially tricky test of Ian White before the second day ends with Mensur Suljovic playing Gerwyn Price.
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Betting
Over the course of the day I’m going with three bets. The first bet comes in the afternoon where Jonny Clayton looks like a good bet to me. His last two tournaments has seen him win a Players Championship event and make the last 16 of a European Tour tournament which is decent enough form. Dimitri van den Bergh might have the home crowd behind him but he doesn’t have a lot of form to speak of. The home crowd did nothing for the Huybrechts pair on Thursday and I don’t see them having much more to shout about here. Clayton for me.
Moving into the evening session and I like the idea of Simon Whitlock hitting more than 4.5 180s against Alan Norris. The Australian has been in good form in recent times and we saw in the latter stages of the World Grand Prix that he was scoring very well. He will need to score well against Norris who is a heavy scorer so I don’t expect to see the crazy board management that Whitlock can sometimes employ. In a relatively lengthy match I’m expecting at least five 180s from the Aussie.
Finally I’ve mentioned in the past how Mensur Suljovic is a strange creature when it comes to positive and negative head to heads. He doesn’t have many career records with opponents over more than a couple of matches which are relatively even. He either beats the same opponents or he loses to the same ones. His record against Gerwyn Price is one of his bad ones. He has one win from eight matches and has dropped the last five, all within the last 18 months. Price showed some decent form on Thursday night and given the wood he seems to have on the Austrian, the Welshman looks a good bet at 2/1.
Tips
WON – Back J.Clayton to beat D.van den Bergh for a 4/10 stake at 1.73 with William Hill
Back him here:
WON – Back S.Whitlock – Over 4.5 180s for a 4/10 stake at 1.83 with Bwin
Back him here:
Back G.Price to beat M.Suljovic for a 3/10 stake at 3.00 with Paddy Power
Back him here:
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