The final event of the European Tour season takes place this weekend with many of the leading lights in the game heading to Gottingen in Germany to battle it out for not just the European Darts Trophy title but the remaining places in the European Championship at the end of the month.
Recent Winners
2016 – Michael van Gerwen
2015 – Michael Smith
2014 – Michael Smith
2013 – Wes Newton
The Format
With this being the 12th event of the year the format should be well known to all now but for those new to the party the 16 seeds meet the 16 qualifiers in the last 32 on Saturday with the remainder of the tournament being played out across two sessions of play on Sunday, the last 16 in the afternoon and the remainder in the evening. Every match of the tournament is the best of 11 legs.
Top Half
Peter Wright is the main attraction in the top half of the draw this week. He is still fighting for the number one seeding for the European Championship so it is a big weekend for him. Michael Smith is seeded to be his biggest danger but the likes of Rob Cross, Dave Chisnall, Gerwyn Price, Jelle Klaasen, Kim Huybrechts and Benito van de Pas will be looking to make names for themselves.
The qualifiers in this section are headed by Jonny Clayton who won a Players Championship event in the week. The man he beat in the final is also in this half too in James Wilson while Nathan Aspinall, Martin Schindler, Chris Dobey, Jamie Caven, Jermaine Wattimena and Keegan Brown will all aim to be competitive.
Bottom Half
Michael van Gerwen is here this weekend and he is situated in the bottom half of the draw. He’s the number one seed with the World Grand Prix finalists Simon Whitlock and Daryl Gurney here to push him all the way. Mervyn King, Ian White, Alan Norris, Joe Cullen and Stephen Bunting make up the rest of the seeded players in this half.
There are some good quality qualifiers in this part of the draw too with Vincent van der Voort the biggest name of them. Winmau World Master Krzysztof Ratajski is also in this part of the draw while Jan Dekker, Andy Boulton, Rene Eidams, Zoran Lerchbacher, Steve West and James Richardson the other players in the draw.
[the_ad_group id=”3624″]
Betting
The draw this week is fairly wide open which makes finding value pretty tough. The two World Grand Prix finalists and Michael van Gerwen being in the bottom half of the draw makes that tough to predict so I am swayed to the top half for a bet this weekend.
To be fair there are plenty of candidates to come through the draw in the top half but it is very hard to ignore the form of Rob Cross at the minute. He won another Players Championship event in midweek to make it four titles for the year and he has been winning plenty of matches on the European Tour too. He looks to have a path through to at least the quarter final and potentially the semi-final so at 18/1 he looks the man to ride through an open looking draw.
Tips
PLACED – Back R.Cross to win European Darts Trophy (e/w) for a 1.5/10 stake at 19.00 with Betfair (1/3 1-2)
Back him here:
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2017-2018
