The first pool of players in the Icons of Darts conclude their week on Friday when the six players take to their home oches for the third and final time as the team at Modus Darts continue to provide us with a darting fix.
It has to be said that the standard among this pool has been largely disappointing throughout the week so far so hopefully that changes and the players go out with a bang. While the standard might be poor the competitiveness has been there at least.
The Format
Each day from Monday to Saturday six players will battle it out for a daily title. There are two pools of players, one which plays on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and the other which toe the oche on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Each day the six players will play each other once over the best of nine legs with two points for a win. The daily winner is the player with the most points. If players are level on points it is determined on leg difference and then the record between the two. The entire event can be watched on various bookmaker websites, dartshop.tv or the Modus YouTube channel.
Confirmation of today’s final league table ✅ @reddragondarts #IconsofDarts
A clean sweep for @wolfiedarts ?? pic.twitter.com/Vz3gt8tjYH
— MODUS Sports (@ModusDarts180) July 30, 2020
Thursday Recap
We expected to see more from the big guns on Thursday and that is exactly what we got, with the biggest gun of them all coming out on top as Martin Adams didn’t just win the group but he won all five of his matches to dominate the pool. Stephen Burton was the man who followed him home with six points. Keane Barry was third on the same number of points but an inferior leg difference while there were a couple of wins for Boris Koltsov. Scott Mitchell and Mike Warburton rounded off their day with one victory each.
It was an up and down day for us betting wise on Thursday. It started unfortunate when Stephen Burton averaged 99 but still lost to Mike Warburton who averaged over a ton in his only win for the day. If you’d have told me beforehand that Burton would average 99 I’d have had a lot more on so that was unlucky. Martin Adams got most of those losses back when he trounced Boris Koltsov 5-1 on his way to group glory so it could have been a lot worse.
Friday Line Up
We are back with the first pool of players on Friday which means that it is Fallon Sherrock who will be given the task of looking to defend the title she won on Wednesday. Her win was no fluke as she was regularly averaging in the 90s throughout the day, and if she has that level with her here she is entitled to be tough to beat. Scott Marsh won the group on Monday and he’ll be looking to win his title back with the fixtures in the same order they were that day. Keelan Kay is an interesting outsider. He has beaten Marsh on both days this week but hasn’t been consistent against the others.
John Brown is the second biggest price to win the group on Friday but there is no doubt that he is warming to the task and could well offer up another big showing over the course of the day. Diogo Portela has been very ordinary this week and he will want to show that he is a lot better than he has delivered to date while Jose Justicia keeps getting odd good results but doesn’t seem able to string them together at the minute.
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Outright Betting
Scott Marsh has been my go to man this week and given that he won this group when the fixtures were in this order on Monday I’m not going to go against him here. If the week so far is anything to go by he should be well on his way to winning the group relatively early on as he faces the two worst players in the field in his opening two matches in Diogo Portela and Jose Justicia. Marsh only won two matches on Wednesday and they were his final two games against that pair which feels significant.
I’m not writing Sherrock off completely but she may well be playing under pressure from her first match if Marsh gets off to a flying start and that would be a concern. We quite often see in these groups that the first player to post a decent points total lands the spoils. That’s happened in this pool twice this week and Marsh can make it three times in a row. One of Marsh’s losses on Wednesday was with a near 99 average so it isn’t like he is playing terribly. He’s the one to beat in my eyes here.
Match Betting
I’ll go with one in the match betting department as well where John Brown should be a much stronger favourite against Diogo Portela than he happens to be. Portela has won three matches this week – weirdly two of them have been against Fallon Sherrock, but it is his averages that worry me. His 10 matches this week have seen him average 79.98, 81.79, 83.32, 85.57, 81.91, 75.33, 77.34, 78.44, 82.63 and 80.63. That is one average in 10 more than 83.32 and four of them in the 70s.
When you look at that it is actually incredible that he has won three matches. What isn’t incredible is he has lost both his matches to Brown 5-2. The concern is that this is Brown’s first match but he averaged nearly 95 in that scenario against Portela on Monday and was comfortably better than him on Wednesday. 90 or near 90 averages are becoming a regular occurrence for Brown these days and if the week from Portela so far is anything to go by you’ve got to think the youngster can complete the clean sweep of wins over the Brazilian.
Tips
WON – Back S.Marsh to win Group 5 for a 3/10 stake at 2.25 with Coral
Back him here:
WON – Back J.Brown to beat D.Portela for a 3/10 stake at 1.90 with Betfair
Back him here:
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