The Icons of Darts event brought to us by the team at Modus enter what was originally expected to be its final week on Monday, although there is the chance that as lockdown continues the competition will go beyond this week.
As ever five more players will battle it out over the course of Monday for points that will go towards the overall table. We have four completely fresh players on show this week so there could be a real competitive edge to proceedings.
The Format
Each day from Monday to Saturday five men will battle it out in a round robin group with the overall champion being determined on Saturday May 2. Matches will see the players compete over the best of 9 legs with each of them at home in front of a webcam throwing at their own individual dartboards. Scores can be found on Dart Connect and the tournament will be streamed on the bookmaker live streaming consoles and for free on Dartslive.tv.
Saturday Recap
It was one of the tightest days of darts we have seen so far in these things on Saturday as three men picked up three victories and the group winner was decided by just one leg. The man who won the week overall, Paul Nicholson, was the player to come out on top, a solitary leg ahead of Adam Huckvale and Andy Jenkins. Arron Monk could only find one win on his final day of action while Diogo Portela went winless to finish off his spell in the event for now.
Our faith in Arron Monk was misplaced on Saturday. He was indifferent all day, not least in the match we wanted him to be good in which was the one between himself and Paul Nicholson. Nicholson won that match 5-3 to condemn us to another losing day in the afternoon event. We’ll certainly be hoping for better this coming week.
Monday Line Up
Jarred Cole is the only man appearing on Monday who has already competed in one of these tournaments before. He was in action a couple of weeks ago before having last week off and now he is back for more and given the experience he gained in that week he played, he would probably have to be considered a leading runner for the overall title this week.
The headline act this week is very much Anastasia Dobromyslova. The former Women’s World Championship winner will line up in full this week looking to showcase her enormous talent on the dartboard. She has admitted on her Twitter feed when confirming her appearance in the event that she hasn’t had the darts out for six weeks, so you would think she is going to need a day or so to get back up to full speed.
Jose Justicia no longer holds a PDC Tour card but it is only four months ago that he was at Alexandra Palace knocking off Arron Monk and pushing Stephen Bunting the distance so he shouldn’t be written off completely, although to be fair since failing to win back his card at Q-School he hasn’t pulled up any trees on the Challenge Tour scene. He did put a few 90+ averages together at Q-School so a repeat of that would give him every chance here.
Justin Smith is a youngster who has been competing on the Development Tour and the Challenge Tour. He attempted to get his PDC Tour card at Q-School earlier in the year but failed to do so which you would think would leave him a little bit behind some of the others in this section, but as I regularly state, you can’t compete on that Development Tour if you haven’t got a decent game in your locker somewhere along the line.
Keelan Kay is the youngest member of the players on show this week. He reached his first quarter final on the Development Tour in Germany earlier in the year but his averages in that event were nothing to write home about. When you look through his overall results, his are comfortably the weakest of those on show here, but again it is hard to write off these Development Tour players completely.
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Outright Betting
At the time of writing there isn’t a lot to go at in terms of the odds for this group with the line up only being announced quite late and fixtures still not confirmed into the early hours of Monday morning, but thankfully Coral have priced the group up and there is a strange favourite in Justin Smith. He might prove to be the man but I have my doubts over what he has achieved and I’m more than happy to take him on.
I’ve no doubt that Jose Justicia is the best player of this quintet but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll come out on top on his first day of action. Instead at 7/2 I think the value lies with Jarred Cole who won a group the first time he was on show in this and who was banging in 90 averages for fun by the end of that week. Anything in that ball park here has every chance of being good enough and while the other four get to grips with the setup and format he could gallop away with this first group.
Match Betting
I’ll side with Jarred Cole in the match betting front as well. I’ve already acknowledged that Anastasia Dobromyslova has admitted she hasn’t played much darts in the last six weeks. She also highlighted she is playing with new darts so her opening day could all go spectacularly wrong, but even if she plays to her normal standard with her new bats she is capable of missing a lot of doubles, and her scoring can sometimes be a little off.
Jarred Cole scored pretty well throughout his first week in this thing and while his doubles let him down early on he was pretty smart on those come the end of the competition. He’ll have had a couple of matches before he takes on Anastasia just to sharpen him back up again and I expect him to do a bit of a job on the Russian here. Cole is likely to outscore Anastasia throughout and he’ll probably finish better too so the 8/11 on him winning by two or more legs looks worth taking.
Tips
WON – Back J.Cole to win Group 1 for a 2/10 stake at 4.50 with Coral
Back him here:
WON – Back J.Cole (-1.5 legs) to beat A.Dobromyslova for a 3/10 stake at 1.73 with Bet365
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