The second pool of players get their Icons of Darts week underway on Tuesday when six men once again take to their home oches to occupy the live stream to keep us entertained during another day of relative lockdown.
As with last week, we have a couple of world champions in action in this pool of players as well as a couple of rising stars and a pair of players who will be looking to stay competitively sharp for when the real action resumes.
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.
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Monday Recap
In most places it was Martin Adams who was favoured to win on Monday and the three-time world champion did exactly that, winning all five of his matches to dominate the opening group of the week. He finished two points ahead of Boris Koltsov so had all but won the group when beating the Russian in the opening match. Diogo Portela rallied late in the day to finish third with four points ahead of Mark Dudbridge and Jarred Cole on leg difference. Jose Justicia went winless on his return to the Icons of Darts.
The week started off as frustratingly as last week ended. Jarred Cole was unable to win the group with only a couple of wins but two of his three losses were in a deciding leg so he might have been closer had those gone his way. Annoyingly one of those deciding leg losses was against Mark Dudbridge in a match we backed Cole to win. Unfortunately he was unable to pin D10 in the final leg and ended up losing 5-4.
Tuesday Line Up
Ritchie Edhouse is back from a week or two off and he is the favourite to open up pool two with a win on Tuesday. His heavy scoring should be really suited to this format and it would make sense if he was tough to beat. If the bookmakers are to be believed then Scott Mitchell is likely to be his closest challenger although ‘Scotty Dog’ wasn’t himself towards the end of last week. Mark Webster won the title on Saturday and he will go in search of successive victories on Tuesday.
Mike Warburton is certainly no stranger to the Modus leagues but much of his action has been over the seven leg format. He did compete in some of the A Night At The Darts events over this distance to moderate effect so it will be interesting to see how he goes here. Adam Huckvale has been invited back into the bubble and he’ll be looking to put up a decent showing, while Keelan Kay will be looking to reward the organisers for keeping him in.
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Outright Betting
I think it is hard to oppose Ritchie Edhouse over this distance but he’s pretty adequately priced if we are honest and his habit of missing doubles is enough to put me off getting involved at 13/8 even though I do expect him to win the group. He hasn’t played for a while so there is a chance that he is rusty but over this distance, in this company his scoring power should see him earn plenty of darts at the double.
Of the others, the bookies suggest Scott Mitchell will be the closest challenger but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is Mark Webster who presents the strongest challenge. Regular action has seen ‘Webby’ really find some form and the way he held off Jason Askew on Saturday highlights that he fancies the job again. He just doesn’t win many matches convincingly for me to back him as if he is going to win the group you would think it would be on leg difference. I don’t fancy any of the others so I’ll watch on.
Match Betting
With three players coming back into the mix after some time off I’ll give the players a day to show their talents before I get too involved in the match betting in this group but there is one that I like midway through the day, which comes in the clash between the two Welshmen as Mark Webster takes on Michael Warburton in a match where I expected the former to be a bit shorter to win than he is after his exertions on Saturday.
Webster won all five matches on Saturday and in the latter two he averaged over 95 so in that form he is going to be hard to beat here. These two met three times in the one week of Icons of Darts they have played against each other and that was at the beginning of last month. Webster won two of those three matches but looks to be playing a lot better here. They were over the best of seven legs but Webster won 4-0 despite not averaging 80 and 4-1 with an 87.82 average. He is definitely playing better than that and I think this format lends itself better to Webster than it does to Warburton. The 17/20 on a Webster win is more than acceptable.
Tips
WON – Back M.Webster to beat M.Warburton for a 3/10 stake at 1.85 with 888sport
Back him here:
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