Wednesday night brings another group of the PDC Home Tour into our homes via the various ways of watching this event. Group 13 sees four more men tackling each other from their own homes in a bid to come out on top in the round robin format.
We have seen a mixture of groups with big names and those with a more competitive feel to them and we are in the latter segment on Wednesday, with nobody currently inside the top 20 in the Order of Merit to be seen.
The Format
Each night four players will battle it out in a round robin format with the group winner progressing to the next stage of the tournament. All six matches in each group will be the best of nine legs with two points awarded for a win. If players finish level on points then leg difference will decide the outcome. If that cannot separate players then the head to head will settle the group winner. Were three players to be tied on points and leg difference the player with the highest overall average goes through. The entire tournament is being streamed live on PDC.tv, the Sky Sports App and various bookmaker sites.
Tuesday Recap
It has to be said that the event turned into something of a farce on Tuesday night when first Keegan Brown saw his internet let him down and then his phone did likewise and eventually he had to be ejected from the competition, leaving the other three men to end up playing each other twice. It was Max Hopp who came out on top in that situation ahead of Mike de Decker, with Conan Whitehead, who was actually in the best position of the lot when Brown was around, ending up bottom of the three.
The good news for us was that prior to disappearing, Keegan Brown did play one match and it was one he lost, against Conan Whitehead which was the one match bet on the night that we tipped up. Although the match was expunged from the records as far as bookmakers are concerned it did take place and as a result we come out of the night with a little bit of profit, which isn’t too bad given the farcical nature of it.
Group 13 Line Up
It is Steve Beaton who is the highest ranked player in the field in this group. Beaton has a couple of advantages heading into the evening, not only does he have the highest ranking, but he is one of two men who have already competed in one of the home events having taken part in a test event. We saw with Nathan Aspinall on Sunday evening just how big an advantage that is. Quite how many darts someone like Beaton will have thrown between then and now remains to be seen, and is a concern for favourite backers.
The other man on show on Wednesday who has competed in one of these home events before is Matt Edgar. Unlike Beaton, he is not a man who is regularly seen on the biggest of stages and his experience in the test event he played was not a positive one as he lost all four matches, albeit to players all ranked above him in the Order of Merit. Nevertheless, he does have that advantage on two of the players which could be the difference in another poor night for him or a better one.
Carl Wilkinson is in the second year of his two year Tour card but being ranked at 89 and having not gone past the last 32 of a full tour event since he picked up his card, we have to appreciate that he is not likely to keep his playing rights regardless of what the future for the remainder of this year holds. It also suggests that he is unlikely to be of the standard of the rest in this group and just two match wins in the eight Players Championship events to date confirms that.
Callan Rydz is the last man in the group in terms of the world rankings but we should take that with a pinch of salt because he has only had his Tour card a couple of months. He got that courtesy of his position on the Challenge Tour rankings last season, where he won a couple of events as well as another on the Development Tour. He has been seen as a bright hope coming out of Newcastle and showed why at Alexandra Palace in December when he took care of Steve Lennon in the World Championship before being edged out by Danny Noppert. It must be said that he has lost in the first round of all seven Players Championship events this season but if there is a sleeper in this group he could well be it.
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Outright Betting
My gut feeling is that Callan Rydz is the man who will come out on top in this group. I readily accept that Steve Beaton and Matthew Edgar have the familiarity advantage on their side but I’m not convinced either are much kop in this format. I can’t believe Beaton will be flat out to win and I suspect Edgar might be getting ridiculed all night for losing all four of his matches the first time he was playing at home.
At the same time, I don’t think Carl Wilkinson is likely to be a factor over the four matches either. Rydz has a big reputation which was earned from his exploits on the Challenge Tour last season and he’s a young, heavy scorer and we’ve seen plenty of them go well in this tournament already. It would be a surprise if anyone won all three matches in this group but if someone does it could be Rydz but 5/2 is a fair price and no more. I’ll sit that out.
Match Betting
I’ll put my money where my mouth is on Callan Rydz in the opening match of the night against Steve Beaton though. Rydz has won their only previous meeting which should give him confidence when taking on the veteran but the other reason is that the Newcastle man is such a heavy scorer. I don’t know if he will have another device set up this time, but the first time Beaton played in the home events he didn’t have a scoreboard on him and kept leaving bogey numbers.
That cost him on that occasion and if he does that a couple of times here then Rydz has the scoring power to make him pay. I expect Rydz to do the bulk of the scoring in this match so then the match comes down to whether he hits the doubles and we are getting a decent enough price to find out. We’ve seen the likes of Michael Smith, Simon Whitlock, Luke Humphries and Max Hopp all lose their opening match as the highest ranked player in the group. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Beaton suffers the same fate.
Tips
Back C.Rydz to beat S.Beaton for a 3/10 stake at 2.50 with William Hill
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