The PDC Home Tour continues to rattle along at a decent lick and we have Group 5 of the competition on Tuesday night as four more dartists face off from their own homes looking to come out on top.
The players are understanding the format having watched a few groups now and we are seeing the sort of darts and outcomes that we would expect so it will be interesting to see if that continues on Tuesday.
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.
Monday Recap
We saw probably the best overall performance of the tournament so far from young Geert Nentjes on Monday when he dominated the group with all the scoring you would expect from a potential Dutch superstar and some pretty clinical finishing. He won all three of his matches with Ross Smith, Mickey Mansell and Lisa Ashton all beating each other to make Nentjes’ life a little easier. Ashton certainly wasn’t disgraced by any means.
It was another good night for us betting wise as not only did Nentjes win the group but his eight 180s was double what anyone else could manage over the course of the night so that landed a juicy 9/4 winner for us, which after the two nice winners on Sunday has us healthily in profit for the tournament and looking to build on that over the course of Tuesday.
Group 5 Line Up
We have two men who know what all this is about in action on Tuesday as they took part in one of the test events. The first of those is actually the favourite to come out on top on the night in Luke Humphries, the man who was a contender in the Premier League earlier in the campaign having shot to prominence on the Development Tour before going well in successive World Championships. He is a heavy scorer and probably deserves to be the 11/8 favourite to progress.
It was actually Devon Petersen who won the test event that these two played in and he’ll be out to replicate that success here. He is a 9/4 second favourite to land the group once again and although Humphries was the one getting hyped up, when the pro tour came to a halt for Covid-19 it was the South African who was making some serious waves in it having made a semi-final where Stephen Bunting, Dimitri Van den Bergh and Rob Cross were among his victims. He carried that form into the test event and will hope he has it with him here too.
PDC new boy Nick Kenny is the third man in the group and he continues a run of Welsh players who have already lined up in the tournament. He’ll be looking to emulate Jamie Lewis on the opening night and go through, and he is a 5/1 shot to do just that. We haven’t seen him on a PDC stage yet but we have seen him on the many BDO stages a few times, to differing successes it has to be said. He is a renowned heavy scorer though and in his own practice surroundings that gives him a chance.
The last man in the field is a player who has won Challenge Tour events in the past in Joe Murnan. He has graced many of the big PDC stages but his form has taken a bit of a dip and a downturn in the last 18 months or a little more. That said, anyone who qualifies for PDC majors must be able to play the game so without the pressures of rankings and the comfort of his own environment don’t be surprised to see ‘Shaggy’ play well.
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Outright Betting
I am tempted to take Devon Petersen to back up his win in the test event but there were five guys on show in that and Luke Humphries actually beat Petersen so maybe the odds makers have got it right to have installed Humphries as the favourite. I’m not completely convinced the other two men in the group can’t get involved along the way either so I’m going to go against getting involved in the group winner.
I had success in the 180s market on Monday night and I’m hearing in that direction again on Tuesday but rather than take the man to hit the most 180s I’m going to take the total 180s to be hit on the night, where the line is 18.5. There were 15 180s on Monday when Mickey Mansell never registered a single one but we have four heavier scorers than those in play on Monday here and I expect the scoring to go up as a result. We require an average of three 180s a match and one on top here and that feels probable to me.
Match Betting
It is the 180s market I like in one of the matches too. That is the first match of the night between Luke Humphries and Nick Kenny, potentially the two heaviest scorers on show in the competition. Humphries can bang in 180s like they are going out of fashion when he gets going but the Welshman is pretty relentless on the 60 bed himself and without the external pressures that professional darts brings I expect him to show that.
I’m a little surprised that the 180 line in this match is only 3.5 because if we assume that there will be eight legs in the match we need one every other leg for this to be covered. These two can both score heavier than that and it wouldn’t actually be a surprise to me if they covered the line on their own, especially Humphries. Both men can attack this match knowing there are two more after it and that should help the scoring. I’ll take the over here.
Tips
WON – Back Over 18.5 180s on the night for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Coral
Back it here:
WON – Back L.Humphries vs N.Kenny – Over 3.5 180s for a 3/10 stake at 1.93 with BetVictor
Back it here:
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