The opening night of the World Series of Darts Finals takes place out in Salzburg on Friday night when darts welcomes a crowd for the first time in more than six months on an evening where the unseeded players battle it out for the right to take on a seed in the next round on Saturday.
16 players will be on show in eight matches and although the format is quite short with the best of 11 legs and the seeds don’t come in until Saturday, there are still some excellent names and good looking matches for us to enjoy over the course of the night.
First Four Matches
The night gets underway with a couple of the lesser lights in action when Harry Ward goes up against Darius Labanauskas for the right to meet Nathan Aspinall on Saturday before Ian White clashes with one of the winners of the Autumn Series events in Damon Heta in what should be a very good match. The same can be said of the third one where Dave Chisnall meets Cody Harris before Joe Cullen looks to continue his good form of last week when he goes up against Vincent van der Voort.
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Later Four Matches
The night concludes with four cracking looking contests with plenty of eyes likely to be on the first of them when Jeff Smith meets Fallon Sherrock in a nightmare draw for both players. The two big matches of the first round follow them. Krzysztof Ratajski goes up against Mensur Suljovic before the tie of the round which is a repeat of the recent World Matchplay semi-final when Glen Durrant takes on the winner of that tournament in Dimitri Van den Bergh. The evening concludes with the battle of the old guys as Simon Whitlock takes on Steve Beaton.
Betting
I’m tempted to take Joe Cullen to beat Vincent van der Voort because Cullen showed excellent form last week but the price is just a little too short for me particularly as VVDV has shown at events like the World Matchplay that he hasn’t lost any of his overall quality, it just doesn’t come out as often as he would like. That leaves me to go with just the one bet which comes in the final match of the night between Simon Whitlock and Steve Beaton.
Whitlock has an excellent record in overseas tournaments and while I’ve never worked out why that it, he’ll be quite happy being on the continent here. He continued his fine work on different shores at the Autumn Series where he made two quarter finals and among his victims in those events were Peter Wright, Dave Chisnall and Glen Durrant. You don’t beat them if you’re not in decent nick and of course if we go back a little further he walloped Michael van Gerwen at the World Matchplay. Beaton is a steady sort but he is unlikely to offer anything too special so with the form Whitlock appears to be in I expect the Australian to win with a bit in hand.
Tips
Back S.Whitlock (-1.5 legs) to beat S.Beaton for a 3/10 stake at 2.10 with Betfair
Back him here:
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