There are two more sessions of play at the PDC World Darts Championship on Thursday as the first and second round of the tournament continues at quite some pace inside the behind closed doors structure at the Alexandra Palace in London.
We are still waiting for this tournament to come to life as the standard on the first two days hasn’t been the greatest. With a couple of seasoned campaigners on show on Thursday afternoon hopefully this will be the session that happens.
Madars Razma vs Toru Suzuki
The opening match of the day sees the Latvian number one Madars Razma taking on one of the Japanese qualifiers in the form of Toru Suzuki who we are seeing on the Alexandra Palace stage for the first time with the former champion Gary Anderson waiting for the winner in the next round.
Razma has had plenty of experience in the World Championship although a lot of it has been in the BDO version of the tournament. He played here last year though and lost in a deciding set to Harry Ward is one of the more low key first round games. He should still be favoured to come through here on experience grounds but if Suzuki can maintain any kind of consistency it wouldn’t be the biggest surprise in the world is he keeps the Latvian honest. Either way I’m in no rush to bet on this one.
Mike De Decker vs Edward Shouji Foulkes
The second match of the afternoon sees the promising Belgian player Mike De Decker looking to pick up a win on his Alexandra Palace debut when he meets another debutant in the form of the Japanese qualifier Edward Shouji Foulkes for the right to face Brendan Dolan in the next round.
Although we don’t know a huge amount about Foulkes the fact that he beat Seigo Asada in the Japanese qualifying event for this competition shows that he must have some sort of game about him because Asada is a very capable and underrated player. De Decker is enjoying life on the PDC circuit and is a more than handy player but I’m always a little reluctant to back players who won’t have been the favourite in a match of this magnitude too often. You’d think the Belgian would win but a no show from him given his inexperience wouldn’t be completely surprising. I’m happy to leave this one alone too.
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Ryan Murray vs Lourence Ilagan
The last of the first round matches in the Thursday afternoon session of the competition sees the Scottish rising star Ryan Murray meeting the extremely experienced Lourence Ilagan who we have seen on this stage and the World Cup scene a number of times.
Ilagan has a lot of experience but he has never won a match here in four previous attempts and that might be something that weighs on his mind. There is also a suspicion that he isn’t quite as good as he has been in previous appearances and because of Covid he won’t have played as much darts as he is used to doing. Murray has had a pretty good first year on the tour. He has scored very heavily and at the recent Winter Series he had a run to the quarter final of one of the events where Dirk van Duijvenbode, Jeffrey de Zwaan and Devon Petersen were among his victims which shows what he can deliver.
I expect Murray to have too much scoring power for Ilagan here so as long as the Scot doesn’t have a complete mare on the doubles, and he should get enough time on them even if he does, then I expect it to be he who will progress to face Michael van Gerwen in the second round. The 4/5 on the Scot is probably only a fair price but I do think he runs out the winner here.
Daryl Gurney vs William O’Connor
The only second round match of the afternoon session sees two Irishmen battling it out when the north is represented by Daryl Gurney as he takes on the man from the south in William O’Connor with Chris Dobey waiting for the winner after Christmas.
Both men will know the opportunity that is ahead of them to go deep here so it will be interesting to see if that has any impression on quality that we see. On the face of it Gurney looks to be a seed worth taking on but even though O’Connor was impressive enough in getting rid of Niels Zonneveld in the previous round he is pretty short in terms of his price for this one when you consider the quality that Gurney has if he can just bring out something like his best form. If I could’ve got a bigger price on O’Connor I would have taken it but I’m happy to sit this one out given what is on offer.
Tips
WON – Back R.Murray to beat L.Ilagan for a 3/10 stake at 1.80 with Betway
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