The penultimate darts tournament of the year is the Players Championship Finals and it gets underway back in Minehead on Friday when the event returns to the popular traditional venue after Covid forced it away last year.
It doesn’t seem to matter where the tournament is held for Michael van Gerwen. He won it again last year and he has qualified to attempt to not just defend his title but win the crown for the sixth time in eight years.
Recent Winners
2020 – Michael van Gerwen
2019 – Michael van Gerwen
2018 – Daryl Gurney
2017 – Michael van Gerwen
2016 – Michael van Gerwen
2015 – Michael van Gerwen
2014 – Gary Anderson
2013 – Michael van Gerwen
2012 – Phil Taylor
2011 – Kevin Painter
The Format
Unlike some events, the 64 man field is seeded by their final position on the Players Championship Order of Merit which gives us a completely different seed list to when the world rankings are used. Number 1 plays number 64 in the first round, 2 vs 63 and so on. The first round takes over the two sessions on Friday and is the best of 11, as is the second round on Saturday afternoon and we then move up to the best of 19 for the last 16 on Saturday evening and the quarter finals on Sunday afternoon. The remainder of the tournament takes place on Sunday evening over the best of 21 legs with the winner taking home a cool £100,000.
Top Quarter
This isn’t a tournament where the defending champion is the number one seed, instead that is determined by the Players Championship Order of Merit which means it is Jose de Sousa who heads the seeds and is in the top quarter here. There are three other seeds in the top 16 in this quarter including the world number one and world champion Gerwyn Price who will be looking for tournament wins in successive weekends after he took down the Grand Slam of Darts title last week. Chris Dobey and Brendan Dolan are the other high seeds in this quarter.
It has to be said there isn’t a huge amount among the other players in the section. Krzysztof Ratajski is worthy of a mention though after a decent run of TV events this year. Mervyn King was the runner up in this last year and will hope for a similarly good showing this time round too. Of the rest Devon Petersen is the last man into the field so he is in this quarter as are the likes of Dave Chisnall, Darius Labanauskas and Ian White.
Second Quarter
Michael Smith is the leading seed in the second quarter this week. He is still looking for a first TV title and could have had it at the Grand Slam last week but for an insane eight leg burst from Peter Wright which denied him in the last four. Ryan Searle is the next highest seed in a quarter which looks quite a tidy one. He had an excellent campaign on the floor as did Rob Cross and Callan Rydz who are the other two top 16 seeds in this quarter.
Nathan Aspinall is an obvious starting point for those who are not in the top 16 seeds in this quarter. Ryan Joyce will come here feeling good after a decent outing at the Grand Slam last week while James Wade was a beaten semi-finalist in that tournament. Mensur Suljovic and Daryl Gurney are two men who know all about going deep in TV tournaments, the same can be said of Simon Whitlock too. Of the rest, Ricky Evans, Alan Soutar and Jeff Smith will be looking to show their worth.
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Third Quarter
The beaten Grand Slam of Darts finalist Peter Wright is the leading seed in another tasty looking third quarter. Wright will be looking to go one better than he did in Wolverhampton but he is going to have it tough here because he is in the same quarter as the defending champion Michael van Gerwen who has an almost unopposable record in this tournament. Dirk van Duijvenbode and Damon Heta had good enough campaigns to be the other top 16 seeds in this section.
This is a stacked quarter because among those outside the top 16 seeds in it are the former world champion Adrian Lewis, a Kim Huybrechts who has looked in decent touch in recent times, the extremely talented Keane Barry as well as the German Giant, Gabriel Clemens. Three names jump off the page at us in terms of those not with a high seeding. They are all former world champions in Raymond van Barneveld, Stephen Bunting and Gary Anderson.
Bottom Quarter
The Masters, Premier League and World Grand Prix winner Jonny Clayton is the star act in the bottom quarter of the draw. He is the third seed this week and could very well be the man to beat here. The three players in the top 16 in the Order of Merit who will be looking to do that are Joe Cullen, Dimitri Van den Bergh and Ross Smith who has had a pretty decent year to be ranked as high as 14 on the list.
There are a few household names among those lower down the ranking for this tournament. The former world champion Scott Mitchell is one of them. Luke Humphries has good memories of this place having won the World Youth Championship here and made the UK Open final here earlier in the year and he’ll look to build on that effort. Vincent van der Voort, Jamie Hughes and Danny Noppert are some of the other players on show.
Betting
I’ll go with a couple of outright bets this weekend, both of which come in the top half where I’m staying away from that loaded third quarter and the likes of Clayton and Van den Bergh in the bottom quarter. Michael Smith is the man I like as a main bet. He looked very good at the Grand Slam last week and when he led Peter Wright 12-8 in the semi-final he was surely dreaming of a shot at glory only for ‘Snakebite’ to rattle off eight legs on the spin averaging well over 110 for that spell to deny Smith his chance. A repeat of the level he showed there should be enough to see him go deep again here though. The concern would be missed doubles in the best of 11 matches but if he gets to the third round where the format increases I would expect him to take a lot of stopping.
I’ll also take a chance on the beaten finalist last year in Mervyn King. He will have been disappointed with his effort in the Grand Slam when he was pony against Bradley Brooks in the opening game and his tilt at the title was done from there. We shouldn’t forget though that it has barely been a month since he was averaging 115 on TV at the World Series Finals and this is a tournament he has good memories from. Although Price and de Sousa are in his part of the draw, King doesn’t fear anyone and in a tournament where the format is designed for the draw to open up it might well be rewarding to side with King at 80/1.
Tips
Back M.Smith to win Players Championship Finals (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 26.00 with William Hill (1/2 1-2)
Back him here:
Back M.King to win Players Championship Finals (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 81.00 with Coral (1/2 1-2)
Back him here:
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