The second day of action at The Masters sees the last 16 of the competition played out in full on Saturday. The matches get played over two sessions of action in the behind closed doors setup at the Marshall Arena in Milton Keynes.
It is the first time this season that we get to see the likes of Michael van Gerwen, Peter Wright and the newly crowned world champion and world number one Gerwyn Price on show on what should be a decent day of darts with us being up to the best of 19 legs.
Afternoon Session
The action gets underway with the former world champion Rob Cross in action when he goes up against a Mervyn King who looks to have reignited the spark in his career and who actually goes into this match as the favourite to win it, possibly rightly so after his fine display against Glen Durrant on Friday night. After they are done the past winner of this event, James Wade, takes to the stage when he takes on Chris Dobey who had a decent win against Dimitri Van den Bergh in the first round.
The third match of the afternoon session could end up being a tight affair as Mensur Suljovic looks to build on his win over Ian White in the first round when he goes up against a Nathan Aspinall who is using new bats this week. Whether that makes him vulnerable remains to be seen. The final match of the afternoon sees Dave Chisnall looking to build on a fine World Championship when he goes up against a player who rediscovered his better touch in that tournament himself in Daryl Gurney.
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Evening Session
A tasty evening session gets underway with two men who have met in a world final in the past as Gary Anderson takes on Adrian Lewis. Anderson is looking to build on his run to the final at Alexandra Palace while Lewis will be out to showcase that he can still do it at this level after a couple of poor seasons. The former world champion Peter Wright then gets his title defence up and running when the Scot faces a Simon Whitlock who has the potential to be dangerous, as he showed when beating MVG three times in big events last season.
The penultimate match of the day sees Gerwyn Price step onto the stage as the world champion for the first time when he goes up against a player who showed at Alexandra Palace that he can be very dangerous in Joe Cullen. A good looking day of action is rounded off with the now world number two Michael van Gerwen facing a Jonny Clayton who is visibly improving with every performance on the big stage and who is capable of causing an upset.
Betting
I’ll go with just the one bet over the course of the day as I take a bit of a watching brief and see what the seeded players have to offer after a month or so off. I’m happy to take one of them on in the evening session though where I think Gerwyn Price could be vulnerable against Joe Cullen. There is going to be a lot of scrutiny and expectation on Price in this match, more so than ever, and it will be interesting to see how he handles it. He has been all over the place doing media in recent times so his practice for this event might have been affected and it isn’t like he’s preparing for the Premier League next week like players usually are when they come here.
Cullen answered the question about whether there would be a World Championship hangover on Friday night when he averaged over 102 in a pretty good win over Stephen Bunting in the first round and the advantage of having played a match this week really shouldn’t be played down as it is pretty significant. These two met in the quarter finals of the Players Championship Finals last month and Price edged Cullen out in a deciding leg but prior to that the Yorkshireman had won their last three meetings so he knows he can see off Price and I fancy Cullen is playing well enough to take the scalp of the world champion here.
Tips
Back J.Cullen to beat G.Price for a 3/10 stake at 3.00 with 888sport
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