The World Cup of Darts gets underway in Germany on Thursday and while we have to wait until Friday evening to see the host nation take to the stage for the first time, there are plenty of good players ready to grace the oche on the opening day.
Wales get their title defence underway on Thursday evening while the likes of the Netherlands, Australia and Scotland will also lay down their title credentials on a night where the format is very simple. It is a race to five in the pairs.
Early Matches
The opening four matches of the night are the ones which do not involved the seeded countries. We get underway with Hungary, whose players will be inspired by having the best in the game in their country last weekend, taking on Lithuania who are regulars at this tournament. The match of the night could well come in the second game where the Czech Republic take on Poland who are headed by Krzysztof Ratajski. Gibraltar take on Singapore and the ever popular Paul Lim in the third match of the evening before we meet the halfway mark with USA taking on Sweden.
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Later Matches
The seeds come one after the other in the second part of the evening with Scotland the first of them. They have Peter Wright and John Henderson going into battle for them and will be expected to see off a weak Chinese pairing. The Netherlands come next when Michael van Gerwen and Dirk van Duijvenbode take on Denmark. Wales get their title defence underway in the penultimate match of the evening when Gerwyn Price and Jonny Clayton take on Finland before the Australian pair of Simon Whitlock and Damon Heta meet Italy in what should be a comfortable match for the men from down under.
Betting
There isn’t a huge amount I like over the course of the evening. The better bets here tend to come in Friday’s action when looking through things at face value. You can never be completely certain in pairs but the four seeds all look unopposable given who they have drawn. I might have looked to get after Scotland given how late John Henderson was confirmed for this event but the Chinese pair aren’t the team to do it with.
There are one pair that I think might be overpriced and that is the Czech Republic against Poland. Obviously Krzysztof Ratajski is going to be the class act on the stage in this match but we have to remember he is only going to throw every other visit to the oche. Often in these pairs it isn’t about who strong your best player is it is how strong the second one is and I think the Czech Republic have the edge in that department with Adam Gawlas extremely talented. He is in form too with a run to the quarter finals of the European Tour event at the weekend where he beat Jonny Clayton and ran Jose de Sousa close in a deciding leg in the last eight. Krzysztof Kcuik has only won two of his last nine matches on the tour so that edge the Czechs have could be significant. It took the Netherlands to win a deciding leg to beat the Czech Republic pairing last year but the Poles aren’t at that level. The 2/1 on the Czech Republic looks mighty big to me.
Tips
Back Czech Republic to beat Poland for a 3/10 stake at 3.00 with Betway
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