The Icons of Darts continues on Wednesday when the first pool of players for this week take to their home oches once again to compete for the second group title of the three that they will be involved in.
This was a competitive pool on Monday when they were first in action and with the six players having shaken off some rust we should expect the standard to improve, not that it was terrible in the first place.
The Format
Each day from Monday to Saturday six players will battle it out for a daily title. There are two pools of players, one which plays on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and the other which toe the oche on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Each day the six players will play each other once over the best of nine legs with two points for a win. The daily winner is the player with the most points. If players are level on points it is determined on leg difference and then the record between the two. The entire event can be watched on various bookmaker websites, dartshop.tv or the Modus YouTube channel.
Confirmation of today’s final league table ✅ @reddragondarts #IconsofDarts
Well done to @BorisKoltsov180 ?? pic.twitter.com/M1dBEJv5t9
— MODUS Sports (@ModusDarts180) July 28, 2020
Tuesday Recap
We were treated to one of the closest Icons groups there has ever been on Tuesday when four players ended up tied on six points with not even leg difference being able to determine the winner. It was Boris Koltsov who landed the spoils courtesy of beating Mike Warburton, the man who finished on +5 legs with him, in their match. Stephen Burton came third one six points and +2 leg difference with Scott Mitchell fourth with a -2 leg difference. Ironically it was the two favourites going into the day who were the lowest two in the table as Martin Adams came fifth with two wins and Keane Barry last on just one win.
It was a level day for us betting wise on Tuesday. It started terribly for us as Scott Mitchell put in one of the worst performances I’ve ever seen from him to get routed 5-0 by Boris Koltsov even though the Russian averaged just over 81 for the contest. Thankfully those losses were soon recovered by Stephen Burton who came past Mike Warburton in a closely fought match, rounding out a 5-3 winner to keep us in profit for the week.
Wednesday Line Up
Scott Marsh won the group title on Monday and it is he who will be expected to make a successful defence of his crown on Wednesday. He looks to be the man to beat, not just based on Monday but previous outings in the Icons of Darts as well. Keelan Kay has shown real promise on his last two outings and if he comes on for Monday’s run he could be the man to give Marsh the most to think about once again. Fallon Sherrock is showing signs of finding her feet in this format but needs to convert good performances into wins.
Diogo Portela has been a little too hit or miss for his liking in recent outings but with the Challenge Tour starting up in a couple of weeks this group and the one on Friday could be very important for him. The same can be said of Jose Justicia, who for large parts of Monday was playing like the player who has spent the last two years on the PDC tour. John Brown is beginning to get to grips with the challenge as well and he makes up the sextet.
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Outright Betting
I took Scott Marsh to win this group on Monday and I’m going to be back on him again here. He was 5/4 to win the group on Monday and has only come in to 11/10 for Wednesday even though he dominated the group. He won four of his five matches over the course of the day and the one he lost he had a near seven point better average. That highlights the size of the task for the rest of the group on Wednesday.
The other issue is that most of the field have on Wednesday is that two or three of them played some of their best stuff on Monday and still never got near Marsh so they are going to need him to come dramatically off his form to have a real chance here. I just don’t see that happening and while we might get the odd freak result, I don’t really see anyone playing well enough to overturn Marsh over the entire day.
Match Betting
I’ll go with one in the match betting on Wednesday as well and that comes relatively late in the day where John Brown takes on Jose Justicia in a match I fancy the youngster to come out on top in at even money. You wouldn’t say either of these men have pulled up trees in the Icons leagues yet but Justicia has been playing it for months without doing anything as opposed to Brown who is only playing his third week in this competition.
Brown took a week or so to get going in this event and we shouldn’t hold that against him, we’ve seen the majority of players take a week to get used to the setup and things. In his last two days of action though, Brown has won four of his 10 matches and lost two others in a deciding leg so he is certainly getting the hang of it. In that time he has a win over David Evans, one over Mark Webster and his two wins on Monday, one of which was against Justicia. The Spaniard crept over the 90 average in beating Kay on Monday but in the main he is averaging under 85 and even in the 70s. Three times in those 10 matches Brown has averaged in the 90s and above 85 on two other occasions. There’s enough to think the even money on him here is a nice price.
Tips
Back S.Marsh to win Group 3 for a 3/10 stake at 2.10 with Betfred
Back J.Brown to beat J.Justicia for a 3/10 stake at 2.00 with Bet365
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