The darts circuit heads to Dortmund this weekend to round off the European campaign with the big money tournament that is the European Championship, one which sees the 32 leading money earners from the European Tour battling it out for the title.
Peter Wright overcame all challengers to win this tournament a year ago and he has done more than enough to make it back into the event to attempt to defend the title. The field feels a lot stronger this year though with few surprise qualifiers.
Recent Winners
2023 – Peter Wright
2022 – Ross Smith
2021 – Rob Cross
2020 – Peter Wright
2019 – Rob Cross
2018 – James Wade
2017 – Michael van Gerwen
2016 – Michael van Gerwen
2015 – Michael van Gerwen
2014 – Michael van Gerwen
The Format
The four day tournament sees the action coming thick and fast with the first round played across the opening two nights of action on Thursday and Friday evening. They are over the best of 11 legs before we move into the second round across the best of 19 legs on Saturday afternoon and evening. The quarter finals are also the best of 19 on Sunday afternoon before the two semi-finals and the final is played out in a big Sunday evening session with all three matches being the best of 21 legs. The tournament can be watched in full on ITV4.
Top Half
The seeding for the tournament is done on the European Tour Order of Merit this week and having won two of the qualifying events it is Martin Schindler who is the highest seed on show. He is at the top of the bracket and is on a collision course for a semi-final with Dave Chisnall should the seeds hold up to that stage. Michael van Gerwen has won this tournament on a number of occasions and he is in this half of the draw with the other top 16 seeds being Gerwyn Price, Ryan Searle, Ross Smith, for whom this is a big week as he is defending the winners prize from two years ago, Gian van Veen and Stephen Bunting.
That leaves us with players ranked 17-32 as the lower seeded players in the draw this week and three of them in the top half are huge names, probably none bigger than Raymond van Barneveld who was safely into this event with time to spare. Gary Anderson is also in here too as is another former world champion in Michael Smith. Gabriel Clemens will hope to make the most of home advantage with Dirk van Duijvenbode, Luke Woodhouse, Daryl Gurney and Ritchie Edhouse completing the top half of the draw.
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Bottom Half
Luke Humphries is the number two seed this weekend and he will be the highest ranked player in the bottom half of the draw. In a strange way that the seedings have worked out, the world champion is on course for a repeat of the World Championship final in the last four because Luke Littler is the third seed on his tournament debut. The other higher ranked seeds in the top half include the defending champion Peter Wright, former winner Rob Cross, Chris Dobey, home star Ricardo Pietreczko, Josh Rock and Danny Noppert.
Some big names are in the lower ranked set of players in this half of the draw as well with Nathan Aspinall currently the highest ranked of those in terms of the world ranking. Recent World Grand Prix winner Mike De Decker goes in search of successive TV event wins in the bottom half too while James Wade knows how to go the course and distance in this tournament too. Jonny Clayton will hope to find some form this week with Jermaine Wattimena, Andrew Gilding, Damon Heta and Joe Cullen the other players on show.
Betting
There aren’t many soft parts of a draw these days so finding outright value isn’t easy but the top quarter only has two top 16 ranked players in the world rankings in it so it looks more open as any of the others. One of those is Gerwyn Price who I couldn’t possibly fancy of recent stage form and the other is Ross Smith who knows he needs a big weekend here given that he is defending the first prize he picked up when he won this tournament two years ago.
That adds to the pressure for Smudger but at 33/1 with a draw which reads Luke Woodhouse in the first round, Ryan Searle or Raymond van Barneveld in the second and no worse than Gerwyn Price ranking wise in the quarter final I think he has to be a bet. Smith is up to nine in the world rankings but if this week goes badly for him he could find himself outside the top 16 which with the World Championship on the horizon isn’t what he would want. The scoring power Smith has will be a real factor if he gets through the first round so I think there is enough juice for a bet on him at 33/1 here.
Tips
Back R.Smith to win European Championship (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 34.00 with Coral (1/2 1-2)
