The European Tour heads into Belgium this week for the Belgian Darts Open which acts as the seventh qualifying tournament for the European Championship which takes place towards the end of the season.
Dave Chisnall won the latest European Tour event and he will be trying to defend the title this week too. We say it all the time but the talent opposing him comes from a deep pool and will be out to deny a successful title defence.
Recent Winners
2022 – Dave Chisnall
The Format
We have the normal format this weekend which means that the qualifiers meet each other over the course of the play on Friday before the last 32 of the tournament is played over two sessions of action on Saturday, with the last 16 on Sunday afternoon and the quarter finals on Sunday night. They are all the best-of-11 legs with the semi-finals also on Sunday evening. They are the best-of-13 and then the final in the same session is the best-of-15 legs. The draw has been pre-determined and is played in a straight knockout format.
Top Half
We are back to the draw having the number one seed in the top half and that means that Luke Humphries is the highest in this section. If everything goes to the rankings then just like last weekend the semi-final in the top half will be between Luke Humphries and Damon Heta. Six seeds will once again be out to stop that from happening. They include the beaten finalist here last year in Andrew Gilding, Nathan Aspinall, Danny Noppert, Jonny Clayton, Dirk van Duijvenbode and Joe Cullen.
There are plenty of recognisable names in the qualifiers for these events these days and two which jump off the page at us in the top half are James Wade and Raymond van Barneveld, who meet in a tasty first round clash. Callan Rydz is another household name while Keane Barry had a good run on the European Tour last weekend. European champion Ross Smith is in this half of the draw too as are the Dutch pair of Richard Veenstra and Jermaine Wattimena. Andy Baetens will look to give the home crowds something to cheer about.
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Bottom Half
The defending champion Dave Chisnall has already won two European Tour events this season and he is the top seed in the bottom half as he looks to make a successful defence of the title this weekend. Michael van Gerwen is the man who is seeded to meet him in what would be a tasty semi-final but the world champion Michael Smith is one of six other seeds who will have a thing or two to say about that. Josh Rock has shown good form in recent times and he is in this half as are Peter Wright, Martin Schindler, Rob Cross and Ryan Searle.
As with the top half of the draw, there are some big names on show in the bottom half who are not seeded this weekend. Two of the biggest are Gary Anderson and Krzysztof Ratajski, who meet in the first round. Daryl Gurney is another qualifier in this half, while home stars Dimitri Van den Bergh and Kim Huybrechts will go for glory from the opening round. Gabriel Clemens, Chris Dobey and Jose de Sousa are established stars who will need to do it from the off.
Betting
Danny Noppert has made the quarter finals of the last two European Tour events and actually missed a dart at a double to beat Luke Humphries in the last eight last week so he is trending in the right direction and I fancy he could be value at 25/1 to win this tournament. The thing about Noppert is with him not being in the Premier League he probably needs a couple of weeks of regular action to get up to full speed and he has had that now.
Noppert has a Saturday draw that should be fairly comfortable for him and then a rematch with Nathan Aspinall, who could easily have his eye on a huge final two weeks in the Premier League rather than this. He might need Humphries again in the quarter final but there was only a missed double between them last week it wouldn’t need too much for the tables to be turned there if they meet again. I suspect we are going to see further improvement in Noppert here and if we do the 25/1 that he takes this title down will look big.
Tips
Back D.Noppert to win Belgian Darts Open (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 26.00 with William Hill (1/2 1-2)
Back him here:
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