The middle day of the Belgian Darts Open sees the second round of the opening European Tour event of the season taking place throughout two sessions of play on Saturday as the seeded players enter the fold for the weekend.
The seeded players are scheduled to face players ranked 17-32 in the world rankings in this second round and in the main that is the case but there are a few qualifiers who didn’t read their script and have secured a crack at a big gun.
Afternoon Session
We begin the day with a juicy clash between Danny Noppert and Daryl Gurney who meet for the second time in as many weekends after Noppert did a job on the man from Northern Ireland at the UK Open a week ago. When they are done Gary Anderson will get his European Tour season underway when he takes on Luke Woodhouse, who was fortunate to come through the opening round. Dave Chisnall is the third seed to take to the stage when he faces Ricardo Pietreczko before we reach the halfway point of the session with a good looking match between Jonny Clayton and Wessel Nijman.
The second half of the afternoon session is as good as it gets on the European Tour at this stage of a tournament. It gets underway with Rob Cross going up against Ross Smith before Damon Heta looks to make it through when he faces the former world champion Michael Smith. Stephen Bunting will get the crowd going in the penultimate match of the session when he takes on Jermaine Wattimena before things conclude with Nathan Aspinall facing the current European champion Ritchie Edhouse.
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Evening Session
The huge stars come out to play in the evening session when we start with the man who reached the final of the UK Open last weekend in James Wade. He takes on Raymond van Barneveld for a place at the final day of the event. When they are done Peter Wright will go up against Matt Campbell who has finally made it through to this stage. Gerwyn Price is the next seed beginning his campaign. He has a tough looking test against Gian van Veen before the halfway point of the evening comes along with a match between Dimitri Van den Bergh and Martin Schindler.
The last four matches on the night look absolute crackers as Luke Humphries gets the second part of the evening underway when the world number one faces the World Grand Prix champion Mike De Decker. The world champion Luke Littler follows them onto the stage when he goes up against another dangerous challenger in Ryan Searle. The penultimate match of the night sees Michael van Gerwen taking on Boris Krcmar before the second round of the tournament concludes with two heavy hitters as Chris Dobey meets Dirk van Duijvenbode.
Betting
There isn’t too much that grabs my eye on Saturday but had it not been for the mauling that he took at the hands of Danny Noppert last week, I would be on Daryl Gurney to beat him after the way the man from Northern Ireland looked in the opening round on Friday. That thrashing is just too fresh in the mind for it to have been forgotten so I would rather leave that one alone and instead I’ll just take one other which comes along in the evening session.
That is for Martin Schindler to beat Dimitri Van den Bergh. Admittedly the Belgian will have the crowd behind him in this match but his form this year has been quite worrying actually. He went out of the UK Open in kind of shambolic fashion last weekend when he averaged 70 and in the two Players Championship events he has played he has lost with averages of 82.48 and 88.86. His exit at The Masters was with an 85.19 average and those are coming along too frequently for my liking. Schindler had a great season in the European Tour events last term and has already had a match on the stage this weekend and if Van den Bergh posts anything like those numbers I would expect Schindler to beat him.
Tips
Back M.Schindler to beat D.Van den Bergh for a 3/10 stake at 2.00 with Coral
