The culmination of the European darts season takes place this weekend when the 32 leading players from the European Tour Order of Merit head to Dortmund to battle it out for the European Championship, an event which continues the run of big TV tournaments to conclude the year.
Rob Cross took full advantage of the riches on offer here a year ago when he cruised to the title. He has made it through to the final stages to attempt to defend the title, but the draw looks very strong here.
Recent Winners
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
2013 – Adrian Lewis
2012 – Simon Whitlock
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 this week is done on the European Tour Order of Merit and that means that Luke Humphries is the top seed because he has done some damage in the regular European Tour events this season. He is seeded to meet the defending champion Rob Cross in the semi-finals but as with all these tournaments there are a number of players out to stop that from happening. Among those in the top 16 seeds in this half we have the recent winner in Gibraltar, Damon Heta, world finalist Michael Smith, World Grand Prix runner up Nathan Aspinall, Dirk van Duijvenbode, Ryan Searle and the UK Open champion Danny Noppert.
Given that not all of the big names played in all of the regular events we get some top players in lower seeds this week and one of those in the top half of the draw is James Wade. The other appealing lower seed in this section is the recent Players Championship winner Josh Rock. The other six players are made up by Andrew Gilding, Vincent van der Voort, Madars Razma, Karel Sedlacek, Martin Lukeman and the last man into the draw in Krzysztof Ratajski.
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Bottom Half
Given the way the seeds are devised for this tournament we can sometimes get a loaded half of the draw and that is very much the case for the bottom half here in Dortmund. The big guns missed some of the regular events which means that we have arguably the four best players in the world in this part of the bracket in Michael van Gerwen, Gerwyn Price, Peter Wright and Jonny Clayton. The other four higher seeds who have drawn the short straw here are Jose de Sousa, Dave Chisnall, Joe Cullen and Dimitri Van den Bergh. Loaded doesn’t do it justice.
I think it is fair to say that the lower seeds in this half of the draw are a little lower in level at the present time but among them is the former world champion Stephen Bunting while Ross Smith arrives in Dortmund off the back of a solid campaign. Chris Dobey, Martin Schindler, Gabriel Clemens, Ryan Meikle, Rowby-John Rodriguez and Daryl Gurney will all be looking for further rewards for their hard work across the season.
Betting
This draw looks very hard to decipher and unlike some stagings of this event there is no guarantee that the draw will open right up because although the big names are largely all in the bottom half of it, they have all avoided each other in the first round and should they all make it through then there will be a tournament within a tournament in that part of the draw. I don’t think things are quite so tough in the top half and that is where my one bet comes from this weekend.
That comes in the form of Michael Smith, who will have a tricky second round game whether he ends up facing Nathan Aspinall or Josh Rock but if he can come through that then he’ll soon be favourite to come through the top half of the draw. Smith hasn’t been in brilliant form recently but he offered signs of life in the Players Championship events last week where he ran into Gerwyn Price twice else he might have gone very deep in one or two. We know we are heading into major season so Smith will have been hitting the board hard and with this draw it could well be this weekend that the elusive TV win comes.
Tips
Back M.Smith to win European Championship (e/w) for a 1.5/10 stake at 15.00 with Sky Bet (1/2 1-2)
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