The European Championship gets underway in Dortmund on Thursday evening when the bottom half of the draw plays their first round matches on a night where we get to see some potential winners taking to the stage.
Although the very big names in the main are saved for Friday, we still have the likes of Michael van Gerwen, Peter Wright, Gerwyn Price and the home ace Martin Schindler toeing the oche looking to entertain the crowds.
First Four Matches
We get the tournament underway with two outsiders looking to make it through to the second round on Saturday when Ryan Joyce takes on Luke Woodhouse. When they are done two former winners will look to progress when the 2022 winner Ross Smith meets the man who took the title from him in Peter Wright. Two men who will feel they are going well enough to be the champion this year compete in the third match of the night when Gian van Veen faces Damon Heta before we get to the halfway point of the evening with a potentially feisty affair as Gerwyn Price takes on Daryl Gurney in a repeat of one half of the World Cup final.
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Later Four Matches
The second half of the session gets going with the other half of that Wales team at the World Cup when Jonny Clayton looks to move into the next round at the expense of Ryan Searle. The number two seed and leading home player Martin Schindler will look to feed off the crowd in the next match. He meets a Dave Chisnall who is bang out of form and looking to find something here. The penultimate match of the night sees two Dutchmen facing off when Wessel Nijman plays Michael van Gerwen before we round off the opening night of action with a clash between Stephen Bunting and Chris Dobey.
Betting
Regular readers will know that I’m no fan of these best of 11 sprints in these major events so I largely keep my powder dry until we get to the longer formats of tournaments like this but there is a price that I can’t ignore on Thursday evening and it comes in the final match of the night where Stephen Bunting takes on Chris Dobey. Having been in the Premier League, these two have seen a fair bit of each other with them having met six times in 2025 already.
Bunting began that run with a 6-0 win in Bahrain but since then Dobey has won four of the next five meetings with the one he lost being in the Premier League when he was 5-3 up only for Bunting to win in a deciding leg, taking out 121 to win it with Dobey waiting on tops for victory. That makes me think that the 6/4 on the outsider here is a little on the big side. Overall, Dobey leads the record between the two 13-5 and in a format which will be a leveller, he looks overpriced at 6/4.
Tips
Back C.Dobey to beat S.Bunting for a 3/10 stake at 2.50 with Boylesports
Back him here:
