There will be 32 nervy players in Belgium on Friday as the opening round of the European Championship is played out across and afternoon and evening sessions of play in Hasselt.
All 32 men play on the opening day and they will all want to come through the lottery nature of the best of 11 leg format and get into the second round where the format increases and the pressure eases a little.
There isn’t a PDC major goes by these days where we don’t get some tasty looking first round draws and this tournament is no exception. There are some potentially magic matches and it is a shame some of them will be just the best of 11 legs.
The pick of the matches in this first round sees Ian White taking on Stephen Bunting, James Wade facing Terry Jenkins and the Lakeside world final rematch between Jelle Klaasen and Raymond Barneveld. Dave Chisnall vs Mensur Suljovic could explode into a cracking match as well.
The afternoon session of play on Friday has two world champions in action and three more world finalists in a pretty good cast list for the first period of play in a tournament. Christian Kist and Stephen Bunting are the world champions playing while Simon Whitlock, Peter Wright and Alan Norris the finalists. The latter two play each other.
I have two bets I like in this session and the first involves one of those two champions – Christian Kist. He faces the upcoming Austrian talent Rowby-John Rodriguez and I’m slightly surprised Kist is a favourite. He hasn’t had the best of years and it is well known he is much better over the longer distances.
Rowby-John Rodriguez is a heavy scorer and he isn’t bad at the end of legs either. He is aggressive on the oche in that he really attacks the board and we’ve seen ever since he burst onto the scene that he fears nobody. He’s had some good results in the European Tour events recently and I fancy him to win this one.
The other bet I like in the afternoon and that is on Simon Whitlock. He has been showing signs of improvement in recent weeks and he has landed a plum draw against Magnus Caris here.
Caris has done precious little in recent times at the main tour level and doesn’t really have an area of his game where he can outperform Whitlock. The Swede just has to hope the Australian feels the pressure and doesn’t deliver a solid performance. If Whitlock is solid and doesn’t do anything silly on the doubles then I expect him to come through with plenty in hand.
The stars really come out to play in the evening session with the likes of Michael van Gerwen, Adrian Lewis, Gary Anderson, James Wade, Phil Taylor and Raymond Barneveld all in action along with the likes of Dave Chisnall and Kim Huybrechts. It really is a stacked line up.
There is one bet I’m going to take in this session as well and it comes in the all-Dutch clash between Jelle Klaasen and Barneveld where I’m a little surprised that Klaasen is such an underdog.
It has been a while since Barneveld convinced us on the big stage and we know Klaasen can beat the Dutch legend on stage as he won their Lakeside final back in 2006. Klaasen has won a tour event as recently as last month and has been in good touch for a while now.
With Barneveld low on confidence and flattering to deceive in the big matches I have to take the confidence and quality of Klaasen in this one as my bet for the evening.
Back R-J.Rodriguez to beat C.Kist for a 4/10 stake at 2.00 with BetVictor
Back S.Whitlock (-2.5 legs) to beat M.Caris for a 4/10 stake at 2.00 with William Hill
Back J.Klaasen to beat R.Barneveld for a 4/10 stake at 2.20 with Boylesports
Blog darts YTD: +14.69pts
