The second round of the European Darts Matchplay tournament is played out across two sessions of play in Trier on Saturday, with places at the final day of the competition on Sunday the reward for the winners.
This all means that the seeded players will take to the stage for the first time this weekend with each seeded player going up against one of the qualifiers who won through the opening round of the event on Friday.
Afternoon Session
The second round will begin with a player who has been a bit of a force on the European Tour circuit over the last year or so in Dave Chisnall going up against Ryan Joyce who can beat anyone on his day. When they are done the two Northern Irishmen battle it out when Josh Rock goes up against Brendan Dolan before Rob Cross takes on another Northern Irish player in the tournament in Mickey Mansell. We reach the halfway mark of the afternoon with one of the form men in Damon Heta going up against Gian van Veen.
The second half of the afternoon gets up and running with our outright pick for the weekend Nathan Aspinall going up against Martin Lukeman. The pick of the afternoon matches is the third to last one as Dirk van Duijvenbode meets the UK Open champion Andrew Gilding. Joe Cullen is the big name up in the penultimate match of the session when he takes on Vitezslav Sedlak and then the afternoon concludes with the current European champion Ross Smith up against Stephen Bunting.
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Evening Session
There is a cracking evening session to enjoy on Saturday and it begins with a cracker between Jonny Clayton and James Wade and then when they are done Dimitri Van den Bergh will be up on the stage when he meets Ricardo Pietreczko. The third match of the evening sees Ryan Searle taking on the World Championship semi-finalist Gabriel Clemens. The halfway mark is reached by the standout fixture on the card as the two Dutch stars meet when Michael van Gerwen goes up against the legend Raymond van Barneveld.
The world champion Michael Smith brings us into the second half of the evening session. He will go up against a Keane Barry who will be extra motivated as he needs a couple more wins to pinch a place at the World Matchplay later in the month. The number one seed Luke Humphries is then up on the stage when he meets Marko Kantele. The penultimate match of the evening sees Martin Schindler taking on Callan Rydz and the action concludes in the second round with Danny Noppert going up against James Wilson.
Betting
There is one bet which jumps out at me on Saturday and it comes in the final match of the afternoon where Stephen Bunting goes up against Ross Smith. To be fair to Smith, he has had a couple of decent runs in tournaments over the last month or so and he is entitled to feel that he is a worthy favourite in this match but Bunting appears to be his kryptonite in that the Liverpool man has won six of their eight career meetings.
Bunting is a player who generally runs on confidence so the fact that he has already won a match this weekend has to be significant. He scored well in that win over Luke Woodhouse, who had just reached the final of an event on the floor so it certainly wasn’t the easy draw it might have been. Smith has to come into this match cold, as all seeds do on Saturday, but he isn’t a regular seed so that might be more of an issue for him who isn’t as used to it as others who might know a little more what to expect. I can’t get away from that 6-2 head-to-head advantage that Bunting has and at 13/10 that makes him value to me.
Tips
Back S.Bunting to beat R.Smith for a 3/10 stake at 2.30 with BetVictor
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