The World Cup of Darts is just days away but before we get there we have another European Tour event taking place this weekend when the European Darts Open is played out in Leverkusen as the qualifying series for the European Championship continues.
Gerwyn Price won this title last year and he is back this weekend looking to keep hold of the crown. A number of players who were originally in the tournament have pulled out but this is still a strong field.
Recent Winners
2023 – Gerwyn Price
2022 – Michael van Gerwen
2019 – Michael van Gerwen
2018 – Michael van Gerwen
2017 – Peter Wright
2016 – Michael van Gerwen
2015 – Robert Thornton
2014 – Peter Wright
2013 – Michael van Gerwen
2012 – Raymond Barneveld
The Format
The format for this tournament remains the same as before, which means that the qualifiers meet each other over the course of the play on Friday before the last 32 of the tournament is played over two sessions of action on Saturday, with the last 16 on Sunday afternoon and the quarter finals on Sunday night. They are all the best-of-11 legs with the semi-finals also on Sunday evening. They are the best-of-13 and then the final in the same session is the best-of-15 legs. The draw has been pre-determined and is played in a straight knockout format.
Top Half
The draw has been flipped again this weekend so the number two seed is the highest ranked one in the top half of the bracket. That means that Dave Chisnall is the top seed in the top half. If everything goes with the numbers this weekend he will meet Damon Heta in the semi-final but as ever there are six other seeded players who will be looking to stop that from happening. They are Danny Noppert, The Masters winner Stephen Bunting, Chris Dobey, five-time winner Michael van Gerwen, Ryan Searle and the home man Ricardo Pietreczko.
We have a bunch of qualifiers in this section as well although it has to be said that the majority of household names among the unseeded fraternity are in the other half of the draw. Joe Cullen is one appealing name in this half while the former UK Open winner Andrew Gilding is in here, as is fellow TV title winner Daryl Gurney. Mike De Decker has been showing some good form of late while Jeffrey de Graaf and Kevin Doets came to prominence a little more during the World Championship and they are in this half as well.
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Bottom Half
The world champion Luke Humphries has made his way to the number one seed in the draw this week and he is the highest seed in the bottom half of the draw. Should he meet the player he is seeded to face in the semi-final then he will come up against the form man of present in Rob Cross. If that match isn’t going to happen the other seeds in this half include the defending champion Gerwyn Price, European Tour event winner Martin Schindler, former world champion Peter Wright, the most recent European Tour winner Josh Rock, Ross Smith and Gian van Veen.
As I alluded to above, the qualifiers in this part of the draw look a lot stronger. They include former world champions in Michael Smith and Raymond van Barneveld while Krzysztof Ratajski had been an automatic seed in these events for the last few years. The reigning WDF world champion Andy Baetens is in this half of the draw too as are the likes of the current UK Open winner Dimitri Van den Bergh, James Wade, Callan Rydz, Gabriel Clemens and Dirk van Duijvenbode so this looks the tougher side of the bracket.
Betting
With that in mind, I’m going to look at the top half of the draw for a bet this weekend. That comes in the form of the former UK Open champion Danny Noppert who looks to have a nice enough draw and who has been in decent form for a while. He has won a Players Championship event this season and reached the semi-final of the most recent one. He reached the semi-final of European Tour 6 where it took Luke Humphries to beat him.
In fact, in the seven European Tour events so far, Noppert has lost to Rob Cross, Humphries, Martin Schindler who went on to win that event, Cross again, Luke Littler, Humphries again and Michael van Gerwen so it has taken one of the best players in the world to get the better of him on the European scene this term. He wouldn’t meet any of those names until the semi-final here and even then it is only van Gerwen in his half of the draw. At 28/1 he looks the value in the outright market this weekend.
Tips
Back D.Noppert to win European Darts Open (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 29.00 with Betway (1/2 1-2)
