The leading lights in the darts world are back on the continent this weekend as the European Tour continues with the German Darts Open, the third to last qualifying event for the European Championship which comes along next month.
This will be the first time the tournament has been staged since 2019 when Michael van Gerwen won it as he did most things back then. He withdrew from the tournament in the lead up to it though so we are guaranteed a new champion.
Recent Winners
2019 – Michael van Gerwen
2018 – Max Hopp
2017 – Peter Wright
The Format
We might not have had many European Tour events last year but the format for these tournaments remains the same as before, which means that 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
Given that van Gerwen has withdrawn it leaves Luke Humphries as the top seed in the draw this week after his fine European Tour campaign so far. He certainly knows how to win these events and he’ll be looking for another to add to his CV this weekend. There are seven seeds out to stop him though and they are Dave Chisnall, Dirk van Duijvenbode, the winner in Hungary last week in Joe Cullen, the inaugural champion here in Peter Wright, Jonny Clayton, Damon Heta and the UK Open champion Danny Noppert.
We also have eight qualifiers in the top half of the draw and there is no doubting who the biggest draw among them is. That is Raymond van Barneveld but Daryl Gurney is another household name in this part of the draw. The other six players who will be doing battle in the top half this weekend are Ross Smith, Joe Murnan, Jim Williams, Daniel Larsson, Bradley Brooks and the Scottish star Alan Soutar.
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Bottom Half
The former world champion Gerwyn Price is the main man in the bottom half of the draw this weekend. He pulled out of Hungary last week but is in the field here in Germany and he’ll be looking to make big progress. The Welsh star is seeded to face Rob Cross in the semi-final but the likes of Martin Schindler, Nathan Aspinall, Jose de Sousa, Krzysztof Ratajski, Ryan Searle and the classy Belgian player Dimitri Van den Bergh will be out to stop that from happening.
We already knew two of the qualifiers in this bottom half of the draw before any matches between them were played out as Lewy Williams and Steve Beaton ended up with byes after some withdrawals ahead of the event. The other six qualifiers in this section are Danny van Trijp, Dragutin Horvat, Martin Lukeman, Geert Nentjes, Luke Woodhouse and David Evans in what is probably not quite as strong a half of the draw as the other one.
Betting
Nathan Aspinall had a decent run to the semi-finals in Hungary last week to brush off any cobwebs that formed in the down time he had since the World Matchplay and the smaller events after it and given that he has landed himself in a nice part of the draw this weekend I think he is worth backing to go a couple of steps better. He is 16/1 to win the tournament which might not sound a lot but we should remember there are question marks over Peter Wright and Gerwyn Price while Michael van Gerwen isn’t here.
We know at his best Aspinall is able to compete with those guys so the fact they are either not here or not at 100% should give him a better chance of making it deep in this draw. He will expect to beat Steve Beaton and then Jose de Sousa isn’t the worst last 16 draw and from there these things become wide open. Aspinall took care of Stephen Bunting among others last week and has been in decent touch over the last couple of months. I think he can cap that with a title here.
Tips
Back N.Aspinall to win German Darts Open (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 17.00 with Boylesports (1/2 1-2)
Back him here:
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