The opening day of the Hungarian Darts Trophy sees the qualifiers battling it out over two sessions of play on Friday with the aim for everyone going onto the stage to be to win and set up a date with a seed on Saturday.
We have to wait until Saturday for the higher ranked players in the game to come to the party but we have plenty of seasoned campaigners, recognisable names and rising stars to entertain us throughout Friday.
Afternoon Session
We begin with two players who have been on the PDC circuit for a while battling it out when Joe Murnan goes up against Jermaine Wattimena. When they are done two European players will take to the stage as Vladimir Andersen takes on Anton Ostlund. The exciting youngster Sebastian Bialecki follows them. He meets Mihaly Vida for a place in the second round. We reach the halfway point of the afternoon with two men whose better success has come on the BDO/WDF circuit when Madars Razma takes on Scott Waites.
The second half of the afternoon session is full of good looking matches. The first of those sees the former Lakeside champion Scott Mitchell looking to make use of a rare European Tour qualification when he takes on Andy Boulton. Scott Williams has been a little quiet of late but he has the big stage to perform on when he meets Richard Veenstra while the penultimate match of the afternoon sees Mike De Decker facing the UK Open champion Andrew Gilding. We conclude with the star Dutch youngster Gian van Veen meeting Brendan Dolan.
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Evening Session
The evening session is always good on the European Tour and we get underway with the home player Gabor Jagicza taking on Luke Woodhouse before Robert Owen meets the reigning European champion Ross Smith. Rowby-John Rodriguez is always entertaining and he’ll look to make it through when he takes on Patrik Kovacs before James Wade returns to the European Tour stage. He will meet William O’Connor who pushed Michael van Gerwen close in Amsterdam last week.
The standout match of the first round gets the second half of the evening up and running when Daryl Gurney takes on Jose de Sousa for a place in the second round. Stephen Bunting arrives here off the back of a run to the final of the last European Tour event and he’ll begin his quest to go one better when he takes on Nathan Rafferty. The penultimate game of the evening sees Ricardo Pietreczko taking on Nandor Major before Gabriel Clemens faces Keane Barry to close out the Friday action.
Betting
I’m a little surprised that Richard Veenstra is the outsider to beat Scott Williams. I get that there was a lot of hype around Williams last year and he showed why at the World Championship but we haven’t really seen much from him in 2023, particularly in recent times where he has only won three of his last 10 matches in all competitions. There is a feeling that he’ll be inspired by being on the stage but he misses too many doubles for my liking.
That is something that in the main Veenstra doesn’t do and he isn’t one of these European Tour players who freezes on the stage. He has decades of experience on the big stage and generally performs to an acceptable level when he is on them. Veenstra has shown some decent form recently with wins over Kim Huybrechts, Josh Rock, Damon Heta and Alan Soutar in his last 10 matches and they’ve all been in the last four weeks. That confidence should make him a big threat at even money here.
Tips
Back R.Veenstra to beat S.Williams for a 3/10 stake at 2.00 with BetVictor
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