The opening night of the PDC World Darts Championship will see four matches taking place inside Alexandra Palace as the biggest tournament in the sport gets underway with three games from the first round and one from the second.
As is tradition in this competition now, it will be the defending champion who plays his second round match on the opening night of the tournament which means that Luke Humphries will be the star attraction on show.
Thibault Tricole vs Joe Cornito
The opening match of the tournament sees the French star Thibault Tricole looking to emulate his run to the second round of this event last year when he goes up against the Australian debutant Joe Cornito for the right to take on Luke Humphries at the end of the night.
Tricole appeared here a year ago and bowed out to Rob Cross in the second round but since then he has had a tour card and been solid enough with it without being spectacular but I do think that there is a massive advantage between tour card holders and those who don’t have one these days because there are so many tournaments and the standard is so high. That will be the thing that Cornito has to overcome and while he impressed in terms of number in making it into this tournament, his mean average is generally below 90 and when you consider he is unlikely to perform at his best on a stage of this magnitude this should be for Tricole to win. He won’t have played many matches of this kind as a favourite before though so I’ll just let him win if he is good enough.
Jermaine Wattimena vs Stefan Bellmont
Two more overseas players will take to the stage for the second match of the tournament when the European Championship finalist Jermaine Wattimena goes up against the Swiss qualifier Stefan Bellmont, a player who has competed regularly on the Challenge Tour this season and in a few Players Championship events.
Wattimena is a warm favourite to win this match and you can understand why with his recent form which didn’t just take him to the final of that European Championship but also to the knockout stages of the Grand Slam. If he plays like he did in those tournaments he should run out a comfortable winner but his record here could be better and as a favourite it wouldn’t be a complete surprise were he to fluff his lines. Bellmont will probably only hang around in this match but if Wattimena allows him to he might take a set or two and make this a tough night for the Dutchman. I expect Wattimena to win but at the prices I’ll let him do it if he can.
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Kim Huybrechts vs Keane Barry
The last of the first round matches on Sunday evening sees the World Championship veteran Kim Huybrechts going up against one of the newer brigade in Keane Barry in what should be the pick of the games from the opening part of the competition.
Huybrechts goes in here as the higher ranked of the two players and although it would be hard to describe his year as decent, he did make a European Tour final and has got a better 12 month average than his Irish opponent. He also has a lot more experience here and success on this stage and that would give him an edge for me. There is no doubt that Barry is extremely talented but we haven’t really seen that talent convert into TV results as often as it should do and because of that it might be that there is more pressure om him in this match. The one thing we do know is that Huybrechts generally shows up with plenty of fight and passion and doesn’t succumb to pressure and in what could be a tight match should Barry play well, the difference might just be that extra experience and poise that the Belgian has. I’ll take him here.
Luke Humphries vs Tricole/Cornito
The final match of the opening night of the tournament is the one second round match to be played as the world champion Luke Humphries gets his title defence underway when he takes on the winner of the earlier match between Thibault Tricole or Joe Cornito.
This is the night that Luke Humphries has waited almost 12 months for and I would imagine there will be some nerves and butterflies within his body at some point. I always think the defending champion is a little vulnerable in this match because whoever he plays has played earlier in the night, got adjusted to conditions and will have the range of the throw and things. Only one player has won this particular match on the opening night 3-0 since the format was changed for the seeded coming in during the second round so that might be something to think about. We can’t bet on this match until we know who Humphries will be facing but when we do know it might pay to take his opponent to win a set although that would determine on how they look in the first game of the night.
Tips
Back K.Huybrechts to beat K.Barry for a 3/10 stake at 1.73 with Boylesports
Back him here:
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