PDC World Darts Championship 2025 – Quarter 1 Tips and Betting Preview

We have taken a good look at the outright market for the PDC World Darts Championship and before the off on Sunday evening there is enough time to have a look at the individual quarter betting prior to the oche being toed at Alexandra Palace.

We will start with the first quarter which as ever begins on the opening night of the tournament where Luke Humphries will kick his title defence into life right from the first evening in a quarter with plenty of decent players.

Draw

(1) Luke Humphries v Thibault Tricole/Joe Comito
(32) Raymond van Barneveld v Nick Kenny/Stowe Buntz
(16) James Wade v Jermaine Wattimena/Stefan Bellmont
(17) Peter Wright v Wesley Plaisier/Ryusei Azemoto

(8) Stephen Bunting v Alan Soutar/Kai Gotthardt
(25) Dirk van Duijvenbode v Madars Razma/Christian Kist
(9) Damon Heta v Connor Scutt/Ben Robb
(24) Mike De Decker v Luke Woodhouse/Lourence Ilagan

Preview

As I have done in previous years i have split each quarter into a red half and a green half to make it easier to decipher. Basically the winner of the red half will meet the winner of the green half in the quarter final. Luke Humphries will be expected to be the man to come out of the red section. If this was last year you could make a case for him being tested by the likes of Raymond van Barneveld , James Wade and Peter Wright but the former is probably too old now while the latter two have shown no great form recently. There are a couple of qualifiers to keep an eye on in this section in the European Championship finalist Jermaine Wattimena and the Winnau World Masters winner Wesley Plaisier who will hope to go well.

The green section is the competitive part of this quarter where we have The Masters champion Stephen Bunting, World Grand Prix winner Mike De Decker, a dangerous Damon Heta and a back to form Dirk van Duijvenbode as the seeds. There are some lively qualifiers in this green section too including the Challenge Tour stars Christian Kist and Connor Scutt while Alan Soutar had a decent run here in the past and Luke Woodhouse is capable of big results. Whoever comes out of the green section will certainly have earned their spot in the quarter final.

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Betting

In the red section I find it hard to believe that Luke Humphries will be denied, although it should be said that the schedule doesn’t help the defending champion here. There isn’t anyone in form that would convince me that they would definitely beat Humphries and so I’ll let him come through that part of the draw if he is indeed good enough. My attention as far as this quarter is concerned comes in the green section which looks much more competitive and open.

There is actually a market on getting to the quarter final and that grabs my attention here so that we’re not sweating on our man beating Humphries to get a payout. The player in the green section I like is Dirk van Duijvenbode. Mike De Decker is the favourite for the section but he misses a lot of doubles and in this format that doesn’t bode well. It is that which is putting me off of Stephen Bunting too while Damon Heta has never done it on TV. Van Duijvenbode has had a tough year with injuries but those are behind him now and his stats in the latter part of the campaign have been very strong. Only Bunting and Humphries have a higher average than him since the start of October and if van Duijvenbode can get a rhythm on the doubles he can be a quarter finalist here if not more. He has reached a quarter final before and lost out in the fourth round twice. Those losses were to Gerwyn Price and Michael van Gerwen. He’d face nothing of that sort in the last 16 here so the 11/2 on DvD getting to the quarter final feels good.

Tips

Back D.van Duijvenbode to reach quarter final for a 2/10 stake at 6.50 with Betfair