The PDC World Championship has another double session day on Saturday as the first round of the tournament continues to get played out at Alexandra Palace.
After Michael van Gerwen got his campaign underway on Friday night it will be the turn of Phil Taylor on Saturday night as the 16 time world champion headlines another busy day of darts.
Such is the standard these days, Taylor isn’t the only world champion on show over the course of the day. Steve Beaton is also in first round action while two men Taylor has beaten in the final in the past – Kevin Painter and Simon Whitlock, also take to the stage on day three of the competition.
The day begins with one of the more competitive looking preliminary matches as Finland’s Kim Viljanen takes on the Dutch qualifier Sven Groen with the winner going on to face Kevin Painter.
I’ve made a not so secret pact with myself not to get involved in these preliminary matches this year but you would think experience will stand Viljanen in good stead and I wouldn’t necessarily put anyone off taking him at 4/5. I’ll stay true to myself and leave the match alone though.
The first of the first round matches sees Steve Beaton taking on the New Zealand qualifier Koha Kokiri. Kokiri came through via the Australian ranking system which should carry some merit but whether it does or not remains to be seen. The fact he didn’t make New Zealand’s World Cup team in June would be a big concern.
Kokiri is on debut in this tournament and we’ve had New Zealanders in the event before with none of them really impressing. On the flip side he has got a nice draw against Steve Beaton in that it could have been a lot harder.
Beaton still finds himself short against the very best in the world but the fact he is still in the top 32 of the rankings shows that he gets past those he is expected to get past more often than not and while he might not cruise to victory necessarily I do think he will win and I’d say he will win well if he gets going straight away.
New Zealand players aren’t generally the heaviest scorers and with nerves and things factored in it would be a surprise to see too many 180s from Kokiri so given that I’m expecting Beaton to win and hit the most 180s it makes sense to take the win, most 180s and highest checkout market for Beaton.
If Beaton wins and wins well then Kokiri won’t have many checkouts and it would be extremely unfortunate if any he does have are enough to beat Beaton’s highest one. The special treble pays 15/8 which is big enough to tempt me in on what should be a largely one sided match.
Ian White takes on Dimitri van den Bergh in the other already fully drawn match in the afternoon and I’m expecting White to win that but just like Dave Pallett against Kim Huybrechts on Friday night the Belgian has the potential to be dangerous enough to make the major markets of little interest.
Moving into the evening and between Phil Taylor finding out who his opponent will be later in the night and the preliminary match itself there are a couple of good looking matches.
Simon Whitlock gets his campaign underway against the fastest slinger in town in Ricky Evans. If Evans has an on night then he could cause the Australian problems but you would fancy the Australian there. I’m on him outright so I can sit any potential trouble Evans can provide out.
The second match is very much like the Beaton one as Vincent van der Voort takes on Loz Ryder. Ryder qualified for this tournament last year where he beat Justin Pipe before losing heavily to Terry Jenkins. In truth he was nothing special in either match.
Since then we’ve seen him in a few of those World Series events and again being totally truthful he wasn’t great in them so while he has experience here which should help him I’m expecting this to be largely one way traffic for the popular Dutchman.
Van der Voort is confident these days, he’s a heavy scorer and he’s been hitting the big checkouts all year at the important times so just like with Beaton I think it is worth putting that treble together here at a perfectly acceptable even money given how one sided this match should be.
Taylor will come through and he’ll come through easily but given we don’t know who he will play we can’t really analyse him yet so it is just the two bets for me on an interesting third day.
Back S.Beaton to Win, Most 180s & Highest Checkout treble for a 3/10 stake at 2.88 with Coral
Back V.van Der Voort to Win, Most 180s & Highest Checkout treble for a 4/10 stake at 2.00 with Coral
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