Christmas is over. The turkey has been and gone and now the PDC World Darts Championship returns on Boxing Night as the tournament really begins at the Alexandra Palace.
We’ve had the first round of the tournament and those who have made it through have enjoyed Christmas and now have their sights on the Sid Waddell Trophy and the cool £300,000 first prize. The next two rounds are the best of seven sets so the players can sit in and enjoy the longer format.
The second round begins with three matches in an evening session which looks very tasty. Opening up the night is the ultra-quick Ricky Evans when he takes on Jamie Caven before Dave Chisnall plays Christian Kist and the night is rounded off by the defending champion Gary Anderson who faces Daryl Gurney.
Ricky Evans will be looking to build on his win over Simon Whitlock in the first round while Caven played some of his best darts for a while against Rob Szabo and will be quietly confident himself.
Caven is the seeded player and as such he is the favourite for this match but I’m not convinced he will win. Evans has been in good form in the last couple of months. He made the last 16 of the penultimate Players Championship event beating James Wade and Daryl Gurney on his way to a deciding leg defeat to Stephen Bunting and he also won the qualifying tournament to get himself in here.
Caven’s form going into the tournament was nothing like as good as Evans’. He has only been past the last 32 of an event once since June and while we have to give him credit for how well he played in the first round we also have to appreciate he was under little pressure. He’ll be under it here.
Neither man has gone past this round in this tournament although Evans is nowhere near as experienced as Caven. Evans has only made this round once while Caven has lost four previous times at this stage so the Kettering kid has less mental baggage to overcome and given that he’s in the better form and looked so impressive when so far behind against Whitlock he’s my pick here.
The last two matches look like absolute pearlers. Dave Chisnall takes on Christian Kist in a battle of two men whose big World Championship runs came at the Lakeside but one of them is going to make the last 16 here.
Chisnall scored as well as anyone in the first round but when he was in finishing range he did get a bit sketchy but Rowby-John Rodriguez couldn’t quite take advantage but if Kist gets the same chances you would think he’ll nail them so I’m expecting a good game here.
You can’t really read too much into Kist’s first round match. Justin Pipe never turned up and then gave up halfway through and the lack of rhythm won’t have helped the Dutchman play his best game so judging him on that would be harsh.
We know from matches gone by though that Kist is a heavy scorer so I find it hard to believe you can get his 180 line at 4.5 here. I’d be surprised if Kist doesn’t at least keep this close and I wouldn’t be surprised if he wins but I would be surprised if he doesn’t hit five 180s at the very least.
I’m expecting a lot of 180s in the final match too as Gary Anderson, a serial hitter of them, takes on Daryl Gurney, another man who hits plenty of 180s.
Gurney has only been in the last 32 of this tournament once in the past where he faced a similar big scoring opponent in Dave Chisnall. He lost that match 4-1 but he slammed in 11 180s in it. Funnily enough in the same round of the same tournament Anderson hit 19 in a 4-3 win against John Bowles!
Anderson’s 180 count in this round since 2011 reads 13, 11, 19, 2 and 14. The two was against Brendan Dolan in a one sided match with no rhythm so we can largely ignore that. Even half of any of the other totals should see the total 180s covered here but the evidence suggests he could even cover it himself.
We won’t need him to though because Gurney will definitely hit 180s himself here so I’m all over the over 12.5 180s here. I also fancy Gurney will keep this closer than the odds suggest. Gurney has won their last two meetings including on the box in Minehead earlier in the month so at solid odds against the Northern Irishman with a 2.5 set start looks attractive too.
Back R.Evans to beat J.Caven for a 4/10 stake at 2.38 with Coral
Back C.Kist Over 4.5 180s for a 4/10 stake at 2.00 with Boylesports
Back G.Anderson vs D.Gurney – Over 12.5 180s for a 5/10 stake at 1.80 with Betway
Back D.Gurney (+2.5 sets) to beat G.Anderson for a 3/10 stake at 2.20 with Bet365
