It is ‘Moving Day’ at the Players Championship Finals on Saturday as the second and third rounds of the tournament take place in Minehead as we whittle the 32 remaining players down to eight on an extensive day of darts.
The second round of the tournament takes place in the afternoon session and we’ll preview that in this post but time restrictions will deny us the chance to look at the third round in detail. That comes along in the evening and if any bets catch my eye I’ll post them on X.
Main Stage
It is the former winner of The Masters who opens up the show on the main stage when Stephen Bunting faces the World Cup champion Daryl Gurney before two men who know all about going all the way in Minehead meet when Peter Wright faces James Wade. The crowds will be making plenty of noise for the third match when Nathan Aspinall is back on the main stage for a clash with Richard Veenstra before the number one seed Gerwyn Price looks to extend his stay in the competition when he meets Sebastian Bialecki, who has already seen off one former world champion and will be looking to double his tally. The world champion Luke Littler then faces Ross Smith in arguably the pick of the afternoon matches before we conclude the session with the European Championship winner Gian van Veen meeting Krzysztof Ratajski and stablemates Josh Rock and Scott Williams facing off against each other.
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Stage Two
The action on the main table looks juicy but it isn’t the worst schedule over on the other stage where opportunity knocks for a number of players beginning with James Hurrell and Luke Woodhouse who open the show. When they are done two more outsiders meet when Adam Lipscombe goes up against Bradley Brooks. We should see plenty of decent scoring in match three as Ryan Searle plays Callan Rydz before our remaining outright bet Jermaine Wattimena will go up against Ryan Joyce. The German number one Martin Schindler will look to overcome Nick Kenny before the pick of the matches on board two sees Ricardo Pietreczko facing Gary Anderson. The last three matches see Justin Hood meeting an Andrew Gilding who has very good memories of this venue while Chris Dobey takes on Cam Crabtree in an appealing match before we conclude the afternoon with Danny Noppert playing Madars Razma.
Betting
Ryan Searle had a good win in the previous round but he was a little short of form coming into the weekend having lost five of his last six matches in all competitions and that makes me think that Callan Rydz might be the value when they meet over on board two on Saturday afternoon. Searle has been known to miss doubles and that is never an ideal situation in such a relatively short sprint and if his scoring isn’t spot on it would leave him vulnerable.
Rydz probably doesn’t have much to lose here and we know he generally comes good at this time of the year after a couple of decent tilts at the World Championship in the past. He can score with the best of them and if he is hitting his doubles nicely then there is no reason why he can’t win this. Rydz saw off a competent challenger in Kevin Doets in the first round which should have boosted his confidence and at odds against I’ll take him here.
Tips
Back C.Rydz to beat R.Searle for a 3/10 stake at 2.20 with Spreadex
