The winner of the Premier League Darts season will be crowned on Thursday night when the top four from the regular campaign head to the o2 Arena in London to play in front of more than 14,000 fans for the biggest invitation title in the game.
The playoffs night consists of both semi-finals, which will be played over the best of 19 legs and then the two winners will fight it out for the title not long after that with the first to 11 leaving with the trophy and a huge first prize.
Luke Littler vs Michael Smith
The opening semi-final of the tournament sees the top player in the final league table, Luke Littler, going up against a man who surprisingly is yet to win this competition in the form of the former world champion Michael Smith, who ended the first part of the campaign in fourth place in the table.
Littler topped the table and won four of the nights in the opening stage of the tournament. He made the final in another two and nobody hit as many 180s in the regular season as he did with 114, although it should be noted that he played more matches than anyone as well. Smith only won two of the 16 qualifying nights but it might be important that he won last week and carries plenty of momentum into the night with him. He also had to play an effective knockout match last week as well and that experience could very well serve him well. Littler hasn’t really played a truly competitive Premier League match for 3-4 weeks. This should be a cracking semi-final between two of the best players to watch in the world but I can’t help but feel that two things are significant here. The first being that Smith has been here before and knows exactly what to expect. The second is that he has won five of their seven meetings in the Premier League this season, including in Sheffield last week. You get the feeling this will come down to a missed double here or there and that makes me think that the 2/1 on Smith to win this match is just a bit too big. Littler is special but this is new surroundings for him and a motivated Smith will love to end his run. At 2/1 I’ll back him to do it.
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Luke Humphries vs Michael van Gerwen
The second semi-final should be an absolute cracker as well as the players who finished second and third in the regular campaign meet when the world champion Luke Humphries goes up against the title holder Michael van Gerwen for a shot at the final.
Humphries is enjoying a golden 12 months at the minute and he’ll look to add this title to the World Championship, World Grand Prix, Grand Slam of Darts and Players Championship crowns that he has already won. He won four of the qualifying nights and when he got it right he looked comfortably the best player in the world. Van Gerwen hasn’t had the year that Humphries has had but he has won this tournament for the last two years and we know that he knows exactly how to peak on the big night. We shouldn’t forget that for all he has done in the last 12 months that this is the first time Humphries will have been to finals night and he might need to few legs to adjust to the situation, especially if the crowd is behind van Gerwen, which is likely to be the case. What will give Humphries confidence is that he has won the last six meetings between these two, five of which have been in the last seven weeks, so current form is very much on his side. That said, this is a different beast and I’m hoping van Gerwen can turn the tables because I am on him outright. I don’t think this is a turn up and win job for Humphries so I’ll let that outright ride as my interest here.
Outright Betting
So we are down to four in the outright market and so competitive is this night expected to be that we have it as 7/4 the field. We are used to getting to this stage and having a clear favourite with Michael van Gerwen often no bigger than even money and quite often odds on. That isn’t the case here, largely because you can make a genuine case for all of the four winning from here. We have the best four players in the world right now battling it out in what should be a great night of darts.
I’m already invested in Michael van Gerwen to win the night having backed him before a dart was thrown in the competition and while he might have a bit to find overall, this is a guy who has peaked in seven finals and knows how to get it done so I’m certainly not writing him off at all. There is a gut feeling that the 6/1 on Michael Smith is a touch big but even then when you are getting 2/1 on him just winning the semi-final that feels the better bet to me. Littler and Humphries are the market leaders but neither have seen the o2 before. I can’t help feeling that is a disadvantage. I’ll stick with MVG and not go in again.
Tips
Back M.Smith to beat L.Littler for a 3/10 stake at 3.00 with Bet365
