The second day of action at the UK Open in Minehead will see the 32 remaining players whittled down to the final eight over the course of two sessions of play in the first televised ranking event of 2023.
The last 32 will be played out in the afternoon session before the last 16 is played out in the evening. Time restrictions will deny us the chance to go through the last 16 but we will pick out the best bets from the last 32 in this preview.
Main Stage
There are four matches on each stage in use on Saturday afternoon and the action on the main stage begins with Gerwyn Price going up against Jeffrey de Zwaan in what should be an entertaining opening to the day. When they are done the title of the round will be on the main stage when the last two beaten finalists in this tournament battle it out as the world champion Michael Smith takes on Luke Humphries. The tournament favourite Michael van Gerwen is up third on the afternoon. He has a date with fellow Dutch player Martijn Kleermaker before Peter Wright rounds off the session when he takes on Callan Rydz.
Stage Two
It isn’t just the main stage where the quality action comes around. There are some standout names on stage two and the defending champion Danny Noppert gets the afternoon underway. He will go up against the semi-finalist of a year ago in William O’Connor. Two men who will fancy a deep run in the tournament meet in the second match of the afternoon as Kim Huybrechts takes on Gary Anderson before the pick of the matches in this part of the campus takes place as Dirk van Duijvenbode goes up against the former champion Nathan Aspinall before the last match on this stage sees Mervyn King meeting Dimitri Van den Bergh.
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Stage Three
Two former world champions will take to stage three in the first two matches in the afternoon. Richie Burnett is the first of those. He will go up against Ted Evetts before Adrian Lewis will look to make it through to the last 16 when he goes up against the highest ranked German player left in the tournament in Martin Schindler. Joe Cullen will take to the stage in the third match of the afternoon when he goes up against Karel Sedlacek. The final match on this board sees the former Premier League champion Jonny Clayton going up against Jose de Sousa in the pick of the matches on this stage.
Stage Four
Two European players open up the action over on stage four when the Czech youngster Adam Gawlas goes up against the Dutch player Kevin Doets for a spot in the last 16. When they are done two more players outside the top 32 in the world rankings look to take a step closer to a first TV title when Luke Woodhouse meets Andrew Gilding. Chris Dobey had an excellent win over Ryan Searle on Friday night and his reward is a meeting with Brendan Dolan before the popular Steve Beaton takes to this stage to round off the action when he meets Rob Cross.
Betting
This draw hasn’t thrown up too much in the way of betting opportunities but one bet that I can’t let pass without getting involved in is the near enough even money for Nathan Aspinall to beat Dirk van Duijvenbode. Aspinall had to come through a deciding leg on Friday night against Alan Soutar in a match he was behind in for much of the duration of it. We know Aspinall has been in good form from his Premier League exploits and even though he was taken the distance in the last round he still averaged 99.65.
He now faces a van Duijvenbode who has started the year well but can still hit too many flat spots on the big stages for my liking. We saw that in the previous round when he overcame Krzysztof Ratajski despite averaging six points less than his opponent on the averages. Aspinall has good memories of this tournament as it was the one which catapulted him to the top level of the game and I fancy his leg on leg consistency will be too much for a DvD who he has beaten in four of their five previous meetings including in a European Tour event last year.
Tips
Back N.Aspinall to beat D.van Duijvenbode for a 3/10 stake at 1.95 with Coral
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