The WDF World Darts Championship continues on Saturday when we have our first two session day of the tournament inside the Lakeside County Club in Frimley Green as the men’s and women’s events play first and second round matches.
We have mostly first round matches on show over the course of the day but there is a couple of second round games in the men’s draw so we see a pair of the seeds for the first time on what looks to be a good schedule.
Afternoon Session
We start off the afternoon session in the men’s draw with a first round clash between the New Zealand player Caleb Hope and the experienced Darren Johnson for the right to face Liam Maendl-Lawrance in the second round. We then turn the attention to the women’s draw for the second match as Joanne Hadley takes on Eve Watson before the second men’s first round match of the afternoon takes place as Ben Robb meets Johan Engstrom. It is then back to the women’s draw for the penultimate match of the afternoon as Jitka Cisarova faces Maud Jansson before we conclude the session with the first second round match as James Beeton takes on Dennis Nilsson.
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Evening Session
We have a good looking evening session on Saturday too as Ryan Hogarth and Jonas Masalin get things underway with the winner progressing to a meeting with Corne Groeneveld in the second round. The standout tie of the first round of the women’s draw then takes place when Kirsi Viinikainen meets the former champion Mikuru Suzuki before in the men’s draw Karl Schaefer plays Daniel Bauerdick. It is then back to the women’s draw again for the match between Irina Armstrong and Maria Carli before the pick of the first round matches for the men sees Brian Raman taking on the Dutch Open champion Jeffrey Sparidaans in what should be a high quality contest. The closing match of the night should be too as the number one seed Jimmy van Schie gets his campaign underway with a second round clash against Alex Williams who impressed in beating Roman Grbavac on the opening night.
Betting
Day one of this tournament didn’t go to plan for me but hopefully day two is a little kinder as I go with one bet. That comes in the marquee match of the evening where I think Jeffrey Sparidaans should be a slightly shorter favourite for his clash with Brian Raman than he actually is. Although he didn’t have a huge amount of success, Sparidaans has been competing on the PDC circuit for much of the year in Players Championship events where he took five legs off Raymond van Barneveld in one match and beat Jonny Clayton in another.
Raman has been on the PDC tour in the past but he didn’t have any success and he might be being priced up on the past rather than the present having been number one in the WDF system in the past. Raman has won a couple of lesser events this year but his recent form hasn’t pulled up any trees. The biggest piece of form between these two was the Sparidaans win in the Dutch Open, a tournament which always takes some winning and given that he has been mixing it in better circles, I’ll take the Dutchman to come through the match of the first round here.
Tips
Back J.Sparidaans to beat B.Raman for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Betway
