2023 Baltic Sea Darts Open Betting Preview – JP
2023 Baltic Sea Darts Open Betting Preview
A new tournament to kick off the European Tour, the 2023 Baltic Sea Darts Open. Kiel in Germany is the host city, yet another German venue, which bodes well for the likes of Gabriel Clemens. The prize money has been increased for 2023 and the winners now get £30000 all the way down to £1250 for first round losers. Apart from that, everything else remains the same.
This weekend’s field sees the top 16 from the Pro Tour OOM as of January 31st, 24 tour card qualifiers, the two highest ranked German players on the Pro Tour OOM as of 31st January and four associated tour qualifiers and two local qualifiers. All the qualifiers have been played and for once we knew well in advance, who has qualified. The top 16 seeds enter at the second-round stage on Saturday.
Seeded Players
1 Luke Humphries
A four-time Euro Tour winner in 2022 wasn’t enough to get Humphries into the Premier League, but it developed him as a player and he will be looking forward to getting back to Europe. Humphries has won seven of his last ten matches and while he only won a couple of matches in last weekend’s players championship events, he is playing well. The top quarter is a tough one and it has been made harder for Humphries as he plays the winner of the Gurney vs. Clemens first round match, either of whom can cause him problems.
2 Michael van Gerwen
MVG didn’t play at the weekend, already managing his schedule to avoid burn out. He was not in great form and went into last night’s Premier League matches on the back of five defeats from his previous ten matches. He won the night in Dublin last night which will have given him some confidence, but it wasn’t classic Van Gerwen. MVG missed 15 darts at doubles in the final, but he just got it done 6-5 against Price in the final.
3 Damon Heta
The Heat has played nine matches in 2023 and lost five. He did hit four ton plus averages in those nine, so there isn’t much wrong with his game. Except perhaps his doubles. His last six defeats have seen his checkout rate at less than 31%. It will be hard to win a title if 60% of your matches are seeing such poor doubling.
4 Rob Cross
Cross started his year with some World Series events followed by a runners up spot at The Masters, thus avoiding that unwanted invitation to play in the Premier League. He has been remarkably consistent since, playing in the four players championship events and losing in the third round very time. Voltage is playing OK, winning six of his last ten matches, but he is not at his best. He should win a few matches and could have a good run, but should find someone too good at some point.
5 Peter Wright
Snakebite has been very hard to work out recently. There are not many playing better than Peter Wright right now, but he has lost seven of his last ten matches. Only two of those defeats saw a below par performance and his last three defeats have seen poor doubling in two of them, but otherwise he has been hard to fault.
He has averaged over 97 in four of those six defeats and if anything, he is due a break. Wright will play the winner of James Wade vs. Raymond van Barneveld, and that is not the easiest of second round prospects. It is hard to back someone who has lost seven of his last ten matches and Wright needs to start getting a few wins or his confidence will be totally shot.
6 Dave Chisnall
Chizzy reached the semi-final of PC4 on Sunday, losing to the in-form Ryan Searle. He has won six of his last ten matches, but his scoring has been inconsistent. There are some big ton plus averages but he seems to struggle against the top players. He is beating who you expect him to beat but not the big boys. He is drawn to meet Gerwyn Price in the third round and that might be as far as he gets.
7 Nathan Aspinall
Consistency is not a big part of The Asp’s game right now. He has lost six of his last ten matches. Three saw 98+ averages, but also five sub 92’s. He is not in good form.
8 Michael Smith
Smith has been winning plenty of matches despite not showing great consistency. His 2023 win rate is 79% and he has won eight of his last ten. There has been a sub 85 average, all the way up to a 109. But the fact that he is winning is more important.
He is confident. He is the Champ. Bully Boy expects to win matches and that helps him to do just that. He is in the tough first quarter of the draw but he fears no one. His doubling in Dublin last night was poor and he was getting frustrated. He cannot win with sub 30% checkout rates, so he needs to improve that part of his game.
9 Dirk van Duijvenbode
Dirk won PC4 on Sunday, lifting his 2023 win rate to 80%. He has won eight of last ten matches and while there have been a couple of sub 90 averages, he has been scoring well and hitting some big averages. His 180 per leg rate has been very good, eight of his ten matches seeing 0.40 per leg or more.
DVD’s best was 0.77 per leg when beating Jonny Clayton 6-3 on Sunday. His awesome firepower makes him a real threat and that recent win will help his confidence. He is due to meet Michael Smith in round three and his record against Smith is 3-11. If he can get through that, he has a decent chance of a deep run, but it is a big hurdle to jump.
10 Joe Cullen
The Rockstar has been scoring really well in recent matches. He has won seven of his last ten and hit seven ton plus averages. There was a 78 in there as well, but I’ll forgive him that one. Cullen built his reputation on the Euro Tour, winning three titles, and a good run this weekend would be no surprise. His opening match is against the winner of the Dolan vs. Monk first round match. Dolan is in decent form, but he isn’t a great traveller.
11 Gerwyn Price
Price is defending his ET1 win from 2021. That is not really important for his world ranking, but it is for his Pro Tour ranking. He needs to reach the final otherwise he drops out of the Pro Tour top 16 and will not be seeded for ET5 onwards. He has won seven of his last ten matches and he is playing well but sometimes has a poor doubling performance which has cost him matches.
All three of his recent defeats saw checkout rates of 25% or worse, including last night’s PL final. He is drawn in Q4 and that is a decent break, as he has a winning H2H record against the other seeds. If he has a good weekend on the doubles, he has a great chance.
12 Danny Noppert
Danny is another player who has kicked off 2023 in good form, winning PC2 and 78% of his matches. His scoring has not been that consistent, but a win is a win, and his confidence will be high. He is a player who has not won a Euro Tour title, but he is one who most likely will at some point. He is in Q2 and plays the winner of the Keegan Brown vs. Filip Sebesta tie, so a decent opening match to settle him in.
13 Ryan Searle
Heavy Metal has hit the ground running in 2023 after a very frustrating 2022. He couldn’t buy a break at the business end of 2022, playing well but finding his opponents playing out of their skin. That kind of luck can’t last forever and he is enjoying some payback. His win rate is 78% and he has won PC1 and was runner up in PC4 on Sunday. His form makes him a contender, but his record on the Euro Tour is poor. He has just a single quarter final to his credit and very few positive associations to draw on.
14 Martin Schindler
Home advantage for Schindy, again, but he comes here in indifferent form, losing five of his last ten matches. He is playing better than that sounds, but he has been losing to some low-ranking players and that doesn’t bode well in a high-quality field such as this.
15 Jonny Clayton
The Ferret is finding some good form, winning seven of his last ten and his scoring is getting back to 2021 standards. Before last night’s Premier League, Clayton had nine averages of 98+, including a 111.9 last weekend. He beat Aspinall last night in the PL, but lost the semi-final to MVG, and he was poor, to be honest. Clayton has only won one Euro Tour title and that was back in 2018 and that is a concern, as is his busy schedule, but he is running hot and he is a contender, if he can put last night’s lacklustre performance behind him.
16 Dimitri van den Bergh
Dancing Dimitri is hard to pin down form wise. He has played a lot of darts already in 2023, with a modest win rate of 56%. He lost his opening match to Gerwyn Price last night and has lost five of his last ten. There is plenty of good stuff, but his doubling has been his Achilles Heel. Can he string five matches together without having one of his double trouble matches is the question.
Best of the Rest
Mario Vandenbogaerde
He has been winning plenty of matches, eight of his last ten and 71% in 2023. His consistency scoring wise is lacking but his A game is very good, and he will be a dangerous opponent.
Raymond van Barneveld
The Dutchman has won 73% of his matches in 2023 and hit five ton plus averages in his last ten matches, winning seven of them. He is another dangerous opponent but how he would cope with playing four matches should he reach the final day is open to debate.
Brendan Dolan
Dolan is a winner of 78% of his matches in 2023 and eight of his last ten. Those stats do flatter him a little as half those last ten saw sub 90 averages and his Euro Tour pedigree is not great.
Daryl Gurney
Another Northern Irish player in good form. His 2023 win rate is 79% and he has won eight of his last ten matches. Three of those wins came against Richard Veenstra and he averaged 103.8 across those three matches. In the later part of last year Superchin struggled to string more than two wins together, but things are going better in 2023.
He has qualified for all four of the opening Euro Tour events and reached a players championship quarter final. Hardly his best form but he is heading back in the right direction. As the confidence returns, he will start to have more deep runs.
By qualifying for all four of the opening ET events, Dolan and Gurney are tied at the top of the Euro Tour OOM before a dart has been thrown. Impressive.
Gabriel Clemens
Followed up his World Championship semi-final with a Players Championship final last Saturday. He got thrashed 1-8 in the final and he remains without a PDC title, having now lost seven finals. He will be getting a complex when it comes to finals, and he is hard to back outright as a result.
Ante Post Selections – 2023 Baltic Sea Darts Open
It is a pain that we have the PL played the night before these Euro Tour events are played. I had my four picks sorted on Wednesday, but two them have been scratched after below par performances last night (Smith and Clayton). Thankfully, there are alternatives in a very high quality field.
