2023 European Darts Open Betting Preview & Tips – JP
2023 European Darts Open Betting Preview
The 2023 European Darts Open will be the tenth edition. Five of the first nine were won by Michael Van Gerwen, including the last three, all at this venue in Leverkusen. Peter Wright has won two, been runner up twice and lost two semi-finals.
2023 European Darts Open: The Seeds
1.Luke Humphries
It has been a case of close, but no cigar for Humphries so far in 2023. He has a good win rate of 71%, a seasonal average of 97.3, he was runner up in ET1 AND a semi-finalist in PC2 & 6. He has won eight of his last ten matches. A Euro Tour specialist, he is a serious contender.
2.Michael van Gerwen
The five-time European Darts Open champion and in good form. His win rate in 2023 is 73% and he has won eight of his last ten. MVG is cleaning up in the Premier League and while he lost in the finals of the World Championship and UK Open, he did pick up his first title of the year on Sunday, winning PC7. Serious claims.
3.Damon Heta
The Heat must be concerned that his win rate in 2023 is just 40%. His seasonal average is 94.7 and he is off the boil, losing five of his last ten. Hard to fancy.
4.Rob Cross
Another of the big guns who is not firing. Cross has lost six of his last ten matches and five of his last six. Four of his last five matches saw sub 30% checkout rates and any more of that and it could be an early flight home for the 2019 runner up.
5.Peter Wright
Snakebite is well off his best form. He has lost six of his last ten matches, is playing a much-reduced schedule and using some darts that look like he got them in a Lucky Bag, but he ditched them for his 5-6 defeat to MVG last night. A tournament specialist but in poor form.
6.Dave Chisnall
Playing as well as he has ever done. A seasonal win rate of 71%, a seasonal average of 97.5 and he has won seven of his last ten matches. Chizzy has reached three PC quarter finals and a semi-final. He won the first Euro Tour event of the year. That means he has won two of the last three Euro Tour events, having picked up ET12 last September.
He was playing some unbelievable darts in the two Players Championship events held in Germany earlier this week. He averaged 113 when beating Daryl Gurney 6-1 and was even better when beating Kevin Burness 6-3, averaging 117. Chizzy is doing very little wrong, and he will be feeling very much at home on the Euro Tour.
7.Michael Smith
Bully Boy has been under the weather since playing at Minehead in the UK Open. He skipped the Players Championship events this week to try and recover and we should have a better idea if he has done so in Thursday night’s Premier League (lost 4-6 to Dobey). His form has suffered as a result and he has lost six of his last ten matches, but it is hard to place him as a result of him being ill.
8.Dirk van Duijvenbode
The Aubergenius is one of 2023’s form players. He has won two Players Championship events in 2023, has a win rate of 79% and a seasonal average of 96.8. His power scoring makes him hard to beat. He is pressuring his opponents’ throws and is hard to break on his own. His doubles are going well and that he has only made a single Euro Tour semi-final in his career cannot last for long. Another serious contender.
9.Joe Cullen
Struggling for consistency at the moment. Cullen has lost five of his last ten matches, half of which have seen sub 90 averages. His win rate in 2023 is just 56% with a seasonal average of 94.6. Hard to fancy.
10. Gerwyn Price
So hard to call right now. There is not a lot wrong with his game. His seasonal average is right up there at 97.1 but his win rate has fallen to 65%, down from a peak of 80% in 2021. He is playing well but struggling to convert that into titles. He only had two ranking titles is 2022.
The Iceman has won eight of his last ten matches and is doing better in the Premier League, winning back to back night’s mini leagues, but he is yet to pick up any sort of title since PC29 early last November. He is getting close and he could be due one.
11. Danny Noppert
The Dutchman started the season with a win in PC2, but since then, his form has been indifferent. He has played sixteen matches since that title win and lost half of them. He just isn’t quite firing.
12. Ryan Searle
Heavy Metal has had a strong start to 2023. His win rate is a very impressive 74% and his seasonal average is 96.5. He won PC 1 and was runner up in PC 4 and PC6. He reached the semi-final of the first Euro Tour event of the year, which was his best Euro Tour result.
Searle took last week off and did not travel to Germany for the two Players Championship events, and with such a strong start, he was under no pressure to do so. Searle was always one to oppose on the Euro Tour, but he is putting in the effort to change that and is benefiting from regular practice sessions with Monday’s PC8 winner, Gary Anderson. Another good run is very possible.
13. Martin Schindler
That first PDC senior title remains elusive. His seasonal average is 93.6 and he will need to up his scoring to make much progress this weekend. He made the quarter final in ET1, the quarter final of the UK Open and the semi-final of PC5, but he is getting so far and then having a stinker. Mental block? Looks like it.
14. Jonny Clayton
The Ferret is another player who is stuck in a rut, or are we guilty of expecting his 2021 form as the norm? That was his year. His win rate was 77%, his best by a margin. In 2020 it was 63%, in 2022 it was 64% and in 2023 it is 60%. Perhaps what we see now is what we should expect.
Clayton was never a serial winner before 2021 and he hasn’t been one since. He got a year when his confidence went off the scale and he cleaned up. He is now back to being a good player who has good runs but finds winning titles hard. Losing six of his last ten matches makes him easy to oppose.
15. Dimitri van den Bergh
Another player who is suffering from too much inconsistency to think he can go and win this weekend. He has won six of his last ten matches, but he has hit five sub 90 averages in those ten, along with three ton plus. He reached the quarter final of PC7 on Sunday and was a semi-finalist at the UK Open.
The Belgian has played 51 matches in 2023 and done all the travelling in the World Series, Premier League, Players Championships and the Euro Tour. Perhaps he is just a bit jaded? He is one of the PL players who has played in Nottingham last Thursday, Germany Sunday to Tuesday, Newcastle on Thursday and back to Germany for the weekend. That is a killer schedule.
16. Josh Rock
The 2022 Rookie of the Year had been a bit quiet in 2023 but he showed that he is still there to be reckoned with when he was runner up to MVG in PC7 on Sunday. He has won seven of his last ten matches, has a 67% win rate this season and an average of 96.9. Rock could contend this weekend.
Best of the Rest
Ross Smith
Playing well on the floor having won PC5 and reached the quarter finals of PC6 and PC8. His seasonal win rate is 72% and his seasonal average 95.7. He has become comfortable with winning titles and is in great form, winning eight of his last ten matches. Shortlist material, despite having one more match to play than the seeds.
Krzysztof Ratajski
Runner up in Monday’s Players Championship, Ratajski is back to his best form. His seasonal win rate is 69% and average 96.5. Ratajski is a multiple PDC title winner and while his last win was back in 2021, he remains a potential winner when he is in good form, and he is.
Ian White
Like Ratajski, White is on the comeback trail. He has fallen back further than The Polish Eagle, but like Ratajski, he is a very experienced winner with the last of his eight PDC titles coming back in 2020. His 2023 win rate is 74% and his average 94.6. He has won eight of his last ten matches. It must be said that many of his wins are coming in Euro Tour qualifiers and he is yet to win more than three matches in a row in tournaments proper.
Daryl Gurney
Much the same can be said about Superchin. His 2023 win rate is 71% and his seasonal average 95.8. That win rate is very similar to what he achieved in 2017 (The Year of the Chin). His recent form sees seven wins from his last ten but like White, a lot of his wins are coming in Euro Tour qualifiers.
Daryl did make the quarter final of PC1 but that is the only time he has won more than three matches in a row in a tournament since PC18 last July. He is heading in the right direction, hitting more 180s and hitting some big checkouts. A good run is possible but winning six matches in a row might be asking too much.
The 2023 European Darts Open Draw
The top quarter has four players on the shortlist, Humphries, Van Duijvenbode, Rock and Ross Smith. That makes it a tough quarter to get through. Humphries is a multiple Euro Tour winner and in good form, while Van Duijvenbode is in great form but does not have a great Euro Tour pedigree.
Rock may still lack the experience to take him all the way. Of the unseeded players drawn into this quarter, there is Ross Smith, Gabriel Clemens, Ian White, Jose de Sousa, Dolan and Lennon. Even the unseeded players are tough draws. The quarter of death.
Weaker
The second quarter looks weaker. Cross, Schindler, Wright, and Searle. Ryan Searle looks the most likely to progress given his early season form. It is interesting that he is practising with Gary Anderson and that both have won a Players Championship tile from the eight played, and Searle was runner up in another.
Historically he has not gone well in Europe, but he reached the semi-final of ET1 last month, losing a deciding leg to Luke Humphries. They are joined by Stephen Bunting and Daryl Gurney who are drawn together, surprise surprise, with the winner to face Ryan Searle. Otherwise it remains a fairly weak quarter.
Third Quarter
Q3 is an interesting quarter. Michael van Gerwen, Dimitri van den Bergh, Michael Smith, and Gerwyn Price. MVG is arguably the form player coming into the event, with eight wins from his last ten matches. His seasonal average of 98.6 is top of the heap and of course, his tournament record is excellent.
Peter Wright is struggling for form, Smith has been unwell for a couple of weeks, Gerwyn Price is playing great but struggling to win titles, while Van den Bergh’s seasonal win rate doesn’t suggest that he is about to win six matches in a row. MVG to make the semi-final is a reasonably likely outcome. The unseeded players entering in the first round include Ratajski, Van Barneveld and James Wade. That makes things a bit tougher for the seeds.
The bottom quarter is there for taking for Dave Chisnall. The other three seeds are Damon Heta who is out of form, Jonny Clayton who is a danger but a bit low on confidence, and Danny Noppert who is not in great form. Chris Dobey is the best of the unseeded players to join at the first round stage, but this is still a decent draw for Chisnall.
Ante Post Selections
The temptation is to avoid the Premier League players. Their schedule is hectic at the best of times, but with the weekend’s Players Championship events having taken place in Germany on Sunday-Tuesday, it has been mental.
Germany, Newcastle, Germany in five days (three for Dobey) will be exhausting. Doing that and then trying to win five matches in two days (six in three for Dobey) is asking a lot. Some managed their schedule to avoid the Players Championship (Aspinall, Wright and Michael Smith) but the other five must be struggling to know what day of the week its and where they are.
Michael van Gerwen 1pt to win the 2023 European Darts Open @ 5.50 generally available
A special allowance is made for MVG purely because of his excellent tournament record.
