2023 Premier League Darts Outright Betting Preview – JP
2023 Premier League Darts – Outright Preview
The 2023 Premier League Darts kicks off in Belfast this week and James Punt’s outright betting preview is below.
2023 PL Darts
Nothing else in darts generates more heat, and very little light, than the Premier League and who is selected to play in it. The top four on the O.O.M. are automatic selections and the other four are ‘wild card’ picks made by the PDC and Sky TV.
It used to be that if you won a ranking major in the preceding season, you would get selected. This now seems to have gone out the window, replaced by the winner of the Masters getting a pick. Now the Masters is a good tournament, but it is not of the same stature of the European Championships or UK Open.
The winners of those two ranking majors in 2022, Ross Smith and Danny Noppert, were passed over and preference given to Masters winner Chris Dobey and winner of a couple of World Series exhibitions, Dimitri van den Bergh. World number 5 and winner of five senior PDC titles in 2022, Luke Humphries was also passed over.
However, it is what it is. The powers that be make the calls and that is that.
Not A Fan
I have to state that I am not a fan of the Premier League. It is too long and the current ‘mini tournament every night’ format is just too repetitive with the same eight faces playing every Thursday night for four months. There is no relegation at the halfway point and it is like eating your favourite dinner every night for a month, you would soon get sick of it.
It can’t be much fun for the players either. Four months of travelling the length and breadth of the UK and Ireland, as well as heading to Rotterdam and Munich. That is travelling to get to the venue on Wednesday, playing Thursday, travelling to Euro Tour/Players Championship events at the weekend and getting a couple of days a week at home. That is a grind.
Little Time Off
It is becoming more common for Premier League players to skip Euro Tour events and some Players Championships, just to be able to have some time off. With the introduction of the two World Series events in January, players like Michael Smith, Gerwyn Price, Jonny Clayton, Peter Wright and Dimitri van den Bergh had very little time off between the end of the World Championship and the start of the ‘proper’ season with last week’s Masters, and the start of the Premier League this week.
This weakens the quality of the Euro Tour fields and that is a shame, as those events are so much more entertaining than the Premier League. Anyway, enough ranting.
2023 Premier League Darts: The Players
Michael Smith
The reigning World Champion’s feet have barely touched the floor since picking up the Sid Waddell Trophy. Media work, followed by the Bahrain Masters and then off to Copenhagen for the Nordic Masters, quickly followed by the Masters in Milton Keynes, before heading off to Belfast for the opening night of the Premier League.
January used to be an opportunity to have three or four weeks off and recharge the batteries before the start of a long season. Now, the top players need to play in exhibitions to keep the cash coming in. Burnout is going to be a big worry for everyone in the PL and those that had little time off in January more so. Was Smith’s lacklustre performance in the Masters semi-final the first sign of fatigue hitting?
Bully Boy was runner up in the 2018 PL but in his four other appearances his highest finish was 6th in 2022. It will be interesting to see if he gets on any better now that he has become a major champion, or whether he suffers some degree of burn out, but his event record is not good.
Peter Wright
Much like Smith, Snakebite’s event record is not good. He was runner up in 2017 and made the playoffs in 2020, but he failed to get any higher than 5th in his other seven appearances. Wright has already said that he will play a reduced number of Euro Tour events in 2023 to allow for some rest.
He does seem to suffer with more health issues than most players and is wife is also prone to illness, which is a big distraction for him. The chances of something like this derailing him at some point over a four month period seem reasonably high.
Gerwyn Price
Another player whose relationship with the Premier League is not good. In four appearances he has failed to make the playoffs and this is in no small part due to the abuse he receives at all bar 1 of the 17 venues. Premier League ‘fans’ tend towards the casual fans, the out for a piss up crowd, and barracking Price is part of what they come for. It does get to Price, and he is unbackable as a result.
Michael van Gerwen
Mighty Mike has a superb PL record, winning it six times and being runner up twice. He won it or was runner up every year from 2013 to 2019. Since then, it has been harder work. He failed to make the playoffs for the only time in 2020, lost in the semi-final in 2021 and had to survive a match dart against him before winning last year’s title. He still starts as favourite, and deservedly so, but he is no longer a stick on.
Jonny Clayton
The first of the wild card picks. The Ferret may not have done much in 2022, but he is something of a Premier League specialist. He won it in 2021 (a tasty 5 point winner for followers of this blog at 21.00, despite a disgraceful Rule 4 being applied by the losing bookie) and he reached the playoffs last year, topping the league phase table. Clayton has a good attitude to winning and losing, rarely goes off the boil for very long and makes his consistency pay.
Nathan Aspinall
Like Jonny Clayton, Nathan Aspinall has thrived in the Premier League. In his two appearances he has been runner up and a semi-finalist. He did not play last year, so he has not yet played in the new ‘mini tournament’ format. He enjoys playing in front of big crowds and they don’t get any bigger than in the Premier League.
Dimitri van den Bergh
Perhaps the most controversial of the wild card picks. Van den Bergh does seem to be a darling of the PDC as he gets invited to a lot of the World Series events and now a second Premier League. His only major title came back in 2020 and his two titles in 2022 were both World Series events. He reached the semi-final at the World Championships, but has he done more that Noppert or Humphries for example? Dimitri has played in just one Premier League, finishing 5th in 2021.
Chris Dobey
Dobey won the Masters on Sunday night, finally lifting a TV trophy after eight years on tour. It seems that winning the Masters is now a better way for qualifying for the Premier League than winning a ranking major. However, the past two Masters winners, Clayton and Cullen, both went on to reach the PL final, Clayton winning and Cullen missing a match dart to win the title.
That should be a hint not to dismiss Dobey out of hand. He won’t ever have had to face the amount of travelling he is about to endure for the next four months before, and it remains to see how he gets on. A poor start and it can become a form of torture for some players.
2023 Premier League Darts Tournament Format Changes
Looking at past Premier Leagues as a form guide is clouded by the fact that the format has been changed over the years and even in the last four, they have all been a bit different. Last year saw a new format.
The field was reduced to eight players and gone was the round robin format with a halfway cut to eliminate the bottom two. It was just 16 weeks of the same eight players having a mini tournament with the winner picking up 5 points for winning the night, three for reaching the final and two for reaching a semi-final.
The top four then played in the playoffs to decide the winner. At least the final stage was the same. That made it a different sort of event and affected some side markets, most notably the most 180 market. This will be the format which will be used this year.
More Matches = More 180s
Jonny Clayton won the most 180s market after hitting a Premier League record of 93. That was largely because he played more matches than anyone else, 36, compared to next best 82 from 32 matches for MVG. Bottom of the league player Gary Anderson only played 19 matches.
The 2022 league was also affected by some players having to withdraw due to illness or injury. Their opponents are automatically handed a 6-0 win and two points. Eventual winner, MVG, benefited from one freebie, runner up Joe Cullen two.
Cullen only qualified for the playoffs two points ahead of Peter Wright, and even if they had been tied his leg difference was a lot better thanks to his free 12 legs. Hopefully this will not be such a problem this year as it make a bit of a mockery of the league stage.
2021 Format
In 2021 the format reverted to ten selected players who played each other over nine weeks, the bottom two were eliminated and the remaining eight played for another seven nights to establish the four players who made the playoffs.
In 2020 and 2019 the format was nine players being selected to play in a round robin format and they would be joined by nine Challengers who played one match each against one of the nine permanent players during the first phase. The bottom player was eliminated and the remaining eight continued until the play off stage.
Pandemic Problems in 2020
The 2020 Premier League was further complicated by the pandemic. The first six nights were played as normal but after the first lockdown, the league stage was then played behind closed doors and rather than on every Thursday night, the matches were played in two blocks of consecutive nights in Late August and early September, with the playoffs played in October.
That made it a different event. Gone was the issue of form rising and falling across four months, replaced by 10 rounds of matches played over a couple of weeks. Whoever was in form at that point got a big advantage. The 2020 playoffs stood out as it was the first time that none of the semi-finalists had played in the previous year’s playoffs, so the enforced format change may have played its part.
2013 -2018 was the ‘classic’ format of 10 players with two taken out with a halfway cut.
Cream Rises
Looking back at past years means we are not always comparing like with like, but at the end of it all, the cream rises to the top. However, it has become more competitive in recent years. Between 2013 and 2019, only seven different played finished first or second. The last three years have seen six different finalists and three different winners.
Michael van Gerwen has dominated the last ten years, winning seven titles and topping the league phase eight times. However, like his form generally, he has found things harder in the last three years. He did win last year but had to survive a match dart from Joe Cullen to do so. Had Cullen hit, we would have had back-to-back Masters winning wild card picks winning the Premier League on debut. Two years cannot establish a trend, but it shows that the days of MVG just rocking up, playing for 4 months and picking up the league and winning the title are over.
That said, in the last ten years MVG has only not made the playoffs once and it is very hard to argue with odds of 1.25 for him to do so again.
Win Rates
The key to winning the Premier League is consistency. Players who can hold their form for long periods of time will do better than those who can be great for a few weeks and then go off the boil. The sport is in an interesting place at the moment. There are more players around who can and will win tournaments, including the big ones. But are there that many who can play at a very high level for months on end. Players who can shrug off a defeat or two and get back to winning ways? Not so many.
Michael van Gerwen belongs to the short list of players who is there or thereabouts most of the time. He will lose matches, he lost 13 of his 32 played under the new format last year, but he won three nights and was runner up four times. That allowed him to pick up enough points finish to second in the league phase.
Clayton PL Form Strong
Jonny Clayton won the 2021 Premier League title, under the old format, and he backed it up by topping the league phase under the new format. He won four nights, more than anyone else, and was runner up four times. That meant he finished a massive nine points ahead of second place man, MVG.
The Ferret is a very consistent player, not as consistent as he was in 2021, but he is still capable of winning plenty of matches and his positive mental attitude is made for an event like this. He can keep it together for months at a time, his dips in form are usually brief.
He is an underrated player, arguably he doesn’t win as many tournaments as he should, but he is consistent, and he looks forward to the Premier League as he has little mental scarring form past experiences. MVG is in the same boat, as is Nathan Aspinall.
Surprise Selection
The Asp was a surprise selection in some people’s minds, but his PL record is very good. He has played two and made the playoffs both times, finishing runner up in 2020.
A crude but effective way of looking at a player’s consistency is to look at their win rate, perhaps the most over looked stat there is.
One of the reasons why MVG has struggled in recent years is that his win rate has fallen every season since 2016. In 2022 he ended with a seasonal win rate of 73%, still the best of any player in the field, but well down on his career high of 91% in 2016.
drop off for price
Michael Smith and Gerwyn Price both had a win rate of 67% in 2022. That was a big step back for Price, who had a win rate of 80% in 2021 and 78% in 2020. Those great win rates did not translate into him even making the playoffs, which tells me that he is not a player to follow in the PL, such is the hostility shown to him by the crowds.
Michael Smith’s win rate had slipped a little from 72%, but his rate has been fairly consistent for much of his career. Will it improve on the back of him making the breakthrough in terms of winning majors? It probably should, but his PL record has largely been disappointing, and I suspect he will still find coping with setbacks harder than the likes of Clayton.
Jonny Clayton’s 2022 win rate was 64%, well down from 77% on his golden 2021 season. That is a big fall and going into the 2021 PL his recent win rate was over 80%, but 64% is still the fourth highest.
Career High
Chris Dobey’s 2022 win rate was also 64% (a career high) and he has started 2023 with his first televised title win. It could be that he continues to improve and get that win rate up. If so, he could follow in the footsteps of Clayton and Cullen and make the playoffs.
Peter Wright’s 2022 win rate was 63%, Van den Bergh’s 61% and Aspinall’s 61%. There is not a huge gap between the highest, MVG’s 73%, and the lowest competitor’s 61%.
Recent Form
If we look at just the last 50 matches of each player, taking into account the more recent form of the eight players, we see Dimitri van den Bergh bottom of the pile with just 50% of his matches won, which further begs the question as to why he was picked. Jonny Clayton has won just 56% of his last 50 and Nathan Aspinall 66%. That is one tournament specialist coming into the event in comparatively poor form and the other, Aspinall, improving.
Michael van Gerwen tops the list with 74%, much in line with the whole of 2022. Michael Smith and Gerwyn Price have won 72% of their last 50, a bit better than for 2022. Peter Wright is on 70%, improving on 2022, and Chris Dobey 68%, again, trending in the right direction.
2023 Premier League Darts Selections
It is hard to get away from Michael van Gerwen for the 2023 Premier League Darts. His tournament record is second to none. He has only failed to make the playoffs once, won the league stage in eight of his ten appearances, and won the title seven times.
He comes into the tournament with the best win rate of any of the eight players. His confidence is not what it was pre-2020, but it has improved in the last year and he still believes that he is the best there is.
Michael Smith is a different proposition this year. He has now officially joined the major players. He has won the big one and the Grand Slam in recent months. His win rates are second only to MVG, but his tournament record is not good. He has only made the playoffs once and has quite a bit of scar tissue. I am also a little concerned that with this being his first season as World Champion, he may suffer from a degree of burn out.
Not A Long Break
Smith didn’t have much of a break after winning the World’s and he now has four months of weekly Premier League chores, as well as having to decide which events he can afford to skip in order to get a few days off here and there.
He did some of that last year, but this year there is a bit more pressure to turn up and fly the flag as World Champion. He needs to be selfish and look after himself, but promoters, TV companies and the PDC will want to see him as often as possible.
Gerwyn Price has the win rates to suggest that he should be in the mix, but he never has in four previous appearances. Such is the vile hostility shown towards him from the huge crowds, it must be nearly impossible for him to play at his best.
Snakebite Underperforms
Peter Wright is another player who has traditionally underperformed in the Premier League. For a player of his abilities, to only make two playoffs and one final is poor. He peaks well but he can go AWOL at times, whether that his down to his fitness or off oche issues.
Tournament specialists, Clayton and Aspinall, may not be playing well enough to repeat their past success, but it wouldn’t be a surprise to see one of them make the playoffs again. Dimitri van den Bergh is my favourite to finish last or be very close to it.
What about Chris Dobey? He really is the outlier. Who would even have had him as a Premier League player this time last week? Will that first breakthrough win spur him on to repeat the success of Clayton in 2021 and Joe Cullen in 2022?
Those two players had enjoyed more previous success than Dobey has had before they won the Masters. That said, he will be on cloud nine going into the tournament, he has a great deal of ability and so long as he gets off to a good start, who knows.
