2024 European Darts Open Betting Preview

Now, it is time for James Punt’s 2024 European Darts Open outright betting preview. It feels like an age since the Dutch Darts Championship, hopefully a great weekend of darts lies ahead.

2024 European Darts Open Preview

This will be the eighth European Tour event of 2024. It is the last one before the cut off for the Matchplay. Players like Dirk van Duijvenbode, Callan Rydz, Mike de Decker and Gabriel Clemens will be looking for a big result to leapfrog them over the likes of James Wade and Andrew Gilding, who are both here this weekend, hoping to hang on.

Gerwyn Price is the defending champion, having beaten Dirk van Duijvenbode last year. Michael van Gerwen is a five time winner of the tournament, Peter Wright has won two and been runner up twice. This will be the sixth time that it has been played at the Ostermann-Arena, Leverkusen, Germany.

Late Withdrawals

We nearly had a full complement of the top names this weekend. Even Gary Anderson had his name in the hat. It was looking to be the strongest line up of the year so far. There is no Premier League for the top players to travel from, so we should get a good one. However, as usual, we have had late withdrawals from Anderson and he is joined on the absent list by Aspinall, Clayton, Joyce and the ante post favourite, Luke Littler.

Back to the drawing board for bookies and tipsters. Nice work. It is fair enough to withdraw for reasons like injury or illness, but it seems that some players will not turn up if they think they have won enough money to make the finals. I mean, even Joe Cullen is here and he thinks all the Euro Tours should be played in England.

Maybe if the PDC started sanctioning players for not showing up without good reason, say getting £5k knocked off their Euro Tour ranking money, then they may show a little more respect to the tour, sponsors and fans.

At least all those withdrawals means that the Bank of Ritchie Edhouse returns as a reserve, along with Kevin Doets, Ryan Meikle, Dylan Slevin and Jamie Hughes.

The Seeds

1 Luke Humphries 

Has only played World Series events since the end of the Premier league season. He has lost four of his last ten including two semi-finals to Rob Cross and a quarter for Michael Smith.

His scoring has been good on the whole but he has now lost his last three matches with Cross, including the final of ET6. They are both in the top half of the draw this weekend, so they could meet again in the semi-final.

2 Dave Chisnall 

Chizzy has lost six of his last ten matches, despite scoring well in most. He lost both his first round matches in last week’s Players Championship events and that could be a bit of frustration getting to him. He has not got beyond the last 16 stage in Europe this season. Hard to fancy.

3 Damon Heta 

His form remains very inconsistent, losing five of his last ten, and his scoring reflects those results. Another player who is hard to fancy.

4 Rob Cross 

Reached the final of all three of the recent World Series events, winning one. Cross continues to play at the top of his game, has a seasonal average of 97.5, but his win rate is just 57%, down from 67% in 2023. He is a bit of a puzzle that I can’t solve.

Cross has won eight of his last ten matches, he won ET6 last month and in that time period he has played eighteen and lost just three matches. With the end of the PL, is Cross set to kick on and pick up more titles? He ticks so many boxes, but I just can’t seem to get him right. My bogey player.

5 Gerwyn Price 

Another player who is hard to fathom. Price, the defending champion, has a seasonal win rate of 59.5%, down from 73% in 2023. Like Cross, he has won eight of his last ten matches and like Cross he enjoyed a good run in the World Series tournaments. He played two, won one and was runner up in the other. He wasn’t so good in last week’s Players Championship events, losing two of his six matches and having three sub 92 averages.

Like Cross, with his hated Premier League behind him, Price may be set to move up the gears. Price reached the semi-finals of ET1, ET2, and the final of ET3. The PL then took his attention and he skipped ET5 & ET6. Given the choice, I guess he would rather have skipped the Premier League and played the Euro Tour. Price should be a feature this weekend but he has been expensive to follow for the last seven or eight months.

6 Danny Noppert 

Has reached one ET semi-final and five quarter finals in 2024, but never reached the payout zone for e/w bets. He is a hard player to follow. Noppert wins plenty of matches, his seasonal win rate is 67%, but he doesn’t tend to convert that into titles.

However, he has won a Players Championship in 2024 and was a semi-finalist in PC12 last week. Noppert is in good form, winning seven of his last ten, but for me he is a player to support in the early rounds, but to oppose at the business end.

7 Michael van Gerwen 

Still struggling. MVG has a win rate of 65%, a perfectly respectable rate for most, but not for the former world number 1. Every year since 2016, his seasonal win rate has fallen, as have his averages. He is steadily sliding into the pack and is finding it hard to accept that he is no longer the number 1.

This is not just a short term loss of form, but a long term decline. That said, he is still capable of playing great darts and winning one of these, but it is becoming much more difficult for him to do so.

Outside of the Covid seasons, when we only had six events over two years, MVG has won at least one ET event every year since 2012. He has won this title five times, but he is hard to fancy, especially as he is still priced as one of the top favourites (9.00 third favourite).

MVG has reached one ET final in 2024, losing that to Humphries, and his most recent form sees four defeats from his last ten matches.

8 Josh Rock 

Was the winner of the last Euro Tour event, the Dutch Darts Championship, beating Jonny Clayton 8-4 in the final. Rock has won eight of his last ten matches and will be feeling a lot better about his game after that title win.

His game is not that consistent, but there is plenty to like at times. He has reached the quarter finals here for the last two years and another good run would be no surprise.

9 Ross Smith 

Smudger’s most recent form sees six defeats from his last ten matches. He is lacking the kind of consistency needed to win titles, but his game is not that far off. He should have won ET4, losing the final to Gary Anderson, and I think that hurt his confidence as he has lost half of his fourteen matches since.

10 Ryan Searle 

Heavy Metal is having his best season on the Euro Tour, reaching four quarter finals, but getting no further. He is not a great traveller, but at least is making the effort worthwhile these days. His recent form sees five wins from his last ten, but he is playing well enough to have good runs and is pretty consistent. Maybe another quarter final?

Searle is twelfth on the European Championship OOM with £28k. Might he be thinking that with another decent run, he too can choose not to turn up for the rest of the season? I suppose it is some kind of incentive.

11 Stephen Bunting 

Has lost six of his last ten matches and there have been some good losing performances, but also three sub 90 averages. Bunting is having a good season, with a win rate of 66%, and he reached two Euro Tour semi-finals. But for me, he remains a bit title shy, but he can have good runs.

12 Martin Schindler 

The winner of ET3 back in April, Schindler is having his best Euro Tour season ever. He was a semi-finalist in ET7 last month, and also in ET2 in April. There was a quarter final at the end of April but his most recent form sees just five wins from his last ten.

He has never made it beyond round two in this event and with his game lacking consistency right now, he is hard to fancy.

13 Peter Wright

Snakebite averaged 109 in his last match and lost 3-6 to Luke Littler on the World Series. That was Wright’s first ton plus average for a month, the last was a 103 against Cameron Menzies, and he lost that one as well.

Wright’s most recent form sees five wins from his last ten, a slight improvement on his seasonal win rate of 46%. That 109 average sticks out like a sore thumb as Wright has been struggling with his scoring. His seasonal average is just 92.29 and that is a very fair representation of where his game is.

14 Chris Dobey 

With a seasonal win rate of 69%, Dobey should be knocking on the winning door a bit more often than he does. He has the sixth highest 12 month average, so he is one of the game’s biggest hitters.

However he has lost five of his last ten matches and hasn’t done much on the Euro Tour this year, reaching the semi-final of ET3 excepted. There are still too many flat performances to fancy Dobey going all the way.

15 Ricardo Pietreczko

Since reaching the semi-final of ET1, Pietreczko has won just two matches on the Euro Tour. His recent form is very poor, losing seven of his last ten matches, and his scoring has been very weak. Just two of his last ten matches saw 90 plus averages and he can easily be opposed.

16 Gian van Veen 

Promoted to seeded status thanks to Anderson’s withdrawal. Has won six of his last ten matches, but he has lost his A-game for the moment. He hasn’t been scoring well and hasn’t beaten anyone of note for a month or so.

Best of the Unseeded Players

The unseeded player list contains some big names and the first round draw will see some tasty matches. The seeded players are unlikely to get many easy second round matches. At least that was the case before the five no shows, not so much now.

Michael Smith

Has only played four Euro Tour events, preferring to concentrate on the PL. He is back to full duties now. Smith has won six of his last ten matches overall, but he has won just two matches in Europe this year.

He is not quite at the top of his game right now, a little inconsistent, he could have a good run but he doesn’t quite look the pick of the bunch.

Dimitri van den Bergh

The surprise winner of PC12 last week. He beat Matt Campbell 8-3 in the final, averaging 87, the same average as he scored to beat Razma in the semi-final. The field in those mid-week Players Championship events was pretty poor, but he played well for the first five rounds. His form before that win was indifferent at best. Will a win on the floor get his stage game going?

Dirk van Duijvenbode 

Last year’s runner up, and in a match he should have won. Dirk also enjoyed a good run last week, reaching the semi-final of PC12, but he had an easy draw and while he will have loved winning some matches, his scoring was nothing to write home about. He lost his semi-final 0-7 to Alan Soutar. He remains hard to fancy.

Joe Cullen

I am finding Cullen hard to read. He was runner up in ET5 at the end of April, but since then he has played just seven matches, losing six. He went from playing great in ET5 struggling to average over 90.

Daryl Gurney 

Another player who had a good run in last week’s Players Championship events, reaching the final of PC11. He would have been disappointed to have averaged just 85 in a 7-8 loss to Alan Soutar in the final, but it was his first final since October 2019.

Superchin has won six of his last ten matches, but despite that run to a final he is hard to fancy. That said, the fact that he is no longer playing under the pressure of trying to win his place in the World Cup may free him up to just play darts. He did reach a final last week, after all.

Ritchie Edhouse

It is nice to have the chance to visit the Bank of Edhouse once more, but is he still in top form? Maybe not. He has won six of his last ten matches and while he won three of his five Players Championship matches last week, his scoring was so-so. However, he seems to come alive on the Euro Tour and will be a dangerous opponent.

The 2024 European Darts Open Draw

Yesterday’s work is in the bin, so time to start again.

1st Quarter

Luke Humphries is the top seed and the 4.00 favourite to win the title. The other seeds are Gian van Veen, Josh Rock, and Ross Smith. Of those four, Humphries and Rock are in the best form.

Interestingly, Rock is 2-1 against Humphries and it was Humphries who Rock beat to win his first PDC title, but all three of their previous meetings were in 2022.

The best of the unseeded players drawn into this quarter include Barney and Ratajski, who meet in the first round, with the winner to face Humphries. Humphries should be able to cope with the winner, but it isn’t the easiest second round draw.

Dimitri van den Bergh, Players Championship winner last week, plays Meikle for the right to face winner of the Dutch Darts Championship, Josh Rock. Callan Rydz, who needs a big run this weekend, will face Ross Smith.

I would fancy Humphries or Rock to make the semi-finals, but maybe Van den Bergh will be refreshed by his recent win on the floor.

2nd Quarter

This quarter features two of the in-form big beasts, Rob Cross and Gerwyn Price. Both enjoyed success in the three World Series events held in the last three weekends. Cross made all three finals, beating Price in one, and losing to Price in another. They are drawn to meet in the quarter final and in would be no great surprise to see that becoming reality.

Cross has a tough second match as he will face the winner of the Michael Smith vs. James Wade first round match. It seems likely that he would face Ritchie Edhouse in the third round. They are 1-1 on the Euro Tour this year and Edhouse is 2-1 overall in 2024.

Price has the easier path to the quarters, with only Martin Schindler looking to be a possible banana skin. Price and Cross are 3-3 in 2024 and picking the winner between those two is hard. I will go for Price, just because he seems more likely to make the quarters.

3rd Quarter

Dave Chisnall is the top seed in this quarter, but his form is not good. MVG is next best and while his draw is good, he just doesn’t strike me as being in tournament winning form. Ryan Searle has been good at making quarter finals on the Euro Tour this season, but he looks to have a tricky second round match with Daryl Gurney. Gurney is 7-2 against Searle.

Ricardo Pietreczko is the other seed but is in terrible form. I look at this quarter and am seeing a Gurney vs. MVG third round match as being the key one. They are 5-5 over their last ten matches. The value in this quarter may lie with Superchin? It certainly looks an open quarter.

4th Quarter

The four seeds here, Heta, Dobey, Bunting and Noppert, are all very good, but a bit underwhelming when it comes to winning titles. Noppert is in the best form and looks the best pick to me. Not with any great enthusiasm, but someone will make the semi-final and then, you never know. Joe Cullen is the only big name in the first round, but his form does not look good.

2024 European Darts Open: Ante Post Selections

This is not a tournament where the selections leap off the page. Luke Littler looked to be a very strong favourite at 4.50. With Littler’s withdrawal, Luke Humphries is maybe not so strong at 4.00. He may well win, but his odds are only fair at best.

Rob Cross and Gerwyn Price look to be the form players coming into this event. I can’t get Cross right at all, so Price is the main pick, which probably means he loses to Cross.

Gerwyn Price to win the 2024 European Darts Open 1pt win @ 9.00 SpreadEx

The other three selections are to minimum stakes only. They are all a bit speculative, but with some top players not in the best of form, it may pay to look outside the box.

Daryl Gurney to win the 2024 European Darts Open 0.5 point e/w @ 67.00 generally available

Danny Noppert to win the 2024 European Darts Open 0.5 point e/w @ 34.00 with Ladbrokes, Betvictor

Josh Rock to win the 2024 European Darts Open 0.5 point e/w @ 29.00 generally available

This tournament clashes with the Spanish GP this weekend, so I will not be covering it round by round, but I will aim to pick out some value match bets when the time allows.

-JamesPunt