Sports Blog 20/03/2017: Premier League Darts Preview – Phase 1 Round 8, Thursday 23rd March 2017

Thursday sees the penultimate round of the Premier League Darts’ Phase 1, and it is set to be a busy night for Michael van Gerwen.

The defending champion will play twice at the Manchester Arena, having pulled out of the 5th round at the start of March with a back injury. That meant Dave Chisnall had to pull double duty in Exeter, though Chizzy has been rewarded for his efforts with an evening off.

Ahead of his matches against James Wade and Raymond van Barneveld, Mighty Mike sits in 2nd place on 10 points, just one behind Peter Wright but with that game in hand. Despite (for now) being behind Wright in the league standings, van Gerwen is far and away at the top of the Outright Index with a spread of 47-50 – where the winner gets 60 points, the runner-up 40, the losing semi-finalists 20, 5th to 8th place 10 and 9th to 10th place nothing. He is also odds on favourite in terms of fixed odds, the Dutch master sitting at 1/2.



With van Gerwen seemingly on track for a 3rd title, it is perhaps more interesting to look at who is vying for the runner-up spot. The aforementioned Wright is at a spread of 30-33, with fixed odds of 7/2, while 2015 champion Gary Anderson is at 27-30 and 4/1. Though they are very close on the Outright Index, there are 4 points separating the 2 men, with Anderson languishing in 5th place and potentially in danger of missing out on the play-offs.

Move beyond the Scotsmen and things get very tight in the middle of the pack. Wade and van Barneveld may be in 3rd and 4th place respectively, but they still sit a relatively disappointing Outright Index spreads of 12-15 and 15-18. Phil Taylor, who for the first time entered the competition as a Wild Card after missing out on the PDC Order of Merit, is then at 14-17, while Adrian Lewis is at 13-16.

As for the resting Chisnall, he is at 6.5-9.5 even with having played one more game than everyone else, and could be in trouble if either Jelle Klaasen (at 0.5-2.5) or Kim Huybrechts (at 0.25-1.75) get their act together in the next fortnight.