Cash Converters Players Chanmpionship

Posted: 28.11.13 in Tournament Analysis Blog category

Here is our preview of this weekends darts tournament!

Off we go again! Sandwiched between the Grand Slam and The Worlds is the Cash Converters Players Championship from Minehead. The good news for non-Sky subscribers is that it is  on ITV 4,  it kicks off at 12.45 on Friday and is all done and dusted by Sunday night.

The tournament itself has had a little bit of a chequered past. First played in 2009 at the Circus Tavern (Taylor won), in 2010 Nico took the title at the Doncaster Dome. Then the dates were meddled with, Taylor won it in February 2011 and then Painter in December 2011.

A lot of players complained the December date (8 December) was too close to the Worlds so a compromise was reached. The last week in November was when the event took place last year (Taylor again) and is the date for this year too.

All the competitors come from the top 32 of the one year order of merit so we should have the form horses going head to head!  There are of course all the usual suspects but it is always good to keep tabs on the players we don’t see quite so often on TV, players such as Ian White, Jamie Lewis and Michal Smith.

The two sessions on Friday are:
First Round
Afternoon Session (12.45pm)
Ian White v Ronnie Baxter
Kim Huybrechts v Terry Jenkins
Wes Newton v Andy Smith
Gary Anderson v Stuart Kellett
Brendan Dolan v Wayne Jones
Jamie Caven v Colin Lloyd
Peter Wright v Michael Smith
Steve Beaton v James Wade

Evening Session (7pm)
John Part v Andy Hamilton
Simon Whitlock v Justin Pipe
Robert Thornton v Richie Burnett
Mervyn King v Raymond van Barneveld
Adrian Lewis v Kevin Painter
Paul Nicholson v Phil Taylor
Michael van Gerwen v Jamie Lewis
Dave Chisnall v Jelle Klaasen

Who is going to Win?

Taylor is even money and is in the opposite side of the draw to MVG and Jackpot. Stingy odds but The Power has regained his spell over the rest and is going to be tough to stop. Lewis and Van Gerwen are realistically the best chances to thwart Taylor and are available at 13/2 and 7/1.

180!

If Lewis can regain the 180 hitting he clinically demonstrated in what was hailed as the greatest game since the last greatest game and that game that was really, really great but not quite great enough (all in the past 18 months!) against Taylor in the Grand Slam a couple of weeks ago then 7/2 to hit the most 180’s in the tournament is worth looking at.

We will look at the individual games tomorrow!

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