Jazzer Isaac

BetVictor World Matchplay Round One Tonight 22:00 Dave Chisnall vs Benito van de Pas – over 9.5 180s @ 4/5. 1 point. 365. Not much can be said about this one. Everybody will have the data – bookies’ prices are just down to how they interpret that data. The key interpretation I make is that Benito van de Pas is a better 180 hitter than the raw data suggests, which is why this line is attractive. Benito van de Pas is one of the rising stars of the game – as a consequence of this, he has had relatively little TV exposure, and thus there is little data on his 180ing standard. Similarly, as a consequence of his continued and rapid improvement, a lot of this available data doesn’t accurately reflect how he is playing now. In light of this, it seems sensible to assign greater weighting to the most recent data points, with big error margins on any statistics you deduce. Basically, BvdP has had the year of his career so far – he won his first two tour events, and has said in interviews that he feels a lot more comfortable on the stage nowadays. That has been reflected in a marked increase in his 180ing stats – improving his frequency by almost 80% from last season to this – going from the second worst 180er in the top 32 to comfortably ‘mid-table’. As two statistical ‘soundbites’ to emphasise van de Pas’ improvement in maximum hitting: he has hit 25 180s in 101 stage legs this year - whilst it took him 171 legs to hit his previous 25 stage 180s - and he hit only 13 180s in his last 101 legs preceding this season. I’ve chosen to take the match total rather than individual total because van de Pas is playing against Dave Chisnall. Chizzy is the best 180 hitter in darts, and he improves his 180ing in the longer games (like he will be playing tonight). Chisnall has often said that when he “finds his rythym”, he finds 180 hitting easy – the longer games gave him more chance to find that rythym. This is backed up by an increase of 0.2 180s per leg from his overall 180ing frequency to his 180ing frequency in games over 15 legs long. His 180ing rates have a big positive skew, and should he find his rhythm early, he could cover this line on his own (he did in his first round match here last year, hitting 13). My 180 model throws out the o9.5 as a 1.56 shot to 100% - this is whilst, 1) taking the market averages on each leg line (I have no strong opinion, but would slightly favour the over), 2) giving van de Pas a slightly lower frequency input than I think is true (to account for the increased error margin), and 3) ignoring Chisnall’s improvement over the longer format. When I hand-priced the line, I had it as a u/o 10.5 pickem. I’m not going silly, but there are a few angles that I think make this a solid pick, and I’ve no qualm about staking this to kick off the tournament tonight.

Down. Good side.

I've had some small stakes on home. 10/1 win with Coral, 13/2 DNB, 29/10 double chance and 13/10 +2 EH. Priced as if the Dons will stick out a first XI in my opinion - won't happen. They played away in the Europa League on Thursday, and are at home in the Europa League on Wednesday. Can't see them risking players at this stage of the pre-season and at this level of fitness. Obviously a big quality gap and you fancy Aberdeen U21/fringe players to still go off favs, but I can't ignore the misprice.

There is 9k available on Betfair for Portugal to win Euro 2016 at 16.5. The Betfair Exchange at decent liquidity is one of the best predictors of true probability available to the layman in my opinion. By its nature, the smart money will dictate the expected price, but I think the actual price is often slightly distorted from this by 'punters' money. In light of this, I think Portugal at the above price are a good back to lay opportunity. The premise being three fold: 1) Both sides' last matches: Croatia beat Spain, Portugal conceded 3 to Hungary and drew. I think this will cause the first punter distortion in the price. They see the results and back Croatia match odds, pushing Portugal out from true price set by big/smart money. 2) If Portugal beat Croatia, it will be likely be in an entertaining game, based on what we've seen from both sides so far. I think this will attract money again and people will think 'Portugal are playing well now'. 3) Punters will not be looking a round ahead, and upon seeing Portugal playing Switzerland or Poland in the quarter final, I reckon the price will be pushed down even further than truth. I'm looking to lay before the quarter final for at least a 6/4 win (which is when they reach 6.6), which I think I will get should Portugal qualify - I'm basically trying to enhance the price on Portugal qualifying. Both sides are worthy of a back to lay punt on the outright - Croatia are -++ on the three distortion points - Portugal are +++, which is why I've taken their side. I think Croatia are good for their marginal favouritism in the match, but Portugal offer the best investment. The +++ and the greater price give more scope for a big % swing upon qualification. I can offer no reason to back Portugal outright at fixed odds, this is just a play of the market. Points 2 and 3 apply to both teams and make the match an excellent opportunity. But it's point 1 that means if you take Croatia, you'll be getting a worse expected return than on Portugal.

Euro Tour 4 Today 15:30 Michael van Gerwen vs Daryl Gurney - over 4.5 180s @ 8/11. Bet365. 1 point. European Tour gift. The two best 180 hitters of 2016 by a margin, should piss in without something going majorly wrong. (I don't want to say what my sums get the o4.5 price at, but I would be looking at over 5.7 180s for a fair 8/11 price). I took evens on Betfair to a bigger stake this morning and have rebacked this price to 1 point. GLt

Most 180s of the week - Michael van Gerwen @ 5/6. 5 points. Betfred. I won't bore you with the sums but this is way, way over on PL performance this season. A lot of the excess probability is held in Lewis' price, which I think is under due to his 9 last week. MvG beats him comfortably over summed 2 game samples and beats the field >90% when 2 plays 1 matchwise. Biggest bet I've had since the World Matchplay. Definitely a price worth having. Hopefully Michael does the business.

Unibet Masters Day 1 Saturday 30th January Michael van Gerwen vs Stephen Bunting - Michael van Gerwen -4.5 @ 10/11. 1 point. 365. - Michael van Gerwen -6.5 @ 3/1. 0.5 points. 365. Stephen Bunting hasn't looked right for a decent while in my opinion. There has been a noticable slump in both his performances and results, coupled with a visible lack of confidence in his body language and a slight slowing of his throw. I think this has probably been caused by his poor Premier League last season, which has affected so many other players in the past. But whatever the reason, he's playing Michael van Gerwen here, and that is the last person you want to be facing when not feeling the best about your game. Van Gerwen is playing the darts of his career. He is the best player in the world and he is still continually improving. Last time out, he was beaten by Raymond van Barneveld in one of the best matches I have ever seen. van Gerwen's performance didn't drop from his usual standard, RvB just turned up with one of his best ever showings. To give an indication to how well van Gerwen is playing, that RvB loss stopped him from making it to EVERY televised final of last season - he won 7 of the 9 finals he did make it to, and he very rarely posted a sub 100 average throughout the entire year. The World Championship is the one van Gerwen wants, and missing out will have hurt him. But there is a somewhat reliable trend: whenever MvG suffers a disappointment, he bounces back immediately. Loses the Grand Prix Final, next match 111 average; loses the Premier League Final, next match 107 average... If he plays to that standard, we're in with a shout on these. This is a first to 10 match, so the -4.5 lands if van Gerwen can win 10-5 or better. Of the 9 matches the two players have played since Bunting's switch to the PDC, van Gerwen has won with over double the legs in 6. The majority of these matches were played when MvG was at a slightly worse standard and Bunting was at a much better standard, so it stands to reason that you'd expect it to happen again here if they maintain their current form levels. Factoring in what I believe to be Bunting's lack of confidence and van Gerwen's motivation to bounce back from World Championship disappointment, and I think this could be a tonking. If van Gerwen gets an early break, I see Bunting struggling to recover. I think van Gerwen will be very strong on throw and will be quite the favourite against throw too. >10/5 is >2 breaks in 6 Bunting legs. I haven't put any formal calculation to the price, but my fag packet thoughts were 1.7-1.75 would be around about right. Likewise, >10-3 is >3 breaks in 6 Bunting legs and I reckon 3/1 on that is decent too.

James Wade vs Wes Newton - James Wade win, high checkout and most 180s @ 15/8. 2 points. Sky. An early one cos cash is going in over the Wade 180s. Most 180s came back at 8/11, down a tick to best priced 4/6 already. -1.5 180 handicap came back at 11/8, already down to 6/5. I've missed 2 bets that I'd want to be on there. Basically, as has been talked about a lot, Newton has been in a bad form for about two years now. He didn't qualify for any tv tournaments, so I didn't know exactly how bad he was going until yesterday. He just did not look like a pro dart player in that game. He averaged 76 and hit 1 180 in 16 legs. Very fortunate to cross the line. Wade is hitting a lot more 180s recently and with Newton on this form, I think most 180s 4/6 represents a fair price over the minimum possible 12 legs - obviously the more legs we have, the bigger the discrepancy between the two players' prices becomes. The only small worry is the highest checkout segment of the treble, but with Wade's reputation as a class finisher and the fact I expect him to win this 12-4ish on legs, this shouldn't be too concerning. This price looks solid to me and I don't expect it to last.

Adrian Lewis vs Jan Dekker - Adrian Lewis to win 3-0 @ 5/4. PP. 1 point. - Adrian Lewis king of the oche @ 10/11. Coral. 1 point. Jan Dekker hasn't had the best of years. He failed to win a tour card last January and hasn't done much on the tour since anyway. He holds a record of 7-20 in Players Championship events, reaching a solitary last 16 on the floor and didn't qualify for any TV events in 2016. He did finish second on the Challenge Tour OoM, so he can't be playing too badly - but playing the world #5 in a World Championship is a very different prospect to a non-professional floor tournament. Adrian Lewis has looked good in recent months. His results have been impressive with final days in each of the last 4 majors, but the key reason why I'm getting on these bets is how focussed Lewis has looked recently. Since reforming his partnership with manager Keith Deller, Lewis has noticably looked more composed and concentrated on the board. We haven't seen any of the Lewis who turns up and throws disinterestedly, which he has been so prone to doing in recent years. A Lewis on form is a contender for any title - he came out firing here last year, recording the highest first round average in a 3-0 victory over Dave Pallett - I'm expecting a similar dominant performance tonight. Lewis wins this comfortably in my opinion. He's far the better player, and when combined with the right attitude I think that Dekker will be putting his jacket back on after just 3 sets here.

Tyson Fury 80/1. Betfair Sportsbook. He's 4/1 to beat Klitschko this weekend. Take that as the true chance, and is he really a 16/1 shot to win SPOTY as a newly crowned Heavyweight World Champion? Factor in that i) it's a public vote, ii) he would get a load of media exposure, iii) his win would only be two weeks before the presentation, iv) the public could quite easily latch onto his 'cult of personality'. And I think that this could be a price. I've never bet on a market like this before so I'm looking for some advice on anything I've missed before pulling the trigger. Anyone got thoughts?

Players Championships Finals 2015. Friday 27th November. 3:30pm Brendan Dolan vs Simon Whitlock - Simon Whitlock @ 10/11. 2 points. Betway. Early but I like this one. I'm really not expressing myself coherently in the write up but I hope you can see the general point. It reads like a ramble. -Whitlock's good game beats Dolan's good game. -Whitlock's average game beats Dolan's average game. -Whitlock's poor game beats Dolan's poor game. -Dolan has just dipped out of form recently and is on the slide at the moment. -Whitlock has been out of form for a while but he is showing signs of finding something imo. He won't threaten a tournament win like he used to, but he is definitely playing better than this time last year . -I expect Dolan to throw his average to poor game and Whitlock to throw his average game. -Whitlock will think he will win, I'm not sure if Dolan will. -Analogously, Dolan has begun his journey down the slide. Whereas, Whitlock has already reached the bottom and is in the process of climbing back up. -Crucially, Whitlock's slide starts and finishes at higher points than Dolan's slide does. -Can't explain this point well because I'm not a statistician and I'm mapping between odds and chance, but the graph of Whitlock odds vs density that I have in my mind's eye has a mean between 8/11 and 4/5 but a much smaller median. -The graph I see has a strong positive skew, which decays to zero fairly quickly after you hit evens. -If you took a sample of bookies, you'd get Whitlock 4/6 more times than you'd get him at our 10/11, for example. -Possibly topping up another point. -Not all odds are out yet, but I think it's VERY unlikely that this price will be beaten.

Max Hopp vs Dimitri van den Bergh - Dimitri van den Bergh @ 7/5. 1 point. Unibet/888. Value shot. A match between two players I consider fairly even ability-wise. Hopp has earnt the more £ of the two this year, though both will qualify for the World Championships. It is easy to argue German players are given a leg-up OOM-wise through the weaker home-nation qualifiers in Europe, but the difference isn't enough to mean much really. Van den Bergh leads the h2h 2-0 although this is fairly irrelevant too. Both come into the tournament in decent form - Hopp reaching the World Youth final and van den Bergh qualifying through a senior field for this event. Hopp is marginally the better player (imo) and is the more experienced of the two. I don't see where the wide 7/5 has come from and I've no issue with a point risk on van den Bergh taking the match at that chance.

Kim Huybrechts vs Mark Oosterhuis - Kim Huybrechts -1 3-way 180 handicap @ 5/4. 3 points. PP. Huybrechts has hit 9 180s in 13 legs so far in this tournament. Oosterhuis hasn't even managed a 140 in 10 legs and has only hit 1 two-treble score... Huybrechts has been smashing them in for fun since the Premier League but I'd be surprised if he can maintain his tournament 180ing rate in this match. And I don't expect Oosterhuis to throw so badly in this match, but I think there's still a bet here. I think the match will have only 5 legs, but there's no price on the correct score any more. The price is due to the short distance but: 5 legs - relaxed - under no pressure - knowing he's going to win, I think Huybrechts hits the 2 180s to fulfill his side of the bargain - from there it's a coin toss between Oosterhuis' first and Huybrechts' third in my book.

+16.33 points. Can't complain about that!

Monday Justin Pipe vs Steve Beaton The double-in format, the set format and the short length of first round matches make this stage of the tournament difficult to price accurately. But I think you may be getting a decent bet on this. I was disappointed when these two drew each other – both haven't been playing to their abilities recently and I was looking at two losses had they not drawn each other. Steve Beaton is a player on a bad run. The last match he won on TV was in November 2013 and the one before that was December 2012. Despite having some bad luck with the draw over the past year, he hasn't backed up his run of losses with any particularly good perfomances. I backed against him with 5 points at the last big tournament in July and have him marked to lose should he qualify for any of the major tournaments in the coming months. Beaton is the weakest player in this field in my opinion. He got to this tournament with £24750 earned in the pro-tour events over the past year – the cut-off was £22750 and he accrued more money than 7 other qualifiers. But an analysis of where this money was earned is telling: by reaching the final of a European Tour event in late 2014, he earned himself seeding in the first 6 European Tour events of 2015, guaranteeing 6 automatic second round places and importantly 6 £1500-minimum cheques. Effectively, he won £9000 of that £22750 prize money for turning up at the venue. Beaton qualified for only 1 of the other 3 European events this season, and since that run to the final he has only won 4 times in 27 matches against top 32 players. Justin Pipe has won only one match on TV since December 2013, but he has maintained a steady top 16 ranking through his off-camera performances. I don't expect his poor TV run to continue in the long term, he is too good of a player and in the worst case scenario, he will eventually draw someone who can't deal with his throwing pace. As I said though, had he drawn any top 16 player here, I would have him down to lose this one. As it is, I have this as a 4/6 Pipe 6/4 Beaton match. The double-in format of this tournament is not conducive to 180 hitting. I did some research to gauge how much of an effect it had, but quickly realised that the key sample I was collecting would be too small (in the time available) to draw any definite conclusions from. I decided to formulate an upper bound on the effectiveness instead: -You can not score a 180 on your checking-in turn. -The average checking-in turn in this format is about 80 (call this 60 for bound reasons). -I estimate the number of 180s hit with a starting score between 501-441 at this level (this is the sample that I realised would take too long to fully collect) is about a sixth of the total 180s hit (with almost all of this number coming from a spike at 501 and a much smaller hump at 444-441). So with a fair bit of noise, it can be assumed that you will get at most 5/6ths of the return you'd expect from a standard start match of the same number of legs on average. -Pipe has averaged 1 180 per 5.3 standard start legs over the past year. -Beaton has averaged 1 180 per 6.2 standard start legs over the past year. You're expecting 1 180 per 2.9 standard start legs in a match between these two. -There are 10.0 legs per first round match in this tournament. And 2.8 goes into 10.0 3.4 times. Apply the bounded double-in 'filter' and I think I've got a bet – apply it in real terms and it becomes even better. Obviously by this point the variance on my calculations was like a bucking horse trying to throw me away from putting my cash down, but I liked these instinctively when I saw them and the statistics somewhat suggest my thoughts were right. -u3.5 180s @ 4/6. 2 points. Coral. -u2.5 180s @ 7/5. 1 points. Betfair. -u1.5 180s @ 19/5. 1 point. Betfair.