Austrian Darts Open 27-29 April

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The PDC have introduced five new European Tour events this year which are all played on a stage with 64 players in each tournament. All matches are the best of 11 legs and with £15k to the winner they are well worth winning. The first tournament is the Austrian Darts Open which begins at 12.00 on Friday. A link to the draw, format and order of play is here: http://www.pdc.tv/page/NewsdeskDetail/0,,10180~2750922,00.html. Adrian Lewis and Phil Taylor are out of the tournament through illness so their first round opponents get byes. Sadly there is no TV or streaming coverage of this event but there are a few bookies offering outright betting and plenty of match betting so there's the potential to make money this weekend.

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Re: Austrian Darts Open 27-29 April I'm taking two outrights this weekend both of which have enhanced in value since the withdrawals of Taylor and Lewis. 1pt ew K.Huybrechts to win Austrian Darts Open 28/1 Blue Square (1/2 1-2) Kim Huybrechts is a player I really like and already this season he has shown me why with wins over Raymond Barneveld, James Wade and Mark Webster among others on the pro tour already. He has already made the final of a UK Open qualifier this season and a semi final and quarter final in the Players Championship tournaments and he looks the real deal to me. As we saw at the World Championship when he's on form he scores very heavily and can be very hard to stop. His draw isn't too bad especially with Lewis pulling out and I think he's just about in the weaker half of the draw with Anderson, Whitlock and Barneveld all in the other half of the draw. Huybrechts is clearly in form and I expect him to go well especially with the Premier League players having to play less than 24hrs after getting themselves up for a big PL match last night so their motivation and enthusiasm could be lower than normal. 1pt ew M.Smith to win Austrian Darts Open 100/1 Blue Square (1/2 1-2) Michael Smith is the next big star who is going to breakthrough in the PDC in a big way and there's no reason why he can't win this tournament. He has already won a Players Championship tournament this year where he beat Nicholson, Chisnall, Wade and Pipe along the way and he's also made a UK Open qualifier semi final where Phil Taylor was too good for him but there's no harm in that. Of the three youth tour events so far this year he has won one and made the final of another so he goes into this event with plenty of match wins and winning momentum behind him and I expect him to go well this weekend. As with all youngsters he can be inconsistent but when he is fully firing he is more than a match for anyone and an incredibly heavy scorer and even though there's some big names in his half of the draw I'll pay to see how far he goes given that this best of 11 distance could just be the perfect distance for him at this point in his career.