2023 European Championship

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It’s been a great couple of weeks on the Darts Forum with some really big priced winners going in, let’s hope that continues in the European Championships. The tournament features the top 32 from the European Tour Order of Merit, and most of the big names are taking part in the tournament, which starts tonight in Dortmund.

Van Gerwen, Price and Humphries are the three favourites for the event, all priced up between 7/2 and 5/1. You can certainly make a case for any of them to win the event, especially Price and Humphries who are both in great form, but I’m going with three Englishmen who are at bigger odds and have impressed me in recent weeks.

The first of these is Rob Cross (22/1 Skybet), a former two time winner of this event, and runner up on his debut in 2017. Voltage has been firing in some impressive averages for a while now, and in the recent Players Championship events he only dipped below the 95 average in three of his 13 matches, hitting a ton-plus average in six of them. He was also in good form at the last European Tour event, also in Germany, reaching the quarter-finals before running into a very hot Luke Humphries. Cross has already won on the ProTour, Euro Tour and picked up two titles on the World Series this year, would be nice if he could add a Major to that list this weekend.

Second on my list is the current European Champion Ross Smith (50/1 Skybet). Ross Smith owes me nothing after picking up a title on the ProTour last weekend, his second win on the floor this year, and he’s playing some really nice darts at the moment. His 180 hitting is right up there with the best in the World, so he’s always going to get chances at the back-end of legs. The draw pits him against home favourite Ricardo Pietreczko in the first round, so it’s a tricky start for Smudger, and then it’s probably van Gerwen in the second round, but he should be feeling pretty confident about making a strong defence to the title he won 12 months ago.

Finally I’m going with Stephen Bunting (66/1 General), another player in fine form and a big title could be just round the corner for The Bullet. Bunting didn’t really threaten at the business end of the tournaments on the floor last week, but he was consistently throwing averages in the high 90’s. After the events he revealed he had been suffering with flu throughout the week - making those averages even more impressive. He’s another player who’s got to face home opposition in the opening round in the shape of Martin Schindler, but I’m hopeful Bunting can give me a good run for my money at tasty odds.

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It seems that Ross Smith won the European Championship only yesterday, late in October '22. I was lucky enough to pick that 150/1 winner and had Dobey at 80/1 for the Semi-Finals. Both players will once again be in the staking plan for me.

Lots of players looked very average in the PC and it will be interesting to see if they play like that in this one or if it's just a case of the matches being on the floor and not in the limelight on ITV.

Here's what I'm taking from an outright perspective :

3pts Humphries 5/1 Paddypower
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1pt e/w Dobey 40/1 Paddypower
1pt e/w Searle 50/1 Bet365
1pt e/w R.Smith 50/1 Skybet
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0.5pts e/w Schindler 100/1 Bet365
0.5pts e/w Pietreczko 125/1 Skybet