European Championships; Thursday in Germany Darts Preview

It only seems a few days ago that we were enjoying great darts on the TV… oh hang on, we were!   The great news is more TV darts starts tomorrow evening, and even better for some, it’s on ITV4, which means a potentially bigger and more diverse viewership.

The European championships in Germany as last year was on Bravo TV, but has this year moved to ITV, who have received a lot of positive feedback on their previous darts coverage (Grand Slam of Darts for example).  So we know the darts is in safe hands!  One of my favourite pundits, Chris Mason will be gracing our screens again – his knowledge and straight talking is a real breath of fresh air.

There are eight games to get through Thursday and another eight Friday night, so you’ll get to see all 32 players over the next 2 days.  Round one is the ‘quick fire’ format used on the PDC Pro Tour, first to 6 legs, so its a format all the players will be very used to.  It doesn’t really allow for slow starts, every leg matters from the very first.

The competition starts with a bang, crowd favourite Co Stompe up against Mervyn King, who was looking a bit out of sorts in the Matchplay.  King is slight favourite with the bookies, but I can see Stompe winning, so it could be well worth a bet at evens (links below).

There’s also some good value in Peter Wright (6/4) against John Part.  Snakebite is consistently displaying good form, and while Part has been improving again, he’s still not his old self yet.  My mate Justin Pipe takes on another friend, and the man currently making waves, Paul Nicholson.  Paul is a big favourite for the win, so if you want to risk a few quid that JP will start quick and beat a possibly distracted Nicholson, you can get 2/1.   Paul has told me he’s not going to hold back at the Euro’s – he has congratulated Taylor on his win at the Matchplay, but he’s not going to sit back and do as he’s hold.

Speaking of Phil Taylor, he’s 1/50 ON to win his match against the Greek John Michael.  If you’re possibly mad or have more money than sense, you can get 12/1 on the upset.  I can’t see that happening at all, but the short format does open things up for the odd shock.If you fancy a bet (and get a £25 free matched bet for signing up), Match Betting can be found here.  Or if you prefer to have a punt on the tournament outright winner, click here.  Cheers and good luck!

The last game of the night will be one I’ll be looking forward to – just to see if Gary Anderson was shocked by his poor Matchplay performance and maybe has done a bit of practicing!  He takes on Jame Caven, who will be very keen to put his poor show at Blackpool behind him – I know he was very disappointed with his doubles, and wants to show the TV fans that it was just one of those nights.  Jabba did have a good Euro’s last year, so it’s got good memories for him.

Relevant news