Players Championship Finals 2018 Odds and Betting Tips
5 August, 2024
38 Views
The final of the Grand Slam of Darts last week has got everybody nicely in…
PDC World Darts Championship 2019 Betting Tips and Odds
And so here we are: the culmination of another wonderful PDC darts season. It’s that time again – time to check out the PDC World Darts Championship 2019 Betting Tips.
It’s been a year in which the darting world has had to rebuild following the retirement of Phil Taylor, and with Michael van Gerwen not the all-conquering force he once was there have been plenty of new faces in the winners’ enclosure over the past 12 months. In truth, it’s made for a far more entertaining spectacle for the neutral observer.
The traditional curtain-call comes at the World Championships – the first without The Power in the tournament’s history, and from December 13 to January 1, with some rest days in-between to coincide with Christmas and New Year celebrations, the famous Alexandra Palace will become a shrine to the very best tungsten tossers on the planet.
Will one of the more established names in the PDC have their name etched onto the Sid Waddell Trophy, or will somebody ‘do a Rob Cross’ and burst from the field seemingly from nowhere?
With £500,000 to the champion and a total prize pool of £2.5 million, the players won’t be short of motivation!
Tournament History & Format
We may be ‘mourning’ the loss of Taylor from darts’ undisputed greatest tournament, but there is still plenty to get excited about.
The 16-time world champion has left a legacy of such esteem that now 96 players will battle it out for the trophy in front of tens of thousands of fans full of festive cheer (and plenty else besides).
The field has increased in size from 72, with extra places handed out to Pro Tour achievers, players securing their places from various qualifiers around the world, and – in a progressive step – the best two women on the planet, who right now are Lisa Ashton and Anastasia Dobromyslova.
That means an increase in playing time – if your Christmas holidays start early, rejoice! – with a total of 28 afternoon and evening sessions and some 95 matches to be contested.
As ever, the top 32 seeds are parachuted into the second round, with the first round made up of the rest of the field in an open draw format. The preliminary round has been vanquished, and that means that all players will feature in a minimum of one best-of-five set contest, with the figure increasing for third and fourth round (best-of-seven), quarter finals (nine), semis (eleven) and, as ever, the final at an energy-sapping best-of-13 sets.
The Field
An incredible 29 different nationalities will be represented in the extended World Championships.
The host nation is the best represented with 34 entrants, although of those only Rob Cross, James Wade and Michael Smith are in the top 10 of the world rankings.
The Dutch charge will be led, as ever, by Michael van Gerwen, with Raymond van Barneveld playing in his penultimate World Championships prior to his recently-announced retirement at the end of the 2019 campaign.
Scotland has a powerful double-header in Gary Anderson and Peter Wright, amongst others, with the rest of the UK challenge inspired by recent Players’ Championship winner, the Northern Irishman Daryl Gurney, and the Grand Slam of Darts champion; the ever-controversial Gerwyn Price.
Every single continent has at least one representative jetting into London, although in truth we do still await a darting hero from Antarctica to emerge. Oceania will be represented by Aussies Simon Whitlock, former All Pally nine-dart hero Kyle Anderson and Paul Nicholson, plus qualifiers Raymond Smith and James Bailey, with a pair of Kiwis (Cody Harris and James Bailey) also in the mix.
There’s a South American (Diego Portela of Brazil), a selection of North Americans, an African (cult favourite Devon Petersen) and an Indian debutant (Nitin Kumar), as well as a strong Asian contingent headlined by the evergreen Paul Lim.
A final note for those not at Alexandra Palace. Alongside Taylor, Kevin Painter has been an ever-present figure at World Championships in both codes of the sport since 1997; he has failed to qualify. And after a year beset by injuries and legal problems, the supremely-talented Cory Cadby is also forced to miss out.
