Darts Betting Tips: Littler and van Veen can Double-Up Big Finishes in Semi-Finals

Littler highest checkout over 150.5 vs Searle @ 13/8

Littler wasn’t at his full flowing best in his quarter-final match against Krzysztof Ratajski, which sounds silly to say considering he still averaged above 100, but that’s the sky-high expectations we now have for the current World Champion. It didn’t stop him breezing past the Pole in a dominant 5-0 win, limiting Ratajski to just five legs in total.

Searle has had a wonderful tournament, regardless of what happens tonight. Having never previously went beyond the Last 16 in seven World Championship appearances in the past, he’s enjoying his best run at Ally Pally by a distance, what better time to do it than the year PDC doubled the prize money pot? As a result of that, Heavy Metal has absolutely shot up the world rankings and now provisionally sits 7th in the world. That could open the door to other opportunities such as World Series events and dare I say it, the Premier League if he could pull off the upset tonight?

Searle should hopefully go into this with minimal fears as he is priced up as a massive underdog, the hard work has been done by him already in terms of earning himself a lot of money and put himself in a great spot in the rankings, this match should be viewed as somewhat of a free hit. The bad news for Ryan and his fans is that he’s often struggled against the very top players, we’ve seen him suffer some heavy defeats to the likes of Littler and Humphries in the past. The head-to-head record against Littler isn’t pretty reading - Luke has won all five of their meetings, the last four score-lines were 6-2, 6-3, 10-2 and 6-3. Perhaps he does lack a bit of self-belief against the elite so he’ll have to drop that mentality if he’s to succeed tonight.

With no obvious value in the winner/handicaps markets, once again I’m going to put my attention into the checkouts. Over this long a format, I feel it’s more expected than not that Littler is going to hit at least one classy checkout. He hadn’t hit any real big finishes up until last night, where he nailed the big fish in the opening set. If things are going smoothly for him then we’ll likely see The Nuke try and leave 170 regularly, as he does. He hit a 170 checkout against Bunting at this stage of the tournament last year and I think a 151+ checkout should be closer to the even money mark so I’ll take the 13/8 all day long.

Van Veen highest checkout over 150.5 vs Anderson @ 6/4

Anybody that reads my articles when Van Veen is involved will know that I’m a massive fan of the recent European Championship winner. I was delighted to see Gian play some of his best stuff last night as he knocked out one of the favourites in Luke Humphries with a comfortable 5-1 victory. He looked to be on the ropes a little during sets 2 and 3, I was slightly worried about his chances at that point but he nicked the third set and never looked back after that. An average of 105.41, 55% on doubles and eleven 180s was more than enough in the end, as Humphries began to weaken later in the contest.

Anderson had a similarly easy time of it as the remarkable run of Justin Hood finally came to an end yesterday. Frustrations could have kicked in for Gary when the match was still tied at 2-2 after four sets, despite Anderson being by far the better player of the two, but he remained patient and eventually was rewarded as he ran away with the match in a 5-2 win. Ando played some of his best stuff towards the end, with set averages of 105, 112 and 107 to close out the match.

Gian has made no secret in previous interviews about Gary being his idol, so this could be an emotional match for the Dutchman. You could make a case that it had affected him in the past when coming up against the Scot, with Gary winning all of their first four meetings. Gian ended that run in September when he defeated Gary 7-4 in the semi-finals of a Pro Tour event. I do feel without doubt that Van Veen has just took his game to another level this year, so he’s probably worthy of his 6/11 price to come out on top in this tasty looking clash.

We’re 3/3 so far when backing Van Veen to hit a big checkout in the daily doubles, so why stop now? GVV looked as clinical as ever when it came to the combination finishes against Humphries, The Giant had checkouts of 170, 124 and 120. He’s already took out the big fish twice in this tournament and I wouldn’t rule out Gian making it a hat-trick. When you consider that this match could easily have 10+ sets, a 151+ checkout for Van Veen isn’t that big an ask.