Darts Betting Tips: Cross stars in Boosted treble

Saturday marks day one of the Grand Slam of Darts 2024, and Betfred Insights' Darts expert, Sean Rafferty, has already given us his Outright Preview. Here is the first of his daily darts betting tips articles, featuring a boosted treble including a former World Champion.

Rob Cross to beat Leonard Gates @ 3/10

Leonard Gates is in decent enough form lately, winning the CDC Continental Cup a few weeks ago with some hard fought victories, however, he only averaged 85, 87, 92 and 87 in those matches, so will likely need to find more here.

Before that he made the final of the World Seniors Matchplay, losing out to John Henderson 9-6. He had comfortable wins over James Richardson, Lisa Ashton and Robert Thornton en-route to the final, but again he was struggling to break the 90+ mark in averages - he averaged 90, 84, 86 and 87 in his matches over that event.

The big ton plus averages he was capable of seem to have vanished - 'Soulger' has failed to post a 100+ average in his last 62 matches, averaging below 90 in 45 of them. He’s likely going to have to find a 90+ average and possibly some more here which based on his stats for the year are odds against happening.

Rob Cross hasn’t been in sterling form this year either but will be confident of progressing through this fairly weak group. Despite him searching for form for most of the year, in 2024 his average is still nine points higher than Gates. He managed to post his best ever run at the World Grand Prix, which he’s always had an abysmal record in, he eventually lost 3-2 to Ryan Joyce in the QFs but had good victories over Luke Littler and Martin Schindler before that.

So he’ll look to raise his game at another major, it’s not very often Cross goes out with a whimper in these events and I fully expect him to get off to a winning start in the group in this one, with a pretty comfy win. The pair have met once before in the World Series in 2019, with Cross winning 6-0 that day. The levels of both players have tailed off a bit in 2024 but Voltage is still a couple levels above.

James Wade to beat Micky Mansell @ 2/5

I’m really impressed with how Wadey is playing in recent months, if it hadn’t been for Luke Humphries being in his section of the draw then I most likely would have been on James to win the event. The Machine is averaging 95.56 since the beginning of July, which is a very solid standard.

A few months ago, Wade was in a perilous position - sitting outside the top 32 and in danger of not qualifying for the likes of the Betfred World Matchplay, World Grand Prix etc. He managed to find form at the right time and showed some real consistency on the Pro Tour which seen him qualify for the Matchplay where he took advantage and went all the way to the semi finals.

He followed this up with a run to the QFs of the World Grand Prix where he walked into a barrage from Mike De Decker. He’s continued to play nicely on the floor and came through the qualifying event for this, dropping just one leg over three matches, averaging 99, 103 and 97. Wadey hasn’t posted a sub-90 average in his last 24 matches, which shows the consistently good level he’s producing at the moment.

Mansell was outstanding in the Grand Slam qualifier, where he had averages including 110 and 100.4 and beat Gerwyn Price and Raymond Van Barneveld along the way. However, The Cyclone’s achilles heel has always been his results and performances in the big televised events - he’s still never been beyond the last 16 of a TV event, which is poor considering how long he’s been on the professional circuit.

The pair have met five times over the years, Wadey winning four of them. I expect this one to be a routine victory for The Machine.

Dimitri Van den Bergh to beat Lourence Ilagen @ 2/5

Lourence Ilagan has always had quite a reputation for being a tough draw for anyone and being one of the top boys on the Asian Tour. I feel he has somewhat lived up to that hype as he has enjoyed good success on the Asian Tour and proved a tricky obstacle for some bigger players in the past at the World Championship and World Cup, however, I still don’t feel he’s ever really had the big results to back it up.

In eight World Championship appearances, The Filipino has never managed to get past the last 64 stage. The two actually met at the 2023 World Championship, where Dimitri ran out a comfortable 3-0 winner in sets. Ilagan won the Asian Championship last month, on top of three Asian Tour events in 2024. But the level he produces there doesn’t quite cut it in this big jump up in standard - 85.15 average over the past 12 months, which more times than not won’t be enough to win against top 32 players.

Dimitri has became renowned for turning up at the big televised events and not a great deal else. For that reason I’m not going to delve into his stats at the floor events as they aren’t pretty reading, but they very rarely are. Despite showing nothing on the Pro Tour or Euro Tour this year, The Dream Maker has still won the UK Open and reached the semis of World Grand Prix and QFs of World Matchplay.

He brings his best game when it matters the most and seems to thrive in a pressure environment. Between the UK Open and Matchplay this year, Dimi averaged 90+ in all nine of his matches, I reckon that most likely gets the job done against Ilagan.

The Betfred traders have generously boosted all three of Sean's selections to 7/4, which you can load direct to slip by clicking below.

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