Hungarian Darts Trophy 2024 Predictions: Four to win in Budapest

The PDC calendar continues with the Hungarian Darts Trophy from Budapest, which runs from the Friday 20 to Sunday 22 September. As always, we've asked our darts expert Sean Rafferty to preview the event and give us his Hungarian Darts Trophy Predictions, which you can check out below.

History, Location and Format

The 2024 Hungarian Darts Trophy is the fourth running of this PDC event and is the eleventh event of thirteen in the PDC European Tour series.

The tournament is held at the MVM Dome, Budapest, Hungary, with this year's event running from September 20th to the 22nd and will be shown on DAZN, Viaplay and PDCTV.

The field is comprised of the top 16 from the PDC Order of Merit and then the next highest 16 ranked players from the ProTour Order of Merit, as well as 16 regional qualifiers.

The draw sees the top 16 in the Order of Merit enter the tournament at the second round stage.

Prize Money

There is a total prize fund of £175,000 on offer to the 48 participants.

Draw

Hungarian Darts Trophy Odds

3u Michael van Gerwen @ 5/1

With the absence of Luke Littler this weekend, who’s generally been playing the best stuff of anyone in the past week, it opens the door for a few others just outside that top end of the outright market. I have to side with MVG this week, as he finally ended a crazy 18 month wait for another ranking title on Wednesday, winning the Players Championship 21.

He played some good stuff on the Pro Tour over two days and more importantly showed plenty of consistency, which he’s struggled to do in recent years. The Green Machine averaged 100+ in five of his 10 matches and he particularly impressed me in his final against Chisnall, averaging 107. He was finding the treble with the first dart more times than not and making life easy for himself.

He was also using a new set of darts midweek so it’ll be interesting to see if he sticks with them after winning an event. He hasn’t won a Euro Tour event since early last year but has still made the semi-final stage or better in three of the seven Euro Tours he’s participated in this year. The additional guidance of best mate and fellow pro Van der Voort seems to be benefitting MVG too, so I’m confident he’s in a good place and can build on Wednesday’s win this weekend, despite being in a tricky section of the draw.

1u Stephen Bunting e/w @ 16/1

I always feel Bunting is a tad short in the outright market but I couldn’t resist backing The Bullet this week, having shown some good signs at the Pro Tour events midweek. The St Helens man lost out 8-7 to Luke Littler in the final on Tuesday, before following up with a run to the QFs on Wednesday. He averaged 98+ in nine of his 12 matches, which is top level if he can maintain it for the duration of this event.

My main reason for backing Bunting is the favourable draw - the biggest name he could face before the QF stage on Sunday evening is Martin Schindler, who’s been quiet recently. The highest seed in his quarter of the draw is Ross Smith who’s struggled a bit and had some indifferent results the past few weeks.

He looks to have a relatively easy path to the semis in comparison to most, where he could inevitably face a Humphries/MVG at that stage but he can beat anybody when in form. He’s yet to win a Euro Tour event and I’m sure he would love to tick that off sooner rather than later, he made the final of the German Darts Open last year and will look for a similar run here.

0.75u Dave Chisnall e/w @ 25/1 

What’s not to like about Chizzy on the Euro Tour? A match made in heaven in recent times. Since 2023, Dave has won a fantastic five titles on the European Tour, only Humphries can compete with those numbers in the same period. He had a slow start to the year on this tour but in his last three ET events he’s won two of them and made the semis of the other.

Similar to Bunting, the fellow St Helens man won 11 matches through the week on the Pro Tour, making a SF then a final the following day, the two eventual winners Littler and Van Gerwen were the only two who could stop Chiz. He looked a bit fatigued towards the end of play yesterday but being a seed for this means he gets a couple days off, so should be refreshed and ready to go again come Saturday.

He’ll likely face a tricky opening tie against Michael Smith on Saturday, after that the draw will open up a bit more, still with capable opponents in the likes of Peter Wright and Damon Heta, but he’s shown time after time that he can beat players of this calibre on these European stages.

He comes defending his title this week in Hungary, in his two previous appearances in this event he’s won one and made a SF, so he clearly seems to like playing in this part of the world. 25/1 is a cracking price for a proven consistent winner on this tour.

0.75u Wessel Nijman e/w @ 40/1 

This was the one section of the draw where I pondered over who to take for a fair while. Eventually I opted for the player with less experience on these stages but who is ultimately playing some outstanding stuff this year. He played in the World Series Finals last weekend which gave him a good taster of playing in front of a boisterous crowd which could be similar to this weeks atmosphere.

He hammered Gilding 6-0, before somehow losing 6-5 to Michael Smith, missing several match darts in the process and arguably fluffing his lines at the end as the occasion maybe got the better of him. His lack of exposure and success at big crowd events is his only negative though.

His numbers are staggering all year, following on from playing some brilliant stuff on the Development Tour last year, he won his Tour Card via the Development Tour Order of Merit and has lit up the Pro Tour all year, with some sky high averages and red hot performances. He’s made one final but consistently wins his board and consistently picks up a few wins per event. Of the five matches he played midweek on the Pro Tour, it included averages of 105, 109 and 102, which is nothing out of the norm for the young Dutchman.

Assuming he eases through the opening round, he faces a tough match against Gerwyn Price on Saturday, who narrowly beat him 6-5 on Wednesday. If he wins this, then his section opens up and there’s nobody left in there that I wouldn’t fancy Nijman’s chances against. 33/1 is probably about right for someone that’s a bit raw and unexposed on the big stage but has all the talent in the world and a ceiling that’s not a million miles off Luke Littler in my opinion.

Darts Odds

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