Swiss Darts Trophy 2024 Predictions: The Nuke to explode yet again?

The PDC calendar continues with the Swiss Darts Trophy from Basel, which runs from the Friday 27 to Sunday 2 September. As always, we've asked our darts expert Sean Rafferty to preview the event and give us his Swiss Darts Trophy 2024 Predictions, which you can check out below...

History, Location and Format

The 2024 Swiss Darts Trophy is the inaugural running of this PDC event and is the twelth event of thirteen in the PDC European Tour series.

The tournament is held at the St. Jakobshalle, Basel, Switzerland, with this year's event running from September 27th to the 29th 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

Swiss Darts Trophy Odds

3.5 u Luke Littler @ 10/3

The last time I tipped up The Nuke he absolutely romped his way to victory in Amsterdam, as he won the World Series Finals in style. Since then, he followed up with another title on the Pro Tour, before sitting out of last weekends Euro Tour event and the midweek Pro Tours.

In the Pro Tour events last week, he averaged 98+ in eight of his 11 matches, so kept up that high standard he set in Amsterdam. He raised my admiration for him to new heights in that World Series Finals victory - he had to show real strength and character mentally to come through matches against van Barneveld and van Gerwen, where he had to battle against a boisterous home crowd, which he’d never really faced yet in his young career.

He came through them with flying colours, his 108 average in an 11-4 win over MVG was arguably his most impressive performance to date in my opinion. Incredibly, he sits in the same section of the draw as Luke Humphries this week, the pair will meet in the Last 16 on Sunday afternoon if they come through their respective matches on Saturday.

I give Littler the edge based on recent form - Humphries hasn’t quite looked near his best in recent weeks, failing to win any of the last seven events he’s played in. In his last match on Wednesday he averaged just 79 in a 6-3 defeat to Mervyn King, he put this down to being fatigued due to a busy time on and off the oche, he’s not getting much of a break before this.

Littler will have had a 10 day rest period come the weekend and should come here refreshed, as well as having the better form. The Nuke was a no brainer again here for me at 10/3, a deserved favourite for the title.

1 u Dave Chisnall e/w @ 18/1

What can you say about Dave? Chizzy notched up yet another title midweek on the Pro Tour, where he continues to pick up these titles and has managed to climb up to fifth in the world rankings now, despite not setting the world alight in the big televised tournaments.

He averaged 97 in all of his matches on Wednesday apart from the final. We were on him last weekend in Budapest, where he somehow found a way to lose to Daryl Gurney in the last 16, despite leading 5-2. He played well in defeat though and averaged 102, as well as 101 in a 6-1 win over Clayton the previous round.

Chizzy comes into the event as top seed, thanks to his sterling form on the Euro Tour. This usually gives him a decent draw - he’s generally playing at a high level more consistently than fellow seeds in his section in Ryan Searle, Damon Heta and Daryl Gurney and certainly picking up a lot more titles than them.

He likely faces Nathan Aspinall first which sounds like a stinker of a draw, however Asp has only recently returned from a injury lay off and still looks a tad rusty so far. 18/1 is cracking value for Dave to pick up yet another Euro Tour, in my opinion he should be closer to single figure odds for this type of event these days. I expect him to be at the business end of this.

0.75 u Michael Smith e/w @ 18/1 

I had to put a bit more consideration into pulling the trigger on this selection, as it was a bit of a toss up between Michael and Ross Smith. In the end I opted for Michael, mainly thanks to some encouraging performances this past week on the Pro Tour.

He didn’t particularly go on any notable runs but was consistently playing at a decent level - his lowest average over six matches was 97 and he averaged 99+ in the other five. This is the kind of standard we expect from Bully Boy and if he can keep that up then he might just be about to come good at the best time of the year.

Smith made the semis of the European Darts Open, but before that hadn’t gone beyond the last 16 of a Euro Event this year. He’s due a title on the Euro Tour stage, having not won one since early last year.

He has six Euro Tour titles to his name so knows how to get the job done and a win here could really kickstart his season and go into the business end of the year with some real confidence and belief that he can add to his majors tally.

His section of the draw is fairly open - there are plenty of good players but none with the success that Smith has had, apart from Barney in years gone by.

Dirk’s (van Duijvenbode) form is still not great, Martin Schindler hasn’t been at his best most of the year, Stephen Bunting has been in good form but struggles to get over the line in Euro Tours, Ricardo Pietreczko has an injury, so it’s safe to write him off this week and Ross Smith has had a few indifferent results of late and not looking as consistent.

Bully Boy has shown a few signs of a return to form recently, including being runner-up at World Series Finals, another big run here would see him go into the World Grand Prix feeling relatively optimistic.

0.5 u Gian van Veen e/w @ 40/1 

I was an avid backer of this young Dutchman in 2023, not so much this year as he’s struggled to reach the same height this year in terms of averages. However, he’s done enough in the past week to make me throw something on him this week.

GVV was a very unlucky runner-up last week in Hungary, as he lost out in a deciding leg in the final to Van Gerwen, he also missed a dart at bull to win his maiden PDC ranking title. He averaged 100+ in his first three matches last week and saw off several big names in rather comfortable fashion. He backed this up fairly well midweek on the Pro Tour I thought - he only dropped well below 97 average in one of his five matches played.

Thanks to his run to the final in Budapest, Gian now comes here as a seed ,which means he doesn’t have to play Friday. I’m sure he’ll be appreciative of an extra day’s rest and will go in as fav against Brendan Dolan or Callan Rydz, the other seeds in his section are searching for their best form, whereas I think Van Veen may have already found his in the past week.

A lot of the spotlight has been off him due to success of other young players like Littler and Josh Rock but I don’t think GVV is a million miles behind them and at 40/1, I’ll have a punt on him to become the next young superstar to win in the PDC.

Darts Odds

You can find all Sean's latest Darts Betting Tips on our main Insights content hub.