World Matchplay Darts 2024 Betting Tips: Voltage too high for Bully Boy

The 2024 Betfred World Matchplay is into the quarter-final stages and our tipster Sean Rafferty is in stunning form. Tonight, we have two cracking looking last eight matches between Andrew Gilding and Michael van Gerwen, as well as a blockbuster clash between Michael Smith and Rob Cross.

Sean returns today with his World Matchplay Darts 2024 betting tips for day seven of the event, which you can check out below and which have been boosted by the Betfred traders.

World Matchplay Darts Odds

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Andrew Gilding +6.5 legs handicap @ 4/6

Andrew Gilding continues his nice start to this tournament and in the second round he won convincingly against Krzysztof Ratajski 11-5, with an 98 average and 50% on doubles. He’s enjoying a vast improvement in form here compared to the rest of the year - he was averaging 91.22 for the year coming into this, but has averaged 94.3 + 98.3 in his two matches here. Gilding's doubles percentage for the year before this was 39.53% but at this tournament it’s 52.5%.

He’ll likely need to continue these numbers to have a chance of beating MVG here but it’s good signs for 'Goldfinger' nonetheless. MVG really showed up against Littler and he does have a tendency to go up a few gears when he feels he has a point to prove - he did similar to Josh Rock a few years ago. Van Gerwen wasn’t as good against Joe Cullen, with a 95 average, but still won 11-8, making it difficult for himself at times from dominant positions. He really needs to find some more consistency in games or he will make heavy weather of this.

MVG has generally struggled against Gilding, Gilding winning his maiden PDC title and first major at the UK Open last year with a dramatic 11-10 victory in the final against The Green Machine being the main highlight of this. It's currently 3-2 to MVG on head-to-head but he has never beat Gilding by more than two legs. MVG won their last meeting 6-5 on the Euro Tour in May and lost the previous two before that. I can’t say MVG has improved since these meetings, with Gilding looking more comfortable playing on the televised stages these days, I think 10+ legs for Goldfinger is an achievable task at 4/6.

Rob Cross to beat Michael Smith @ 8/13

I could talk up Rob Cross all day at the moment, after yet another brilliant performance a couple nights ago against Ryan Searle - 107 average (his highest in the Matchplay), 58% on doubles and eight 180s. This followed up a good showing in the opening round against Gian Van Veen, where he survived match darts.

You can tell in his interviews he’s so at ease with his game the past nine months and knows he’s in a good place on and off the oche. Who can argue with him? The numbers back it up - since the Grand Slam last November, Voltage has played 18 matches in majors, averaging 100+ in eight of them and 96+ in 15 of them.

Michael Smith seems to have taken some confidence from his World Cup victory for England with Luke Humphries and has taken that into this tournament. He was brilliant against Gary Anderson from 3-0 down, where he ended up winning 10-5 with a 102 average.

However, he struggled to carry that into his next match against Chris Dobey, after being 4-0 up early doors, he really stumbled over the line in the end with some messy doubles, hitting under 30% in the end. If he does that here, he’ll get punished by Cross, simple as that.

His scoring has been good so far but he needs to finish the back end of legs quickly to back it up. Cross has won two of their three meetings this year, Smith beat him 6-0 on the Euro Tour last month but I’m happy to draw a line under that as did just appear to be a very rare bad day at the office for Rob.

They’ve played many long format matches in majors, which is what I’d like to use as a guide here, albeit some of them were a few years ago now - they’ve played nine matches which have been first to 10+ legs or first to four sets and Rob has won six of them. The most notable one being a 18-13 victory in the World Matchplay final in 2019.

Since November last year, Cross is averaging 97.72, compared to 95.34 for Bully Boy. Once again, Voltage ticks all the boxes I’m looking for here and is an auto-pick to win again at 8/13. Can’t see anything other than a cracking performance.

The Betfred traders have kindly boosted the price from 17/10 to 2/1, which you can load to betslip by clicking below.

Darts Odds

Offers

Betfred World Matchplay (13/07 – 21/07): We are playing 4 places on the Betfred World Matchplay at 1/4 odds. (Available from 12:30 Thursday 04/07).

Betfred World Matchplay (13/07 – 21/07): We will be Top Price or joint Top Price on Luke Humphries to win the Betfred World Matchplay Darts with selected bookmakers using oddschecker.com for the comparison (Available from 09:30 Friday).

Betfred World Matchplay (13/07 – 21/07): Bet on any player to win the Betfred World Matchplay Darts, and if they win and hit a 9 Dart Finish during the tournament, we’ll double your odds!

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