Darts Betting Tips: Back the big finishes in our boosted double

The Betfred World Matchplay is well underway and on Wednesday, we finish off the second round matches. 

To celebrate our continued headline sponsorship, we've boosted our star darts tipster Sean Rafferty's selections and will continue to do daily throughout the tournament! Here are his Day 5 tips...

Gian Van Veen highest checkout over 120.5 vs Wessel Nijman @ EVS

This is one of the standout ties in the Last 16 in my opinion - two quality young Dutch players who will battle it out for a spot in the quarters. Van Veen is already a major winner, having won the European Championship last year and followed this up by making a World Championship final. Nijman is still in the earlier stages of his rise to stardom as he continues to dominate the Pro Tour but has yet to put his stamp on a major tournament.

The way this one has been priced up is really interesting - Nijman has been made 4/7 favourite, with Van Veen priced as a 7/5 outsider. It seems there’s a lot of recency bias going on with the pricing of this match and they’re solely basing it off recent form. After all, it’s only just over six months ago that Van Veen was a World Championship runner-up and he was being spoken about as potentially the biggest threat to Littler now, ahead of Humphries.

Since then, Van Veen was unfortunately diagnosed with kidney stones and undergoing surgery to renew them. Since then he’s struggled to get his confidence back due to indifferent results but I think this week is a good time to put that to bed with a few decent results in a major tournament.

Due to Van Veen being priced as the underdog, it opens up a bit of value where he’s concerned. When playing at his best, big checkouts and good doubles were key attributes in his game - although he wasn’t at his best in his win over Ratajski, the checkouts and doubles were on song. The Giant hit checkouts of 160, 144 & 144, with a checkout rate of 66.67% on the doubles. If he’s to come through this tricky test and prove a point to the doubters, he may need a big checkout to go and even money for a 121+ finish looks brilliant value.

Rob Cross highest checkout over 120.5 vs Gerwyn Price @ EVS

Two very different performances from these two in the opening round on Monday night - Cross made a tricky game on paper against Noppert look very easy, hammering the 10th best ranked player in the world 10-3. Rob raced into a 5-0 lead, averaging 104 in the opening session and never looked back from that point, cruising to victory, hitting 52.63% of his doubles along the way.

Price had a far bumpier ride to this point, as he fell over the line in hard-fought 11-9 win over Schindler. The Iceman was completely out of sorts and looked like he could be on his way out of the Winter Gardens when he trailed the German 8-5 and 4-0, but he eventually dug in and played some decent stuff in spells to complete the comeback. If he starts anything like he did in the match against Cross though who’d be highly unlikely to spurn such a lead, he’d be a goner.

Again, I don’t really agree with the way this match has been priced up - Price has been made 8/13 favourite, with Cross a tempting looking 5/4. Price hasn’t played a great deal recently with a busy life away from the oche, that reflected in his performance against Schindler as he looked awfully rusty. Cross on the other hand looks to be brimming with confidence as he continues this impressive return to form.

Voltage was electrifying on the outer-ring which makes me think he could be a good bet to hit a big checkout again. He nailed a 128 checkout in his win over Noppert and should get challenged a little more in this match which means he may be forced into going for a big finish, unlike Monday night where he chose to lay up a few times on 161+ checkouts. Again, even money for a 121+ checkout looks generous based on the form and how well he’s finishing legs.

You can load the boosted double straight to your betslip by clicking the banner below.

We've also got two more brilliant offers, which you can find below...

We're paying out on ANY player at the Betfred World Matchplay that has a 170 checkout or a 9-dart finish, whether they win or lose!