Big Guns in Action at PDC World Championships

James ‘The Machine’ Wade and Simon ‘The Wizard’ Whitlock are both in action at Alexandra Palace tonight as the second round of the PDC World Championships continues.

World number two Wade concludes the evening’s play when he takes on Austrian number one Mensur Suljovic. Suljovic beat an out-of-sorts Michael van Gerwen in his first round match whilst The Machine was impressive in his 3-0 win over Antonio Alcinas of Spain.

Wade is a short price 1/10 to book a place in the third round, a price which rather accurately reflects the gulf in class between these two players. There are 45 places between them in the PDC rankings and unless Wade has a real off day then we are unlikely to see the odds of 6/1 on the Austrian landed.

The penultimate match of the evening sees world number four Whitlock take on Dennis Ovens. Ovens booked his place in the last 32 with a comfortable win over Jyhan Artut of Germany despite suffering from flu like symptoms. He will need to perform a lot better than he did in that match if he is to overturn odds of 1/8 and defeat last year’s beaten finalist.

Other intriguing matches over the course of the evening include Wayne Jones up against Vincent van der Voort and Wes Newton versus Brendan Dolan.

Jones is one of the games in-form players but his Dutch opponent is capable of blowing anyone away with his blistering pace when at his best, the bookmakers are going 8/13 about a Jones win and 11/8 for a dose of Dutch delight.

And it was Dolan who produced one of the performances of the first round when he beat 2004 World Championship runner-up Kevin Painter 3-0 with a 96.32 average; the fourth best of the tournament so far. He is up against one of the games other in form players in Newton who is 4/11 to progress, but at 11/4 there will be many supporters of Dolan after his impressive first round performance.

In one of the most open World Championships we have ever seen laying down a marker to the rest of the competition is becoming just as important as winning for the big guns of the game.