World Cup of Darts Opens With Unfamiliar Faces

There will be very few familiar faces on show on the opening day of the PDC World Cup in Sunderland this Friday.

Even the most ardent of darts fans may find themselves scratching their heads this Friday as the PDC World Cup kicks off. The history of darts is littered with players from England, Scotland, Netherlands and more recently Australia but with representatives from Gibraltar, Slovenia, Sweden, Slovakia and Poland amongst those competing in the PDC World Cup there will be more than a few unfamiliar faces on show.

Tams ranked 9-24 will compete on the first day of the World Cup with the eight winners going on to face the top eight nations in the world at the weekend.

Ranked number nine are the Irish duo of Mick McGowan and William O’Connor who will face Slovakian pair Peter Martin (no, he doesn’t sound very Slovakian to us either) and Oto Zmelik. Given that they are ranked at number 174 and 359 in the PDC rankings the bookmakers aren’t expecting the Slovaks to cause the Irish duo too much trouble and have priced them appropriately at odds of 1/8.

Perhaps one of the most recognisable faces on show this Friday will be 2008 Women’s World Champion Anastasia Dobromyslova. She created a storm of media coverage when competing alongside her male counterparts in the 2009 PDC World Championships and represents Russia alongside Roman Konchikov.

Russia’s opening round opponents will be Gibraltar who are represented by Dylan Duo and Dyson Parody. Duo is currently ranked at number 74 in the PDC rankings and made it to the last 64 in the UK Open earlier this season, Parody’s recent form isn’t as impressive but he is also a solid player. The bookmakers can’t split these two sides and are going Evens about each nation.

Betting action is expected to be light on the first day of the World Cup with knowledge of the lesser known nations at a premium, but expect the tournament to burst into life when the big boys take to the stage on Saturday.