The 2023 Premier League of Darts is underway and we have already had some spectacular action from the SSE Arena in Belfast on Week 1 of this popular 17-week darts tournament.
Eight of the best players in darts will battle it out over 16 weeks to decide which four progress into the Playoffs, held at the end of may at the 02 Arena in London.
Before then, the eight qualifiers will take each other in the new style tournament format, first used last season in the Premier League, to decide how the points available are dished out that week, as well as who picks up the £10,000 on offer for winning the weekly tournament.
As always, bet365 Sport is offering excellent betting on each weekly tournament in the Premier League of Darts with a wide range of bets available on each Weekly event, as well as plenty of pre-match and In Play betting available on each of the seven games played.
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So how is the 2023 Premier League Darts tournament shaping up? Let’s check out a list of some of the main venues, players plus all the results from Week 1’s action from Belfast.
The schedule for the 17 nights of action in the Premier League is as follows:
As has been the case for a number of years, each week the players travel to a different venue in England, Scotland, Wales, Northern and Southern Ireland as well as Netherlands and Germany, to play in the tournament that week.
The players compete every week in a best of 11 legs tournament-style event; a change that was first used in the 2022 season of the Premier League Darts.
In this format, players that lose their quarter final tie do not receive any points towards their total for the season.
Of the four players that move into the semi-finals, the two losing semi-finalists will receive two points each for reaching this stage of the tournament.
The final is then contested with the winner of the tournament winning five points as well as a £10,000 prize for winning that night’s tournament. The runner up receives three points towards their 2023 Premier League darts total points.
After 16 weeks of action, the four players that have accrued the most points and occupy the top four positions in the table, will qualify for the Playoffs on Week 17, when two best of 19 and one best of 21 final will be played to decide the winner.
A total of £1,000,000 in prize money is on offer for the players competing in the event, which his split between them as follows:
A number of different players have won the Premier League tournament since it was first contested in 2005 and the roll call of Champions for each year is shown below:
Phil Taylor and Michael van Gerwen share the most wins in the tournament with six, followed by Gary Anderson who has two wins. James Wade, Raymond van Barneveld, Glen Durant and Jonny Clayton have one win apiece.
The top four players on the PDC Order of Merit qualified automatically for the tournament: Michael van Gerwen, Michael Smith, Peter Wright and Gerwyn Price.
The other four players were selected to compete in this event due to a number of other factors and they are: Nathan Aspinall, Jonny Clayton, Dimitri Van den Bergh and Chris Dobey.
The selection of Van den Bergh and Dobey, who both lie outside the PDC Order of Merit top ten were contentious given that players with higher rankings, such as Luke Humphries, Rob Cross and James Wade missed out.
Chris Dobey was crowned the winner of the first week of Premier League Darts emphasising that the newly crowned Masters Champion was a very worthy selection for the event given his impressive recent form.
Dobey beat Peter Wright, Nathan Aspinall and then Michael van Gerwen on his way to the £10,000 prize and the maximum five points.
The full list of results for Week 1 in Belfast is shown below:
Quarterfinals
Semifinals
Final
Additionally, other measurable stats from Week 1 are:
So after the first week and heading to Cardiff for Week 2’s action on Thursday this week, the current Premier League Darts 2023 table looks like:
The figures in brackets are the number of legs won and lost in the tournament so far.
This week, the eight players head to Cardiff to the Motorpoint Arena, which will be a great night for Gerwyn Price and Jonny Clayton as both Welshmen will get the chance to play in front of their home crowd, enjoying partisan support.
The matches for Week 2 are outlined below, together with the betting odds from bet365 Sport for who will win the game and we have also given you our tips for who will win each of the opening set of games, as well as who we’re backing to win the nightly tournament too.
Can the home crowd lift Jonny Clayton to a win over Michael Smith, the current World Champion? Clayton will enjoy great support here and both he and Smith need to pick up some points after coming up empty-handed last week. I can see this being a very close one and perhaps it will go right down to the final leg, but I am going to go with Clayton to land the win given the home crowd support.
Having already picked up some points last week, Nathan Aspinall will be in good spirits ahead of this game against Peter Wright, who has blown hot and cold in this tournament over the years. The Scot will have his eye on a better performance this time around and after losing in the first round last week, I think he will land a degree of revenge here by taking the win. Back Wright to win this one around 6-3 or 6-4.
Usually, Gerwyn Price is the crowd’s bad boy but tonight he will enjoy great support from a home crowd as he takes on last week’s winner Chris Dobey. Dobey is in superb form at the moment after winning last week and also the Masters just prior to that, a win that earned him a surprise spot in this event. However, with Price enjoying support from the home crowd, I am backing the Welshman to take the win here.
Michael van Gerwen came so close to winning the first week of Premier League of darts last week, just losing in a deciding leg. He’ll be itching to put that right here against Van den Bergh, who lost to van Gerwen in last week’s semi final. I am backing Van Gerwen to double up against the Belgian by landing another win here.
While the Welsh players could be inspired, I am going to back Michael van Gerwen to land the win that he just missed out on in last week’s tournament.
The action gets underway on Thursday night this week, shown live on Sky Sports, so tune in to enjoy some cracking darts action!
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