The final evening of the Premier League Darts regular season takes place this Thursday as the tour visits the Utilita Arena in Sheffield for Night 16.
The key match of the evening will be the quarter-final between fourth-placed Nathan Aspinall and fifth-placed Michael Smith, the second on the schedule.
The winner will progress to the semi-finals and earn the final berth in next week's finals night at the O2 Arena in London. This is the pairs fourth meeting in this season's Premier League with Aspinall owning the series 2-1, the legs shared 15-15 through the three matches.
The pair are close on the averages – 96.86 for Aspinall and 96.18 for Smith – are level on 180s at 28-28, with 'Bully Boy' boasting a substantial advantage in checkout percentage at 41.41 to 36.69. Both have also won 50% of their matches since the start of April.
Both players are priced at 10/11 to earn victory, with over 9.5 legs priced at 5/6. It's hard to punt on a big win for either player, but a cover bet on 6-5 (11/2) and 6-4 (11/2) in favour of Smith could be the range we'd wager for.
The winner will face the unenviable task of taking on league leader Luke Littler who should handle his opening match of the night against Peter Wright. 'Snakebite' will surely be keen to end a 16-week campaign that has seen him win just two matches.
'The Nuke' meanwhile, has won 12 of his last 15 matches, earned four night victories, and been almost unplayable over the past seven weeks. He tops the averages (99.06) and has hit by far the most 180s (46), whilst also picking up the recent Austrian Darts Open in stunning fashion.
A Match Treble – victory, most 180s and highest checkout – at 13/10 is certainly a favourable punt.
In the other half of the draw Luke Humphries takes on Gerwyn Price and Michael van Gerwen duels with Rob Cross.
Humphries reached the Baltic Sea Darts Open final this past weekend and claimed the Night 15 victory in Leeds last week, defeating Cross 6-1, Smith 6-1 and 'MVG' 6-5, averaging 99.99 or more in all three matches.
Humphries also owns a 2-0 record against Price this season, winning matches 6-3 and 6-2. 'Cool Hand Luke' to win by a 6-4 scoreline or better is 5/6, and is probably the ballpark for this one.
Meanwhile, a struggling Van Gerwen faces 'Voltage' who defeated Humphries in that Baltic Sea Open final. 'Mighty Mike' sits bottom of the checkout percentage rankings since the start of April (35.36%) and is seventh in three-dart average (95.55).
Cross, meanwhile, is second in average (98.17) and first in checkout percentage (46.67%) - at 11/8 the value for the Englishman is incredible.
Best bets – Treble (9.42/1)
Rob Cross to beat Michael van Gerwen – 11/8
Luke Littler Match Treble against Peter Wright – 13/10
Michael Smith to beat Nathan Aspinall – 10/11
