Premier League Darts Night 8: Betting Odds & Prediction

(Featured image: Alamy Images)

Written by: Stuart Pike

The Premier League returns on Thursday with Night 8 of the series at Dublin’s 3Arena. World champion Luke Humphries has taken over at the top of the table from Michael van Gerwen and is aiming to emulate the Dutchman’s feat of three successive night victories from earlier in the series.

Tournament Format

Eight of the best darts players face-off in a mini tournament with quarter-finals, semi-finals and a final all taking place in one night. The Premier League takes place across 16 nights in total, with this week’s being the eighth. Each match will be played over the best of eleven legs.

Players will be rewarded with ranking points each night - five to the winner, three to the runner-up and two to the players who lose in the semi-finals. Points will be added up across the 16 weeks, with the top four players proceeding to the tournament play-offs in May. 

Quarter-Final Lineup

Luke Humphries vs Peter Wright

Nathan Aspinall vs Rob Cross

Michael van Gerwen vs Gerwyn Price

Luke Littler vs Michael Smith

Luke Humphries vs Peter Wright 

Luke Humphries is hot favourite to progress in this top-against-bottom clash, even though wounded ‘Snakebite’ finally won a Premier League match at the seventh time of asking last week. ‘Cool Hand’, who dropped just eight legs in total in winning both Night Six and Night Seven, played superbly to dispatch the two-time world champion 6-1 in last week’s semi-final.

Wright's miserable campaign finally lifted off with a nervy last-leg quarter-final victory over Gerwyn Price and he performed well to reach the last eight of Monday’s Players Championship 5 in Hildesheim. However, he requires a major improvement to shock Humphries in Dublin.

Nathan Aspinall vs Rob Cross

Rob Cross must be sick of the sight of Nathan Aspinall; he has already succumbed three times to ‘The Asp’ in this year’s Premier League, including a final-leg thriller in last week’s Nottingham quarter-final. Only Luke Littler has reached more semi-finals than the five of ‘Voltage’; he has lost to the eventual winner or runner-up in each event.

After an unconvincing start, inconsistent Aspinall has reached three of the last four finals; Night Five’s 6-2 triumph in Exeter over Cross is what separates the pair in fourth and fifth place. Aspinall scored heavily to reach the Nottingham final - but faded in a 6-3 defeat to Humphries.

Michael van Gerwen vs Gerwyn Price

The two 2023 finalists both head into Night Eight in need of a boost. Michael van Gerwen is still clinging on to second place in the table but had not won a darts match in March until Monday’s three victories at Players Championship 5. MvG could do very little, though, against a barrage of brilliance from Littler on Night seven.

The seventh-placed ‘Iceman’, meanwhile, is winless in the PL since Night Three in Glasgow, having scored well but failed to take his chances in last week’s defeat to Wright. Seven-time champion Van Gerwen won their previous quarter-final fixture in Newcastle 6-4 on Night Four.

Luke Littler vs Michael Smith

Luke Littler remains without a nightly win but is well positioned in third, having only failed to pick up points once. However, the ‘Nuke’ will be frustrated at having lost four semi-finals in a row, particularly after recording the 2024 tournament’s highest average of 114.00 in dismantling van Gerwen 6-2 in Nottingham.

Michael Smith has come out on top in two of his three matches with Littler, including a 6-5 semi-final victory en route to winning Night One in Cardiff. Sixth-placed Bully Boy, who hit a nine-darter on Monday in his last-16 defeat to Players Championship 5 winner Raymond van Barneveld, has won just one match fewer than the 17-year-old sensation - but has fallen at the quarter-final stage in four of his last five outings.

Prediction

Luke Humphries’ red-hot Premier League form is impossible to ignore - and his opener looks the closest thing to a ‘banker’ in this short format.

OddsNow’s pick: Humphries to win Night Eight in Dublin (9/4 bet365 and 888Sport).

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