Premier League Darts Night Twelve: Betting Odds & Prediction

(Featured image: Alamy Images)

Written by: Stuart Pike

Premier League Darts returns on Thursday for Night 12 of the series, with Rotterdam Ahoy the venue.

Seven-time champion Michael van Gerwen was back in the winner’s circle at Birmingham’s Utilita Arena after defeating 17-year-old league pacesetter Luke Littler to close the gap on second-placed Luke Humphries to two points. Nathan Aspinall leads 2023 world champion Michael Smith by a point in the battle to make the top four.

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 tenth. Each match will be played over the best of 11 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:

Michael Smith vs Luke Littler

Rob Cross vs Gerwyn Price

Peter Wright vs Nathan Aspinall

Mihcael van Gerwen vs Luke Humphries

Michael Smith vs Luke Littler

Although Luke Littler (10/21 Coral/Ladbrokes) saved probably his least impressive Premier League performance for last week’s final defeat to Michael van Gerwen, a thrilling 6-5 semi-final win over Luke Humphries extended his narrow lead at the head of the standings as well as a four-match winning streak against the world champion.

‘The Nuke’ has not enjoyed the same success against Michael Smith (7/4 several outlets), though, having notched just one victory in the pair’s four Premier League meetings so far. That was by a scoreline of 6-2 in a high-quality quarter-final tie on Night 5 in Exeter, while Smith has conceded 5, 3 and 4 legs to the teenager in his trio of wins.

The hot-starting teenager, who has now reached four finals (including the last three), has won an impressive nine opening matches in 11 weeks, with only Smith (Night 8) and Gerwyn Price (Night 3) condemning him to an early night.

‘Bully Boy’ picked up a further two points on Night 11 to cut the gap to Nathan Aspinall in the all-important fourth place. However, having taken care of Gerwyn Price 6-3 to avenge the previous week’s defeat, he failed to build on a strong quarter-final appearance, for a second week running, in his 6-4 loss to van Gerwen.

Rob Cross vs Gerwyn Price

After a promising start, Rob Cross (7/5 Betfred) has seen his Premier League bid hit the buffers on the back of five consecutive opening-match exits. Sixth-placed ‘Voltage’, who has now lost four of his five deciding legs in this year’s series, needs to start winning to keep his nose in front of Gerwyn Price (8/13 BetMGM/BetUK) and haul himself back into play-off contention. On Night 11, Cross was leading Luke Littler 5-4 only to fall short again. 

Price comes into this round bolstered by a robust defence of his International Darts Open title in Germany at the weekend, where he picked up four victories before 15 missed darts at doubles saw him beaten 8-5 in the final by home favourite Martin Schindler. After pulling off a nine-darter en route to the Night 10 final, the Welshman was unable to build on some long-overdue momentum in Birmingham, slipping to a seventh quarter-final defeat despite a 103.26 average against Michael Smith.

Separated now by just one point, this pair’s previous Premier League encounters do not offer too much help; ‘The Iceman’ won their semi-final 6-2 in front of his home crowd way back on Night 1, but the Hastings darter returned the favour with a 6-1 quarter-final thumping four weeks later. However, Cross can point to a 7-3 win in their most recent contest at last month’s Belgian Darts Open semi-final.

Peter Wright vs Nathan Aspinall

If results continue to go against him this week, Peter Wright (6/4 various outlets) could be statistically out of contention for the tournament play-offs by the end of week 13. In truth, the writing is already on the wall; the 54-year-old has endured a miserable campaign, recording just two match wins. Friday’s 6-5 defeat to Gabriel Clemens in Riesa extended this month’s losing streak in all competitions to six matches.

Wright’s latest Premier League reverse was 6-4 to Luke Humphries, while he has lost twice to Nathan Aspinall (4/7 William Hill/IBet/888Sport) in this year’s series, 6-4 on Night 5 and 6-2 on Night 9.

Last week’s defeat to nightly winner Michael van Gerwen was Aspinall’s first quarter-final exit since Night 6. However, the omens going into this match could scarcely be brighter for ‘The Asp’, who reached the final after each of his two previous wins over the Scot—including his one nightly triumph in Exeter. 

Fourth-placed Aspinall, who has beaten Wright in eight of their last 10 meetings, is unbeaten in nine contests against the current bottom four since a Night 1 loss to Gerwyn Price, while his opponent’s record against the current top five reads played nine, lost nine. Aspinall also grabbed the nightly win at this venue at the same stage of last year’s Premier League.

Michael van Gerwen vs Luke Humphries

The heavyweight tie of the round in Rotterdam pits the winners of seven of the series events against each other, with Luke Humphries (13/20 Coral/Ladbrokes) taking on Dutch home favourite Michael van Gerwen (11/8 Betfair). 

Humphries and MvG, who have both recorded hat-tricks of consecutive nightly wins, have also shared the spoils on the previous two occasions the 2024 Premier League has departed UK shores.

While still short of his brilliant best, van Gerwen’s fourth nightly win on Night 11 landed a psychological counter punch after he had been usurped in the table by the rampant Lukes. He picked up a treble of match victories against fellow play-off contenders Nathan Aspinall 6-4, Michael Smith 6-4 and, in an anti-climactic final, Luke Littler 6-3, despite averages of just 93.28 and 90.38 in the latter two contests. Prior to that, a bruising spell had seen the defending champion record just one match win in the competition since 22nd February.

After a blistering run of nine match wins on the bounce, including eight ton-plus averages, ‘Cool Hand’ Luke Humphries has collected just two points from his last three competition outings. Last week’s performance was workmanlike by his outrageous recent standards; he followed up a 6-4 win over Peter Wright with a third deciding-leg loss to Luke Littler in succession, averaging 94.30.

Perhaps surprisingly given their respective positions in the table, these two have only met twice so far in this year’s Premier League; Mighty Mike took a last-leg thriller in the Night 3 final in Glasgow, before a 6-3 Humphries win exacted revenge at the quarter-final stage two weeks later. However, their most recent encounter just over two weeks ago ended in a magnificent 8-1 victory for Humphries in the final of the German Grand Prix in Munich.

Prediction

Much attention will be on the first and last quarter-final ties, with pace-setters Luke Littler and Luke Humphries needing to overcome, respectively, a losing head-to-head record and vocal ‘away’ crowd—as well as high-class opponents. Littler, who has reached the past three finals, and Michael van Gerwen should be the freshest of the eight players, having sat out the weekend’s International Darts Open. 

OddsNow back Littler to extend his lead at the top of the Premier League table with a third event win in four weeks.

OddsNow's Pick: Luke Littler to win Night 12 (13/5 @ bet365)

 

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