Bet of the day: Van Gerwen highest player checkout in World Matchplay on Thursday

Where to start with why this Thursday flutter is fantastic? MvG does all his talking on the Winter Gardens stage, where he has put in sublime performances so far, easily bettering the three remaining immediate rivals in his half of the draw.

Only Mighty Mike, his opponent Chizzy plus Jackpot and Snakebite will take to the oche tonight, and Van Gerwen has been by far the most potent of the trio in Blackpool.

When crushing Jamie Caven 10-0 and Kyle Anderson 11-3, MVG clocked up 105.85 and 102.97 averages in each game respectively. The best any of his three Thursday night quarter-final peers have mustered, meanwhile, is 99.67 – highlighting how superior the Dutchman’s deadly scoring is.

To boot, vicious thrower Van Gerwen is currently second for top PDC checkout percentage across the past two years with 45.15 per cent, striking success in 1,178 of 2,609 attempts behind only Kevin Painter (45.39 per cent), who has made far less taking out 59 of 152 to hand him a better strike rate.

Powerful finisher MvG has already proven ruthless in other ranked Major TV events this calendar year aside form the World Matchplay, finishing joint first for highest tournament checkouts in the only other two to have occurred so far – the 2016 World Darts Championship and UK Open (in which he claimed 170 checkouts on four occasions).

While, even in non-ranked televised Majors in 2016, Mighty Mike was again joint top of the pile for highest competition checkouts in two of three so far (The Masters and Premier League, the latter in which he also set a record average).

So, back Van Gerwen’s individual brilliance to come out tops again tonight, with those 2/1 odds for highest player checkout on the evening.

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Dip into our bet of the day archive to see how our previous picks fared.