Tough times call for exciting new measures and the Darts agency MODUS, who represent the likes of Michael van Gerwen, Fallon Sherrock, Peter Wright and Raymond van Barneveld, have come up with an ingenious way of bringing us some live darts while we wait for things to get back to normal. Yes, last week’s live darts made a bit of a comeback as the inaugural MODUS Icons of Darts Live League got underway.
The Icons of Darts format is a series of round-robin leagues that will take place daily from Monday to Saturday each week until Saturday, May 2nd when the overall champion will be announced. The players, including big names such as Paul Nicholson, Mark Webster, Andy Jenkins and Wessel Nijman, will each be competing from their own homes while streaming their play over their webcams.
Darts does at least lend itself to such a format which will help provide us with some much-needed entertainment in these weird times. Each match is best of nine legs and leading online bookmaker bet365 will be live streaming proceedings. Betway will be offering markets on the Icons of Darts tourneys. Correct Leg Score, Total 180s, Most 180s and Score After 4 Legs are all available for your entertainment.
Naturally, you need to sign up to bet365 via this link before either making a deposit or placing a bet, unless you have already done so in the last 24 hours, in which case you will be able to live stream the Icons of Darts through your various devices.
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Week One
The first week of the MODUS Icons of Darts Live League finished over the weekend when David Evans became the winner of week one. Evans wasn’t even required to throw on Saturday as all players are required to take a day off out of the six and Saturday was his turn. It mattered not though as Wessel Nijman lost out to Mark Webster to on 30 points tied with Evans, who took the top spot on leg difference. Paul Nicholson finished third, ahead of Andy Jenkins.
Ten points behind, the bottom two places include Raymond van Barneveld on 10 points and Mark Webster on 8 points.
Week Two
Nijman picked up where he left off from week one on Monday night with a victory over Raymond van Barneveld. Nijman also saw off Martin Adams, Ritchie Edhouse and David Evans on a strong opening night in week two. Earlier on, Martin Adams claimed a victory over Edhouse fresh from inflicting defeat on Barney, who in turn finally got some scores on the doors by beating Ritchie Edhouse 5-4.
With the exception of Scott Mitchell, stepping in to replace Martin Adams, the same line-up as Monday goes again on Tuesday. This means that Raymond van Barneveld, Scott Mitchell, David Evans, Wessel Nijman and Ritchie Edhouse all feature in Tuesday’s Icons of Darts.
Raymond van Barneveld takes on Scott Mitchell in the first match of the night. Barney, who has tweeted that he isn’t feeling on top form, looks very out of sorts even on his home oche. To that end, we’d have to back Mitchell on this one.
Mitchell then moves on to fellow BDO man and week one winner David Evans. These two are hard to split but due to his performances last week, we’re just bout leaning towards Evans in this one. Along with Wessel Nijman, Evans has been among the standout players so far.
That, then, makes the big game of the night the 20:30 GMT match between the pair. Wessel beat David 5-4 on Monday despite missing a lot of darts and I would expect a repeat performance on Tuesday.
Tuesday, April 14 fixtures
- Paul Nicholson v Jarred Cole
- Andy Jenkins v Robert Collins
- Arron Monk v Paul Nicholson
- Jarred Cole v Andy Jenkin
- Robert Collins v Arron Monk
- Paul Nicholson v Andy Jenkins
- Jarred Cole v Robert Collins
- Arron Monk v Andy Jenkins
- Paul Nicholson v Robert Collins
- Jarred Cole v Arron Monk