Doncaster-born darts star Matt Edgar backs himself as ‘dark horse’ for success at Lakeside

The championship gets underway tonight, and ahead of his return to Lakeside, WDF Professional Matt Edgar talked to OLBG.com to preview the tournament and outline his tournament predictions.

So, who should be considered a dark horse to win the event and how is Matt feeling about his own chances of success?

“I'm really looking forward to it actually," said Matt. “It's been a few years now since I played in a World Championship, and I’m looking forward to playing in front of a crowd again and I've been preparing well for this.

“I've managed to hook up with some real top-quality practice partners. I've hooked up with Ryan Searle. I'm hooking up with Scott Williams, [these are] people that are performing very well on the PDC pro tour and in those TV tournaments.

"It's going to put me in good stead and if I can produce what I've been producing against these guys on that stage, I think I'm going to be a bit of a dark horse.”

He was asked, aside from himself, who does he see as the favourite to win the tournament? Who else is a danger?’

“It's got to be Jimmy Van Schie.

“He really does have to be viewed as the favourite. I think everyone who [has] previewed this event so far has gone for Jimmy Vansky. That being said, he's on debut. We don't know how he's going to react to this and I'm going to take him out anyway!

“I think there's loads of value in this event. I don't see there being somebody who you look at and go, they're definitely going to win it. You've got people like Moreno Blom, Reece Colley, that are 100/1 and 66/1 to one respectively.

"That to me represents value because they are players that are capable of doing this. Reece Colley just won the World Open, which is a very, very hard tournament to win and a gold-ranked event.

“It's all how people handle the experience. We're not talking about people that are overly experienced, who [have] had the opportunity to play on big stages like this in front of crowds before. So I think those with experience really need to be taken seriously.”

Selected Winner Odds for the WDF Lakeside World Championship 2024

Player, Odds, Probability Chance

Jimmy Van Schie 3/1 25%

Gary Stone 6/1 14.3%

Neil Duff 13/2 11.1%

Matt Edgar (joint-17th favourite) 33/1 2.9%

Reece Colley 50/1 2.0%

Moreno Blom 125/1 0.8%

*Latest odds courtesy of William Hill on Friday 29th November*

You can also head over to the OLBG Youtube channel to see more from Matt Edgar.