This Thursday, 6th June, sees the start of the 2019 BetVictor World Cup of Darts.  Introduced by the PDC in 2010, this is the 9th staging of the tournament – there was no event in 2011.  With Germany now established as the hosting nation, the tournament returns to the port city of Hamburg after four years in Frankfurt.  Once again, there will be 32 teams competing.

World Cup ever-present Darin Young will be joined on the US team by Arizona’s Chuck Puleo.  Although making his debut in the event, you may recall that Chuck was the United States representative in the 2019 William Hill World Championship.  The man from Mesa produced a battling performance before being edged out by Belgian Dimitri Van den Bergh.

Puleo will have to wait to get his revenge on Van den Bergh, as the two nations have been drawn on opposite sides of the bracket.  The Americans open Friday evening’s session against the Chinese duo of Xiaochen Zong and Qingyu Zhan.  If they can safely negotiate the first hurdle, they will face either #8 seeds Austria (Mensur Suljovic and Zoran Lerchbacher), or Russia (Boris Koltsov and Aleksey Kadochnikov).

The top eight seeded teams are :

1 – England (Rob Cross/Michael Smith)
2 – Scotland (Gary Anderson/Peter Wright)
3 – Wales (Gerwyn Price/Jonny Clayton)
4 – Netherlands (Michael van Gerwen/Jermaine Wattimena)
5 – Australia (Simon Whitlock/Kyle Anderson)
6 – Northern Ireland (Daryl Gurney/Brendan Dolan)
7 – Belgium (Kim Huybrechts/Dimitri Van den Bergh)
8 – Austria (Mensur Suljovic/Zoran Lerchbacher)

Don’t forget that Paul Lim – who represented the United States with such distinction on many occasions – will be in action for Singapore, alongside Harith Lim (no relation).  They meet Wales on Thursday evening.

Thursday and Friday sessions start at 7.00pm local time (1.00pm Eastern/10.00am Pacific), and all first round matches are straight doubles, best-of-nine-legs.

The two Saturday sessions (starting at 1.00pm and 7.00pm local) feature all second round matches.

The quarter-finals will start at 1.00pm local on Sunday, with the semi-finals and final kicking off at 7.00pm local.

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