“Luke Humphries looks well placed to take top honours from the opening quarter-final tie of the night with Stephen Bunting.

The world number 1 has made a quietly impressive start to his Premier League campaign and currently leads the way at the top of the table. In fact, Humphries has won 5 of his 6 matches in this year’s Premier League, only narrowly losing out to Luke Littler in last week’s final. The Newbury ace’s average across his 6 outings is in excess of 100, not to mention only Luke Littler (17) and Michael van Gerwen (17) have hit more 180s than Humphries (15) at this juncture.

In contrast, Bunting has endured a difficult start upon his return to the Premier League this year, losing his opening 2 games with both Rob Cross and Michael van Gerwen. While it’s surely only a matter of time before Bunting gets up and running, it’s difficult to make a case for him against Humphries in Dublin this week. ‘Cool Hand’ has come out on top in 5 of the last 7 meetings between the duo and the form book certainly favours the league leader ahead of their latest encounter in the Emerald Isle.”

“As tends to be the case in any match that he goes into, Luke Littler looks well placed to hit the most 180s when he takes on Gerwyn Price on Thursday night. ‘The Nuke’ has already crashed in a notable 17 maximums across his opening 4 appearances in this year’s Premier League. A sizeable 11 of those 180s arrived across his 3 outings last week, including 5 when pulling off an epic comeback to edge out Rob Cross in the Glasgow curtain-raiser. The other 6 maximums that the teenage sensation has scored in this year’s Premier League came against Michael van Gerwen on night 1.

While Price is also a dab-hand when it comes to delivering 180s, he has failed to hit more maximums than his opponent in each of his 3 Premier League appearances this year. In fact, ‘The Iceman’ has hit 3 180s or fewer in each of his opening 3 outings this season, and a repeat here is unlikely to be enough to ‘outmax’ serial 180-hitter Littler.”