81 of the 115 eligible players have signed up for Dartslive's World final qualifying thing, sadly not including Ratajski. Probably a bunch of the no-hopers at the back of the ranking won't actually bother to show up, so I'd guess 70-75 players will be going for the 4 spots in the streamed stage tournament. As mentioned this is happening in two weeks.Zeyes wrote:Yup, was enough, he finished tied for 86th. The lowest eligibles for the qualifying tournament are a 27-way tie for 97th place at 30 points. (Which means that anyone who simply participated in three of the five tournaments has made it, since there are 10 points on offer just for showing up.)Zeyes wrote:The final ranking (snip)Zeyes wrote:Dartslive World circuit doing its thing for the fifth and final time this season today, this time in Malaysia.
Ratajski was in the semifinals of the second tour event in France earlier in the year; not sure yet if the 35 points he got for that have been good enough for him to finish in the top 100 of the ranking, which would make him eligible for the Finals qualifier whose 4 winners will get to join the 8 automatic entrants. Takes place the first weekend of December in Hong Kong, so wouldn't clash with any PDC events. $30,000 on offer to the winner.
Hong Kong isn't exactly around the corner from Poland, but for a shot at $30k, against players who largely wouldn't make much of a dent in PDC competition...might be tempting. Unless he's announcing it himself on Facebook or something, we'll probably know by mid-November or so if he has signed up to play. Eligible players have been emailed by Dartslive, entries need to be in by Wednesday.
The tournament format will comprise 8 stepladder brackets - lowest player against second-lowest, winner of that goes against the third-lowest and so on. The 8 winners will play off for the 4 spots in the final tournament. The last time they ran such a qualifier (two years ago), about two-thirds of all eligible players decided to participate. One bracket was won by the 4th-lowest player that time, who had to win 8 games to qualify. That's roughly what Ratajski would be looking at as needing to do.
The entry list for the qualifier can be found here. Andy Jenkins!
13 or so female players in the field; there are some Asian (primarily ethnic Chinese) names I can't place, so might be a couple more.
Some notable non-signups other than Ratajski, i.e. players you may have heard of:
Randy Van Deursen (USA, 71 points)
Jacques Labre (France, 63)
Martin Marti (Spain, 53)
Tony Martin (England, 52)
David Fatum (Canada, 49)
Hyejin Choi (Korea, 47, the country's top female player)
José Justicia (Spain, 37)
Alan Ljubic (Croatia, 37)
Kurt Van de Rijck (Belgium, 32)
Yuji Eguchi (Japan, 30)
Tengku Shah (Malaysia, 30)
Van Deursen was 25th in line, so the top 24 (after the 8 already-qualified players) are all planning to be there.