Scotland's Gary Anderson, who tonight plays the defending champion Raymond Van Barneveld, and England's Gary Robson were yesterday cleared of wrong-doing after bookmakers reported irregular betting patterns before their first-round match at the Lakeside Country Club on Monday, which Anderson won 3-1.
The British Darts Organisation, the event's governing body, launched an investigation yesterday but nothing untoward was discovered. Robert Holmes, PR consultant for the BDO, said: "There was no impropriety from any of them. Anything is open to abuse. I have asked them, hand on heart, if there was anything I should know and they were affronted by the suggestion they would do anything wrong. They are two of the nicest guys you could wish to meet in any sport."
The bookmaker William Hill was forced to suspend its market on the match within two hours of opening it last Thursday, having been inundated with support for Anderson. "We saw some of the strangest ever betting patterns on an early-round darts match in a major competition," said William Hill's spokesman Graham Sharpe. "We thought it was a flip-of-the-coin type of match but we were knocked over by people wanting to back Gary Anderson. In normal circumstances you would maybe take a couple of thousand pounds but in this case it was well into five figures within two hours, and the interest was only in one of the two players."
Coral's spokesman Simon Clare added: "We are paying out through gritted teeth but we have serious concerns about the betting patterns." But the BDO's managing director Olly Croft summed up its conclusion: "The players were told about the betting activity and were distraught about it," he said. "They are the most honest people in the world."