Swiss Darts Trophy Round Two Results: Ten Seeds Out

Swiss Darts Trophy round two results in full

Every one of the 16 second-round ties pitted a seed against a man who had already played and won on the Friday, which makes this the cleanest test of a bye the European Tour offers. The men who had played on Friday won it 10-6.

What was the bye actually worth?

One leg. Across the 153 legs played on Saturday the seeds won 76 and Friday’s survivors won 77, which is as close to nothing as a structural advantage can get. The seeds arrived rested, having watched 32 other players knock lumps out of each other the day before, and were out-scored by a single leg in aggregate and beaten 10-6 in matches.

The likeliest reading is simply that a European Tour match is best of 11 legs, short enough that a cold start costs more than a tired arm, and the men who had come through the Friday first round had already found the board. It is the same reason a three-dart average tells you so little over eleven legs: the format is too short for the better player to be reliably the winning player.

Split by seeding band, the collapse is oddly tidy. The top four held — three of them won, and only Wade went — and then the floor fell out uniformly: one survivor from seeds 5-8, one from 9-12, one from 13-16. Of the twelve men seeded fourth to fifteenth, exactly two are still in the tournament, Josh Rock and Ross Smith.

Three of those sixteen seedings only existed because of the four withdrawals that reshaped the draw on Thursday, lifting Luke Woodhouse, Martin Schindler and Krzysztof Ratajski into the bracket and out of a Friday shift. Woodhouse lost to Rob Cross and Schindler lost to Tom Bissell. Ratajski took his gift, beat Stefan Bellmont 6-2 and now stands between the top seed and the quarter-finals.

Van Gerwen out, Bunting dethroned

Van Gerwen’s 6-4 defeat by Mensur Suljovicis the result that will travel furthest, and it fits a pattern that has followed him all year rather than breaking one. Suljovic was in Basel only via the first round, having beaten György Jehirszki 6-3 on the Friday to earn the tie.

Bunting’s exit was quieter and costlier. The defending champion lost 6-4 to Jeffrey de Graaf, which means both of last year’s Basel finalists are out before the last 16 — Woodhouse was the man Bunting beat in the 2025 final. Wade went out 6-5 to Dirk van Duijvenbode, beaten in a deciding leg after missing match darts. Danny Noppert, the eighth seed, lost 6-3 to Damon Heta.

Humphries survives, Clayton flies

Luke Humphriescame closest of the six surviving seeds to joining the pile. Three legs up on Kevin Doets, the top seed was hauled back to 5-5 and needed a 60 finish to win 6-5 — and he did it while being out-averaged, 105.64 to 102.85. Doets leaves Basel with the second-best average reported in the round and the £3,500 second-round cheque.

Jonny Clayton had the opposite evening. His 6-1 win over Maik Kuivenhoven came on a 108.81 average with two checkouts landed on the bullseye, the best figure reported anywhere in Basel this weekend and comfortably clear of the 105.95 Cross managed on the Friday. For a man who is still missing from the Grand Slam field, and for whom a European Tour title is the quickest way in, the timing is useful. Gian van Veen was the only man to win without conceding, beating Niko Springer 6-0.

The margin chart explains the body count better than any average does. Nine of the sixteen matches ended 6-4 and three went to a deciding leg, so twelve were live inside the last two legs. Only van Veen, Clayton, Ratajski and Heta won anything you could call comfortable. Round two was less a procession of upsets than sixteen tight matches that mostly fell the same way.

Sedlacek, the last reserve standing

Karel Sedlacekis not supposed to be here at all. He lost his final Tour Card Holder Qualifier match and was sitting on the reserve list until Gerwyn Price withdrew on Thursday; he was one of four replacements drafted in that afternoon, and the only one to survive the Friday. Two days later he has beaten 11th seed Wessel Nijman 6-4 as well, and he is in the last 16 of a European Tour event with £5,000 banked against the £2,000 the other three reserves took home.

That money matters beyond Basel. This is the second-last European Tour event of the season, and the one-year table it feeds decides the 32-man field for Dortmund later this month. The standings move match by match on the European Championship race table, and the mechanics of the cut are set out in our guide to how the Dortmund field is decided. Only the Dutch Darts Championship in Maastricht, on 16-18 October, follows.

Swiss Darts Trophy last 16: Sunday’s line-up

Four rounds are played on the Sunday. The last 16 opens the afternoon session from 12:00 local time, with the quarter-finals, semi-finals and final all in the evening from 18:00 — best of 11 legs up to and including the quarter-finals, best of 13 in the semi-finals and best of 15 in the final.

Three of the eight ties contain no seeded player at all — de Graaf against Brooks, van Duijvenbode against Michael Smith, Heta against Reyes — so at least three of the eight quarter-finalists will be men who entered this tournament without a bye. The only all-seeded tie in the last 16 is the one the seeding is supposed to make last: top seed against bottom seed, Humphries against Ratajski. Clayton gets Cross and the 105.95 average he posted on Friday, and van Veen draws Bissell, who has now beaten Joe Cullen and Schindler on the spin after averaging 81.36 in the first round. Prize money, the format and the six entry routes into the 48-player field are covered in our Swiss Darts Trophy preview, and the rest of the autumn sits on the 2026 calendar.