The 32 players remaining in the Scottish Open will be hoping it is a busy day for them on Thursday as two rounds of the tournament is played out in Glasgow. The afternoon sees the last 32 played out in full while the winners then return in the evening session for the last 16 ahead of the final stages of the event over the weekend.
Although we lost a couple of decent players along the way such as Shaun Murphy, Stuart Bingham and Ali Carter there is still stacks of quality and big names left in the tournament so Thursday is set up to be sensational. As ever in these Home Nations events the time restrictions mean we can’t preview the last 16 but we can certainly cover the last 32.
Opening Matches
All eight tables are in use to begin with on Thursday with the TV table seeing Kyren Wilson taking on Oliver Lines who is riding a good wave at the minute. Judd Trump will face Noppon Saengkham on the other main table.
Elsewhere there are some tasty looking matches. Robert Milkins against Joe Perry is probably the highlight on the outside tables but Anthony Hamilton also takes on Chris Wakelin. Yu Delu plays Daniel Wells, Mitchell Mann meets Sean O’Sullivan, Barry Hawkins plays Mike Dunn and Ian Burns goes up against Liang Wenbo.
Second Matches
There is one match in this set of matches that whets the appetite. It is the one between Ronnie O’Sullivan and Jimmy White which is unsurprisingly on the match table. Stephen Maguire takes on Mark Williams in another tantalising match.
It isn’t as though the support cast is bad either. Dominic Dale meets Ricky Walden in a good one while Mark Davis against Xiao Guodong also looks juicy. Mark Allen faces Chinese opposition for the second time in as many days when he plays Li Hang and Marco Fu plays Robin Hull.
Final Matches
The last two matches see John Higgins taking on Met Xiwen on the main TV table while on the other table Neil Robertson looks to continue his return to form when he goes up against a Joe Swail in need of as many wins as he can to get his under threat tour place more secure.
Betting
There are some great matches to witness in this round of the tournament and there are two bets I like too. The first is on Xiao Guodong who takes on Mark Davis. Guodong took care of Shaun Murphy in the last round opening up the match with two centuries and powering to victory and if there is one thing I’ve learnt about the Chinese star it is when he is scoring well he is tough to beat.
To be fair Mark Davis has played some decent stuff in the tournament so far too. He is yet to lose a frame in the tournament but I don’t believe he is playing as well as Guodong is. Davis hasn’t been tested yet and that could count against him. Guodong is striking the ball nicely and he’s my pick in that one.
Ricky Walden literally fell over the line against Alex Borg on Wednesday and that only adds fuel to my belief that he is nothing like as confident a favourite as he is when he is the outsider and he is a favourite to beat Dominic Dale but I’m not so sure that should be the case.
The two met in Northern Ireland recently when Dale won 4-2 and since then he has kicked on and I fancy the Welshman in this one. Walden never seems to play as well in the UK as he does overseas and as an uneasy favourite taking him on is pretty automatic and that’s what I’ll do here.
Tips
Back X.Guodong to beat M.Davis for a 4/10 stake at 2.00 with Skybet
Back him here:
WON – Back D.Dale to beat R.Walden for a 4/10 stake at 2.40 with Boylesports
Back him here:
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