The second round of the Indian Open is played out in full in Visakhapatnam on Thursday as the remaining players brace themselves for a busy few days if they are to go all the way and win the tournament.
The majority of the big names who went to India for the event made it through the opening round so we should get plenty of decent snooker streamed across the two sessions on Thursday with spots in the last 16 up for grabs.
Morning Session
There are two sets of matches in the morning session with the streamed tables being occupied first up by Ben Woollaston and Ricky Walden as well as the interesting clash between Mark King and Graeme Dott. Elsewhere we have Sam Baird and Ken Doherty and a match between Xu Si and Sean O’Sullivan which is a massive one for the pair with a spot in the last 16 assured for one of them.
The second set of matches are headlined by a battle between Stuart Bingham and Matthew Selt. They are on one of the streamed tables with Fergal O’Brien taking on Shaun Murphy on the other one. Hossein Vafaei plays Gerard Greene on an outside table and there is an all-Chinese battle on the other when Tian Pengfei faces Zhang Anda.
Afternoon Session
Mark Allen has the centre stage to open up the afternoon session. He takes on the talented Swiss player Alexander Ursenbacher while on the other streamed table we have Kurt Maflin against David Gilbert. The outside tables see the defending champion Anthony McGill meeting Rory McLeod and Gary Wilson taking on Michael Holt.
The final set of matches in the round sees Joe Perry against Elliot Slessor on one of the TV tables and John Higgins facing Martin O’Donnell on the other. Away from the spotlight Yu Delu will take on Liam Highfield and Akani Songsermsawad goes up against Dominic Dale.
[the_ad_group id=”3624″]
Betting
I like two bets on Thursday. In the morning session I think Anda Zhang is overpriced to see off his Chinese compatriot Tian Pengfei. It could be that Pengfei is free-rolling now after coming from 3-0 down in the first round but at the same time being 3-0 down could mean that he wasn’t playing very well to begin with. Anda Zhang had a decent win over Soheil Vahedi in the first round and should be inspired by Luca Brecel’s win in China recently. They are from the same stable so I expect Zhang to kick on with a win here.
In the afternoon I think it is worth taking a chance with Gary Wilson against Michael Holt. Holt is a much improved player from the one that was on tour say five years ago but he still has periods where he doesn’t convince me. Wilson is one on the upturn I feel and generally when he plays well, as he did in his first round, he keeps going for a while. This is much more 50/50 than the odds suggest so I’ll go with Wilson.
Tips
WON – Back A.Zhang to beat T.Pengfei for a 4/10 stake at 2.00 with Betfred
Back him here:
Back G.Wilson to beat M.Holt for a 4/10 stake at 2.25 with Paddy Power
Back him here:
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2017
