The opening quarter final of The Masters at Alexandra Palace sees the defending champion Ronnie O’Sullivan taking on the former winner Neil Robertson in what should be a feast of snooker in London on Thursday afternoon.
The two men will do battle over the best of 11 frames for a place in Saturday’s semi-final where either Mark Allen or Marco Fu will be waiting for the winner.
Ronnie O’Sullivan
Although he is the defending champion O’Sullivan might already feel like he is on a freeroll this week. That is because he knows he should be out of the tournament already. Liang Wenbo had match ball black against him in the previous round but he missed it, O’Sullivan didn’t and then he banged in a ton in the final frame to come through 6-5.
That wasn’t a vintage performance from O’Sullivan and it continued with the trend of the season that he has really struggled against aggressive and attacking players who no longer fear him. Taking O’Sullivan on in London is never easy but Wenbo didn’t look too inconvenienced by the crowd so Ronnie will need to up his game.
Neil Robertson
There were question marks about the game of Neil Robertson heading into this tournament and the state it was in but there looked to be nothing wrong with it in the first round when he saw off Ali Carter 6-3 knocking in a ton and four other hefty breaks in a fairly comfortable win and that will have done him the world of good.
After a relatively quiet first half of the season by his high standards Robertson might feel he has some making up to do over the second half of the campaign and that will spell danger for the rest if that is the case. You get the feeling the penny has dropped with the Australian and he’ll be bang up for the fight here.
Head to Head
Clearly these two are no strangers to each other. In all competitions they have met on 19 occasions with O’Sullivan winning 12 times to Robertson’s six. They’ve also drawn a match too. O’Sullivan won their most recent meeting in Romania in October 6-0. In The Masters they have met twice. O’Sullivan beat Robertson 6-4 in 2010 while Robertson won their semi-final in 2015 6-1.
Betting
I hate taking on Ronnie O’Sullivan in London because the crowd really do get involved but it is slightly easier to find the bottle to do it when the player you are taking him on with has already beaten him 6-1 here.
That makes me side with Neil Robertson in this one. He is a class act and we’ve seen all season that O’Sullivan has beaten the lower ranked players but when he’s come up against the cream of the tour he has struggled and I suspect that might be the case here. Robertson will have a game plan which he’ll stick to but at the end of the day he’ll score well and that can lead him to a win here.
Whenever these two meet centuries tend to come along regularly and I would be surprised if that trend doesn’t continue here given how well the table is playing. Both made a ton in their first round matches while Robertson was involved in that epic quarter final here last year with Judd Trump which had six centuries. O’Sullivan will have to score at his best to come out on top here so I expect another couple of centuries.
Tips
Back N.Robertson to beat R.O’Sullivan for a 3/10 stake at 2.75 with Titanbet
Back him here:
Back Over 1.5 centuries for a 4/10 stake at 1.73 with Bet365
Back it here:
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