The first round of qualifying for the World Championship concludes on Saturday when the last of the matches get underway in the morning before finishing in the evening. By the end of Saturday’s play we will know the 64 players who are two wins away from an appearance at the Crucible in the main event.
Friday Recap
Friday saw the end of another season for Jimmy White and barring a trip to q-school or a wildcard the Whirlwind’s place on the tour went with it which is a huge shame. There was another shock when Rob Milkins was beaten but there were wins for Peter Ebdon and Yan Bingtao.
It was a decent enough day betting wise for us with Eden Sharav easily seeing off Jamie Cope as we expected and Chen Zhe took a 6-3 lead into the second session of his match with Dechawat Poomjaeng which will finish on Saturday afternoon so things are looking good there too.
Morning Session
The biggest name in the qualifying event gets his campaign underway on Saturday when Mark Williams enters the competition in one of the matches on the main table. He has a tricky little test against Zhao Xintong while the other streamed table will be occupied by former world champion Ken Doherty and Jason Weston.
The other matches in this session include Liam Highfield against Andres Petrov, Matt Selt against David John, Hossein Vafaei versus Hatem Yassin and Anthony Hamilton against Craig Steadman. Elsewhere Noppon Saengkham plays Jak Jones, Stephen Maguire meets Kritsanut Lertsattayatthorn, Ben Woollaston faces Chris Totten, Luca Brecel takes on Sean O’Sullivan and Kurt Maflin plays Sydney Wilson.
Afternoon Session
It was a really slow session on Friday afternoon so plenty of matches have a lot of legs left in them. Chen Zhe leads Dechawat Poomjaeng while Graeme Dott has the same advantage over Allan Taylor. Gerard Greene is 5-4 up on Fergal O’Brien and Sanderson Lam leads Joe Swail by the same scoreline.
Tian Pengfei holds a sizeable 7-2 advantage over Zhang Yong with Jimmy Robertson 5-4 up on Cao Yupeng. Oliver Lines and Duane Jones are locked at 4-4 while Rod Lawler is 4-2 up on Xu Si. Alan McManus has a significant 5-1 lead on Kurt Dunham and Darryl Hill narrowly leads Rory McLeod 4-3.
Betting
I’m only going to take one in the matches to get going on Saturday morning but I’ll also go with one that is in play as well to make up two bets for the day to build on a solid day on Friday.
The season of Liam Highfield hasn’t gone to plan but we shouldn’t forget he has a win over Mark Selby on his CV in this campaign. Highfield lost out in qualifying last year in the final frame of qualifying so he knows how to come through a couple of rounds and I expect him to ease through here. Andres Petrov needed a couple of players in front of him to get entries in other ways to get in here which shows how lowly ranked he is even in the amateur list. This is a big deal and I expect Highfield to deal with it better and come through nicely.
In the afternoon session I fancy Joe Swail could well turn his match with Sanderson Lam around. He only trails 5-4 overnight and he’ll have done that plenty of times in his career and turned it round and I think he can here. Lam doesn’t win a lot of matches at this level and progression would be a big deal for him. The first session was nothing special but if this becomes a battle Swail specialises in them and he’s a little overpriced to turn this around.
Tips
WON – Back L.Highfield (-4.5 frames) to beat A.Petrov for a 4/10 stake at 1.83 with Ladbrokes
Back him here:
WON – Back J.Swail to beat S.Lam for a 3/10 stake at 2.63 with Paddy Power
Back him here:
