The first day of the now extremely lucrative China Open tournament sees the matches from the qualifying event that were held over to the main venue being played as well as the wildcard matches and the opening round of the event also gets underway on what is an extremely busy day of action in Beijing on Monday.
It might be the opening day of the event but that does not mean we are devoid of big names being on show. The Masters champion Mark Allen, home favourite Ding Junhui, world champion Mark Selby and form man Ronnie O’Sullivan will all be on show for us to watch on across the day.
Early Morning Session
We have eight matches in the morning session with a variety of different rounds of the event on show. The main table will be occupied by Mark Allen. He takes on Noppon Saengkham knowing he has to win else he will be having to qualify for the World Championship. Liang Wenbo had his qualifying match held over and he will play that against Rhys Clark on the other main table.
The outside tables will be full all day and in this session Ben Woollaston faces Lee Walker in the first round while Mark Davis and Michael Holt go up against each other in the same round. Anthony Hamilton meets Jack Lisowski in what could be one of the matches of the day. There are also three wildcard matches as Basem Eltahhan plays Luo Honghao, Chen Feilong meets Fan Zhengyi and Zhang Yong goes up against Chang Bingyu.
Morning Session
It will be all about Ronnie O’Sullivan in the main morning session. He faces Ross Muir in his qualifying match which was delayed to this week on one of the main tables but it could be the match on the other main table which steals the show when Luca Brecel takes on Cao Yupeng in arguably the match of the round.
There are some good ones on the outside tables too. Mark Williams will take on Thepchaiya Un-Nooh while Ali Carter is also in action when he plays Gary Wilson. Jak Jones meets Nigel Bond while Joe Perry faces Chris Totten. Liam Highfield meets Lu Haotian in the other match in the session.
Afternoon Session
The world champion Mark Selby has had his qualifying match held off until this session as has local favourite Ding Junhui. They will occupy the main tables with Selby meeting Wang Yuchen and Ding facing the Shootout champion Michael Georgiou in what looks a really intriguing battle.
There are three held over matches on the outside tables too when Peter Ebdon will meet the winner of the match between Zhang Yong and Chang Bingyu from earlier in the day. Andrew Higginson will take on the winner of Chen Feilong and Fan Zhengyi. Stuart Carrington takes on either Basem Eltahhan or Luo Honghao. The first round matches sees Martin Gould taking on Sam Craigie, Hamza Akbar meets Ricky Walden and Matthew Stevens plays Stuart Bingham.
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Betting
I’ll go with two bets for the opening day which both come in the morning session. In the big match I fancy Cao Yupeng can get the better of Luca Brecel. To be fair we saw Brecel actually offering something in the Championship League when he made a 147 against John Higgins last week but then he lost every other match to suggest his form still isn’t good. Yupeng has made two finals this season and is in home conditions. I think he’s a great chance.
Nigel Bond is not the player he once was that much is plainly obvious but he showed in Gibraltar recently that he can still tame a certain level of the tour and we might see that again when he faces Jak Jones on Monday. Jones made a name for himself when he took care of Judd Trump in qualifying but Trump was having issues at the time and in truth Jones has done nothing either side of that. Bond maintains tactical knowhow and that can be enough to get him through here.
Tips
WON – Back C.Yupeng to beat L.Brecel for a 4/10 stake at 2.15 with Betfair
Back him here:
Back N.Bond to beat J.Jones for a 4/10 stake at 1.85 with LeoVegas
Back him here:
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