The qualifying competition for the China Open begins on Saturday with a number of players looking to win the one match they need to in order to progress to the main event of the incredibly lucrative competition.
There is a cool £225,000 waiting for the winner of the tournament in the final stages and £5,000 just for winning their qualifying match so the big money is really on show here. This competition used to be the best of nine frames but it is now best of 11. Three sessions of action get us going on Saturday.
Morning Session
As ever we have two tables being streamed live on the bookmaker websites and first up on one of those sees Joe Perry taking on Joe Swail. Xiao Guodong will be keen to make it into his home event and he is on the other streamed table taking on Alex Borg. The other three matches in this session sees Alfie Burden playing Martin O’Donnell, Mark Joyce meeting Peter Lines and Yu Delu facing Duane Jones.
Afternoon Session
Ben Woollaston has the luxury of being on one of the main tables in the afternoon session. He goes up against Rod Lawler while the 2017 German Masters champion Anthony Hamilton faces David John on the other one. Scott Donaldson plays Zhang Anda on one of the outside tables with Rory McLeod meeting Liam Highfield and Gary Wilson playing Niu Zhuang on the others.
Evening Session
It is Judd Trump who takes centre stage in the evening session. He is on one of the main tables and looks to have a good chance of progressing against Jak Jones. Martin Gould, fresh from a 147 in the Championship League, plays Fang Xiongman on the other. Elsewhere Graeme Dott meets Mei Xi Wen while Jack Lisowski plays Gerard Greene and Michael Holt takes on Akani Songsermsawad.
[the_ad_group id=”3624″]
Betting
It is still relatively early in the year to get going knees deep into things and with the money that is on offer the tension is likely to be there throughout these four days so there is just the one bet for me to kick off the competition. It comes in the evening session.
It sees Michael Holt taking on Akani Songsermsawad for the second time in a couple of months. These two met in the UK Championship at the back end of last year and the Thai came through 6-4. He was in the middle of a good spell then but has done little since and I fancy Holt will be able to turn the tables here. Holt played a bit of the Championship League earlier in the month to keep his eye in and as the higher ranked player he should be the better man. Unless Akani has suddenly hit form again, which doesn’t seem likely, then I’m with Holt to make it through this one.
Tips
WON – Back M.Holt to beat A.Songsermsawad for a 4/10 stake at 1.80 with Coral
Back him here:
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2018
