We are hitting a busy period of the snooker season and after the thrilling conclusion to the World Open last week we have the qualifying events for a couple of competitions beginning with the Indian Open which gets going on Wednesday.
We have two days of qualifiers for the main event next month and although it is fair to say the entries for this tournament are modest at best but there are still a few household names on show on the opening day. We have four sessions of play on this first day.
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Morning Session
Michael White is the main attraction in the morning session and he will be on one of the streamed tables as a result. He takes on Nigel Bond while Hossein Vafaei takes on Sanderson Lam on the other. The outside tables will be full over both days. Duane Jones takes on Adam Stefanow on one of them with Alan McManus facing James Cahill on another. David Gilbert will look to get over his disappointment in the World Open final with a clash against Niu Zhuang while Daniel Wells meets Elliott Slessor. Robbie Williams faces Hamza Akbar on the other table.
Early Afternoon Session
Joe Perry and Liang Wenbo get the chance to play on the main tables in the first of the two afternoon sessions. Perry takes on Joe O’Connor while Wenbo faces Mitchell Mann. On the outside tables Li Hang takes on Basem Eltahhan while Xu Si faces Ashley Carty. Peter Ebdon meets Jamie Clarke while Peter Lines plays Zhang Anda. The other match sees Li Yuan going up against Ross Muir.
Late Afternoon Session
The former world champion Stuart Bingham goes up against Chris Totten on one of the main tables while Yan Bingtao takes on Leo Fernandez on the other streamed table. Gary Wilson is a big name on the outside tables. He faces Steven Hallworth while Mike Dunn plays John Astley. Gerard Greene takes on Andy Lee with the other two matches seeing Robert Milkins playing Lu Ning and Liam Highfield meeting Billy Joe Castle.
Evening Session
Tom Ford gets the streamed table treatment in the evening session when he faces Jordan Brown while on the other streamed offering sees Mark Joyce going up against Oliver Lines. The outside tables sees Jimmy White playing Sam Craigie, Matt Selt meeting Zhang Jiankang, Martin O’Donnell going up against Joe Swail. Elsewhere Robin Hull meets Alfie Burden and Michael Georgiou will face Ben Hancorn.
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Betting
I’ll go with two bets on the opening day. The first one involves taking a bit of a chance on Dave Gilbert being knackered when he takes on Niu Zhuang. In fairness to Gilbert he has every right to be tired. He only finished up in China on Sunday evening and all we saw from many players on social media is the difficulty and time it takes to get out of that place so it might be that he didn’t get back to Blighty until Tuesday and then he has to make it to Preston for a match first thing in the morning. If that isn’t bad enough he has to recover from losing the last five frames to miss out on his first ranking title too. Niu Zhuang might be nothing special but he has a win over Stuart Bingham to his name this season and if Gilbert is feeling worse for wear he could be turned over.
Robert Milkins had a decent run in China and should have been back early enough to recover for his match against Lu Ning. Ning has been well beaten in the first two qualifying events this season. He lost 4-1 to Joe Perry in Riga qualifying and 5-1 by Kurt Maflin in the World Open. He is not having a good season and given that the second of those losses came five weeks ago he won’t have played much in that time. Milkins went well enough last week and there was nothing he could do about his defeat to Marco Fu so I think he can come through here and cover 1.5 frames in the process.
Tips
Back N.Zhuang to beat D.Gilbert for a 2/10 stake at 4.33 with William Hill
Back him here:
Back R.Milkins (-1.5 frames) to beat L.Ning for a 4/10 stake at 1.73 with Coral
Back him here:
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