The second leg of the ‘Triple Crown’ in the snooker season gets underway on Sunday when the leading 16 players in the world descend on Alexandra Palace for The Masters, arguably the second biggest event on the calendar and certainly the most important invitation event.
Ronnie O’Sullivan is the defending champion this week and he is looking for a third successive title. With a stellar field opposing him we know whoever holds the Paul Hunter Trophy aloft at the end of the tournament will have played some fantastic snooker.
Recent Winners
2017 – Ronnie O’Sullivan
2016 – Ronnie O’Sullivan
2015 – Shaun Murphy
2014 – Ronnie O’Sullivan
2013 – Mark Selby
2012 – Neil Robertson
2011 – Ding Junhui
2010 – Mark Selby
2009 – Ronnie O’Sullivan
2008 – Mark Selby
The Format
The 16 players have been drawn into a bracket for the week with the top eight seeds playing one of the other eight players in the first round of the event. Every match of the tournament is the best of 11 frames apart from the final which will see the title decided in a two session, best of 19 frames conclusion.
Top Half
Ronnie O’Sullivan is the number one seed as the defending champion and he is in the top half. Ding Junhui and John Higgins rate as his main dangers according to the world rankings while Mark Allen is the other man who is seeded and who is in this section of the draw.
The lower ranked players in this half of the draw are by no means any mugs. Luca Brecel is a tournament winner this year as is Ryan Day and while the former is making his debut in this tournament both can be competitive. Anthony McGill and Marco Fu are the other two men in this half.
Bottom Half
This half looks to be the tougher of the two. It contains the world champion Mark Selby and the recent Champion of Champions winner Shaun Murphy while Judd Trump and Barry Hawkins sets a pretty decent standard in terms of the top eight seeds in this bottom section.
Mark Williams is probably the pick of the rest in this bottom half of the draw although Liang Wenbo and Ali Carter will no doubt have something to say about that, as they should do. Both are very competent players, as is the other man in the draw in Kyren Wilson who will be looking for his first win in the tournament when he plays his first round match.
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Betting
I’m going with two outrights for this tournament. If Mark Williams can come past Mark Selby in the first match of the tournament then I fancy he can have a lengthy run this week. He is playing some nice snooker at the minute as we saw when he won the Northern Ireland Open. We have seen the Welshman in a number of quarter finals and semi-finals this season and with the draw likely to open up if he sees off Selby I’ll take him to go deep this week.
Luca Brecel is making his debut but we saw in tournaments such as the China Championship, the World Open and the Champion of Champions that he loves the spotlight and the big stage so I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he brings his best game to the party. If it does we’ve seen that be good enough to beat anyone this season so at 40/1 I’ll pay to see how he goes too.
Tips
Back M.Williams to win The Masters (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 23.00 with Paddy Power (1/2 1-2)
Back him here:
Back L.Brecel to win The Masters (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 41.00 with Coral (1/2 1-2)
Back him here:
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