The best time of year for snooker fans is upon us with the World Championship qualifying event beginning at the English Institute for Sport with 128 men and women looking to be one of the 16 players who will qualify for the Crucible Theatre.
The equation is quite simple for those involved. Win three matches and you take your place against one of the automatically qualified seeded players in the first round of the World Championship main draw later in the month.
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The Format
It is a 128 man event but in essence this competition should be thought of as 16 eight-man tournaments with the winner of each progressing to the main draw. Each match in this competition is the best-of-19 frames and will be played across two sessions of play. World Snooker put on two excellent days of broadcast on their social media and YouTube channels for the final round which is often epic viewing.
Group 1
Ryan Day is the top seed in the qualifying competition and so he is housed in this group. He will take on Oliver Lines in the first round with the winners of that match taking on whoever prevails when Tian Pengfei plays Soheil Vahedi. In the other half of the group Matthew Stevens will be hoping to set up another Crucible jaunt. He meets Thor Chuan Leong in the first round with Chris Wakelin or Fan Zhengyi awaiting the winner of that in the second round.
Group 2
Gary Wilson just about made it into the seeded players in the draw and his reward for that is a first round clash with Sanderson Lam. The man who comes through that will face the winner of Dominic Dale and Chris Totten in the next stage. On the other side of the section, Liang Wenbo will be expected to go well. He faces Basem Eltahhan in the first round and if he comes through that Rory McLeod or David Grace will be waiting for him.
Group 3
Tom Ford is the leading seed in this section of the draw although not necessarily the leading name or best player. He will face Ross Muir in the first round and then the winner of San Craigie and Rhys Clark in the second round should he get that far. The other half of this section looks interesting with regular qualifying king Robbie Williams up against Sam Baird and Marco Fu against Luo Honghao. This looks a tough section.
Group 4
Anthony McGill will look to secure a return to the Crucible Theatre in Group 4. In order to do that he will have to beat Ashley Hugill in the first round and then the winner of Duane Jones against Kishan Hirani in the second round. Robert Milkins is a leading name in the other half of this group. He faces Luke Simmonds in the first round and the winner of Sunny Akani and Chen Zifan after that if he gets that far.
Group 5
Former world champion Graeme Dott looks to set up another tilt at the title from Group 5. He has the Pakistan player Hamza Akbar in the first round and if he navigates his way through that he will come up against the winner of Xu Si and Sean O’Sullivan. The other half of this group looks interesting as Stuart Carrington plays Pang Junxu and Kurt Maflin takes on Mitchell Mann with the two winners meeting in the second round.
Group 6
This is the first group where we have a leading Chinese seed. That is Li Hang and he will go up against his countryman Niu Zhuang in the first round. Whoever wins that will face the winner of the game between Ian Burns and Farakh Ajaib. The other half of the section sees Ben Woollaston meeting Elliot Slessor and Nigel Bond facing Mike Dunn so plenty of players will fancy their chances of progressing from this group.
Group 7
Martin Gould has gone a bit quiet in recent times but he has the chance of ending the season well from Group 7. His first round opponent will be Mostafa Dorgham and then he will play the winner of the game between Gerard Greene and Aaron Hill. The other half of the group looks much stronger. There is an all-Welsh battle between Daniel Wells and Jamie Clarke with the winner moving through to face the successor in the match between Hossein Vafaei and Zhang Anda.
Group 8
Yan Bingtao heads the way in Group 8 but not much is likely to come easy for him here. It might do in the first round although there are easier opponents than Lukas Kleckers. Mei Xi Wen could await him in the second round when he goes up against Florian Nussle. Former title holder Peter Ebdon is in the other half of this section. He faces Harvey Chandler in the first round and whoever wins that faces the winner of Michael Georgiou against Lee Walker in the second.
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Group 9
Ali Carter might not have been planning to enter qualifying for the World Championship but he is there and he is in group 9 in the draw where he will come up against Paul Davison in the first round. The Whirlwind himself Jimmy White will face the winner of that if he beats Ross Bulman. The other half of the group sees Michael White against Andy Hicks in the first round as well as Yuan Sijun against John Astley.
Group 10
Ricky Walden showed signs of life in Beijing last week and he heads the way in Group 10. He faces Alfie Burden in the first round with the winner of that taking on whoever comes through when Eden Sharav meets David Lilley. Zhou Yuelong will be expected to make the final round from the other half when he takes on Robin Hull in the first round with a second round date with either Liam Highfield or Hammad Miah the reward if he comes through.
Group 11
Lu Haotian made it out of the qualifiers and into the main draw last year. He beat Marco Fu when he got there too and if he is to make it to the Crucible again this time around he needs to beat Ashley Carty in the first round and either Alexander Ursenbacher or Jordan Brown in the second one. Veterans Fergal O’Brien and Mark Davis will be looking to set up a second round meeting in the other half but they have to beat Jackson Page and Rod Lawler respectively first.
Group 12
European Masters winner Jimmy Robertson heads up the twelve group and he should come past Chen Feilong in the first round with a clash against the talented Joe O’Connor or Joe Swail in the second round his reward. Shootout champion Thepchaiya Un-Nooh is the big name in the other half. He meets Jonathan Bagley in the first round and the winner of Mark Joyce and Billy Joe Castle in the second one.
Group 13
Xiao Guodong is the main man in Group 13 of the draw and he will meet Jak Jones in the first round. The other match in his half of the group sees Peter Lines battling it out with Michael Judge. Michael Holt will hope to come through the other half of this group. His route to the final round sees a first round meeting with Michael Sargeant before facing the winner of Andrew Higginson and James Cahill in what looks like a competitiove group.
Group 14
Mark King is the man seeded to make the Crucible out of Group 14 and he will take on the Brazilian player Igor Figueiredo in the first round with the winner of that meeting either Lu Ning or Allan Taylor in the second round. China Open semi-finalist Scott Donaldson will be favourite to come through the other half of the group. He meets Craig Steadman in the first round with former champion Ken Doherty and Andy Lee the other two men in the section.
Group 15
Noppon Saengkham is the top seed in the penultimate group of the competition. He meets Adam Stefanow in the first round and could face Zhao Xintong in the second if he comes through. Xintong would have to see off Adam Lilley for that to happen. Matt Selt is a tournament winner this term and he should come past Dylan Emery in the first round. He will face the winner of Anthony Hamilton and James Wattana in the second one if he does.
Group 16
Joe Perry is expected to come out of the last group. He should have the beating of Simon Lichtenberg in the first round and if he comes through that he will face Zhang Yong or Reanne Evans in the second round. Martin O’Donnell had a good spell around Christmas but has gone quiet since then. He faces Adam Duffy in the first round while Alan McManus plays Ng On Yee to play the winner in the second round.
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Betting
I like a few bets over the piece here and they begin in Group 1 where Matthew Stevens looks overpriced. He showed what he can do in the International Championship earlier in the season and he has always flourished in the longer format matches so I would expect a decent showing out of him. Clearly Ryan Day is the favourite to come through here but he hasn’t gone all that well in the second half of the campaign and is bang under pressure to qualify as the highest seed to miss out automatically. Chris Wakelin can be competitive but if Stevens gets past him in the second round he could well make it to the Crucible.
Tom Ford is the leading light in the third section but he feels right to take on and although Marco Fu is the best player in the group we don’t know if all is well with him so this might be the time Sam Craigie makes his big breakthrough. He made his first ranking quarter final in China last week so he should be on a real high heading in here. He will need to play well but he is clearly in good touch and he can come through here.
Moving onto Group 7 and although Martin Gould is the main seed in the group it is Hossein Vafaei who I want to be on. The Iranian star is a really good player and is in much better form that Gould. It might be that a couple of comfortable early wins allows Gould to get his dander up heading into a potential final clash with Vafaei but then if he is untested in those he could revert to struggling when under pressure. Vafaei has a tough first match against Zhang Anda but if he comes through there I would be surprised if he isn’t the qualifier from this group.
Group 11 is an interesting one because the only player who has shown any form in recent times is Lu Haotian but there are so many experienced players in it who know how to deal with young bucks. Fergal O’Brien and Mark Davis are two of them but you’d be stretching it a bit to say that either of them are in any form. Rod Lawler showed a bit of form last week and while he is nothing like as good as Haotian, O’Brien or Davis he is a pain in the backside to beat and can ground anything out. He shouldn’t qualify but at 28/1 I’ll pay to see if he does do.
My last bet comes in Group 14 where Scott Donaldson should be taken to build on his run to the semi-final last week. That last four clash with Jack Lisowski was a step too far for him but there is no Lisowski’s in this section. Mark King is the man expected to come through this group but he hasn’t won three matches in the same tournament since the European Masters and his form in recent times has tailed right off. That isn’t the case with Donaldson and it could be that his hardest match comes up first against Craig Steadman. If he comes through that he can qualify from this section.
Tips
Back M.Stevens to win Group 1 for a 1/10 stake at 6.50 with Betfred
Back him here:
Back S.Craigie to win Group 3 for a 3/10 stake at 3.10 with Boylesports
Back him here:
Back H.Vafaei to win Group 7 for a 2/10 stake at 7.00 with William Hill
Back him here:
Back R.Lawler to win Group 11 for a 1/10 stake at 29.00 with Coral
Back him here:
WON – Back S.Donaldson to win Group 14 for a 3/10 stake at 4.00 with Betway
Back him here:
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