The middle day of qualifying for the European Masters takes place on Wednesday when the remaining half of the field yet to play their opening match in the event do so up in Barnsley, looking to move a win away from the main draw.
There were a whole bunch of deciding frames on the first day of the competition so we should expect something of a competitive day of action over the course of the three sessions on a busy Wednesday.
Morning Session
Two of the biggest names in the field come out to play on Wednesday morning as Stuart Bingham and Shaun Murphy get their campaigns underway with the aim of making it through to the main draw in Vienna early next year. Bingham faces the Welsh player Duane Jones while Murphy will go up against Ashley Carty so both men have matches that they will be expected to come through, especially over the best of nine frames.
The outside tables are full on Wednesday and in the morning we have Peter Ebdon taking on Zhang Anda on one of them, Liang Wenbo meets Chris Wakelin on another and there is also Yan Bingtao going up against Sam Baird. Elsewhere, Jamie Clarke faces Andy Hicks, local amateur Florian Nuble meets Jak Jones and Matthew Selt plays Mike Dunn. The match of the morning could well be the one between Ricky Walden and Marco Fu. The other two matches sees Fan Zhengyi taking on Ben Woollaston and Alfie Burden playing Kishan Hirani.
Afternoon Session
The newly crowned UK champion Ding Junhui heads up a loaded session of play in the afternoon session. He will be on one of the streamed table when he goes up against the Swiss star Alexander Ursenbacher while on the other table in front of the cameras the new Scottish Open winner Mark Selby will be gracing us with his presence. He has a date with his fellow former world champion Ken Doherty for a place in the next round.
Such is the quality on show in this session that John Higgins can only make it onto the outside tables. He goes up against the Chinese youngster Lei Peifan while another young star from the Far East, Yuan Sijun, plays fellow Asian player Sohail Vahedi and Mark Davis meets Fraser Patrick. Liam Highfield will look to continue his good form when he meets Fergal O’Brien while Jimmy White goes in search of a first win in the season when he takes on Hammad Miah. There are four other matches in the session and they see Xiao Guodong playing Andy Lee, Xu Si meeting Lukas Kleckers, Kacper Filipiak facing Mark Joyce and Gary Wilson taking on Barry Pinches.
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Evening Session
The last season in the first round of action sees two more household names on the main tables. One of those is the world champion Judd Trump, who will be looking to start his quest for the £150,000 bonus pool in style when he takes on Ian Burns while on the other one Mark Allen will face off against Mark King in a first round clash that is a horrible draw for both men when you consider who they could have been going up against.
There are plenty more big names on the outside tables with Barry Hawkins among them. He faces Ross Bulman on one of the slates while Joe O’Connor meets Lee Walker on another one. Lu Ning faces Oliver Lines while Luca Brecel is another appealing name in action. He takes on Michael Georgiou with arguably the clash of the night seeing Stephen Maguire playing Martin Gould. Michael White takes on Harvey Chandler with Noppon Saengkham taking on Rod Lawler. Zhao Xintong plays Sam Craigie in another intriguing looking match up which probably deserved a better stage.
Betting
I’ll go with just the one bet over the course of the day on Wednesday and given that he is yet to win a match on the tour this season I think Jimmy White has to be taken on here. The Whirlwind still talks a good game and it would be great to see him deliver one but the evidence from what we’ve seen in everything to date is that it is unlikely to come. Hammad Miah might not be the best player in the world but the even money on show can’t be ignored.
To be fair to Miah he took care of Martin Gould in Northern Ireland and almost edged out Yuan Sijun in the UK Championship, losing on the final black in a deciding frame and was respectable in Scotland last week in going down to Anthony McGill. That suggests that his form might be better than his results, unlike Jimmy whose best result is taking Ronnie O’Sullivan to a deciding frame in the Champion of Champions but we saw at 3-0 up there that he has forgotten how to win and lost 4-3. I’m with Miah here.
Tips
Back H.Miah to beat J.White for a 4/10 stake at 2.00 with William Hill
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