The qualifying competition for the second of the new BetVictor Series events in the New Year begins on Friday when a whole bunch of players start their quest to make it to the German Masters, one of the more popular events on tour given the excellent venue the final stages are played at.
There are only three days of this event to round off the snooker for 2019 which means that the big names come thick and fast and they will all want to win so that they get to sample the Tempodrom in Berlin once again next month.
Morning Session
The tables are absolutely loaded once again on Friday and two senior players will be occupying the streamed ones first up. Ali Carter is a former finalist out in Berlin and he’ll be looking to take a step closer to a return to the German capital when he meets the German star Simon Lichtenberg. UK Championship finalist Stephen Maguire is on the other table. He begins his tilt at the title with a clash against the Iranian player Soheil Vahedi.
There are some good names on the outside tables and Xiao Guodong is one of them who have been in good touch. He meets Sunny Akani while Thepchaiya Un-Nooh goes up against Zhang Jiankang. Michael Holt is in good form too and he faces Alexander Ursenbacher while Elliot Slessor goes up against Fraser Patrick in what might be a nice draw for both. Duane Jones faces Robert Milkins while Robbie Williams takes on David Lilley. Two experienced campaigners do battle when Matthew Stevens meets Peter Ebdon and the other match sees Harvey Chandler going up against Billy Joe Castle.
Afternoon Session
Mark Williams is the former winner of this title and he will begin his quest to regain the crown on one of the streamed tables on Friday afternoon. He looked in better touch in the European Masters qualifiers and he’ll look to overcome the challenge of Andy Hicks. It is the UK champion Ding Junhui who will be in action on the other streamed table. He goes up against the lowly ranked Alex Borg for a place in the second round.
As ever the outside tables are full once again with Anthony McGill facing Jackson Page on one of them while Liang Wenbo meets Jimmy White on another. Sam Craigie faces Jak Jones for a place in the next round with two recent World Championship semi-finalists meeting as Gary Wilson plays Alan McManus. There is an all-Asian clash between Xu Si and Hossein Vafaei while Oliver Lines faces the veteran Alfie Burden. Scott Donaldson meets the talented Si Jiahui with the other two games seeing Jimmy Robertson facing off against Eden Sharav and Mark King facing Riley Parsons.
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Evening Session
Kyren Wilson hopes to have the chance to head to Berlin to defend his title next month but if he is to do that he needs to win a couple of matches this week. The first of those comes in the evening session on Friday night when he goes up against Rod Lawler on one of the streamed tables. Neil Robertson will be on the other one of them as he faces the more than competent Martin O’Donnell in what is something of a nasty first round clash for the pair of them.
There are a number of Chinese players on the outside tables in this session and two of them meet on the same one as Li Hang faces Mei Xi Wen. Another of them goes up against Stuart Bingham, with the former world champion facing Lu Ning. Chris Wakelin takes on Mitchell Mann while one of the matches of the night sees the Scottish Open finalist Jack Lisowski taking on Michael White in what is a brutal first round draw. Ian Burns faces Paul Davison while there is another all-Chinese battle as Lyu Haotian meets Zhang Anda. There are two more matches and they see Lukas Kleckers looking to qualify for his home tournament when he starts out against Igor Figueiredo while Anthony Hamilton plays Hammad Miah in the other.
Betting
I’ll begin this qualifying event with the one bet which comes in the evening session where the form of Lu Ning has been catching the eye in recent times, not least his 5-0 thrashing of Mark Allen in no time on Thursday evening. That is a standout performance and with four 50s in the match there appeared to be absolutely no fluke about it either which is encouraging here.
The Chinese player faces Stuart Bingham who is in the period of some mixed form, possibly as a hangover to that really shoddy display against John Higgins in the UK Championship where he looked all over the shop. He has only won one of his last four matches so his confidence might well be a little on the low side. These two have met twice this year and they have both gone to a deciding frame so the odds on Lu Ning with the 2.5 frame head start looks acceptable enough to me.
Tips
Back L.Ning (+2.5 frames) to beat S.Bingham for a 4/10 stake at 1.78 with 888sport
Back him here:
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