The Northern Ireland Open gets underway with a typically busy opening day inside the Marshall Arena in Milton Keynes on Monday as half of the field look to make it into the second round and earn themselves some wages from the event.
There is only this tournament and the UK Championship that count towards the rankings for The Masters so those not yet in the top 16 will be looking to get off to a good start to push to get back in there. Among the stars on show on the opening day are the defending champion Judd Trump, former winner Mark Williams, Ronnie O’Sullivan and Shaun Muprhy.
Morning Session
Yan Bingtao is the man who is given the chance to start up the tournament on what will be the TV table this week. He faces the veteran Peter Lines while over on the official streamed table Dave Gilbert is on show. He takes on David Grace for a place in the second round. There are two other tables being streamed with the bookmakers this week and on those tables we have Gary Wilson taking on Rory McLeod and Martin O’Donnell going up against Lu Ning.
There are three other matches away from the stream cameras to begin with in this session. They see Mitchell Mann taking on Gao Yang, Paul Davison going up against Andy Hicks and Simon Lichtenberg takes on Rod Lawler. There are also a couple of later morning matches where Michael Holt goes up against Sohail Vahedi and Scott Donaldson looks to make it into the second round when he meets the youngster Sean Maddocks.
Afternoon Session
Judd Trump gets his title defence underway on the TV table first up on Monday afternoon. He faces the ‘home’ player Gerard Greene for a place in the second round while there is an all-Welsh clash over on the streamed table as Mark Williams takes on Jamie Jones. The two other matches in the first part of the afternoon play sees Alexander Ursenbacher meeting Lei Peifan and two Chinese players battling it out when Chen Zifan takes on Xu Si.
The TV match in the second part of the afternoon involves the Championship League winner Kyren Wilson. He faces David Lilley while over on the streamed table a potentially cracking contest between Martin Gould and Jamie Clarke takes place. The other two matches sees Sam Craigie facing Amine Amiri and Xiao Guodong going up against Duane Jones.
A third round of matches take place in the afternoon with Luca Brecel saved for the TV table to take on the Polish youngster Kacper Filipiak while over on the streamed table the plan is for Zhou Yuelong to go up against the Whirlwind himself in Jimmy White. The other two matches have Fan Zhingyi facing Robert Milkins and the former world champion Ken Doherty on show when he takes on the competent Chris Wakelin for a second round spot.
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Evening Session
The world champion Ronnie O’Sullivan gets his campaign underway in the evening session when he takes on Jamie O’Neill on the TV table in a match he’ll be expected to win. Jack Lisowski will be first up on the streamed table in the evening to face Ashley Carty. The other three matches in this first part of the session sees Brandon Sargeant meeting Louis Heathcote, Aaron Hill going up against Jackson Page in the battle of the youngsters and Kurt Maflin meeting Fraser Patrick.
The big match of the day is the second offering on the main table in the evening session as Shaun Murphy goes up against Ryan Day in a clash which should be taking place a lot later in the tournament than this. Stephen Maguire is on the streamed table when he takes on Alex Borg while the other two matches in the session sees Matthew Selt going up against Joe O’Connor and Mark Davis facing Ian Burns.
Betting
I’ll go with a couple of bets in the opening day of the tournament with the first of them coming right away in the first session where I think Gao Yang can see off Mitchell Mann. Mann hasn’t really done much in any of the tournaments this term and although Yang hasn’t had a deep run in any of them that is only because after he wins his first match he runs into someone elite and his game isn’t yet at the level to compete with those sorts of players. He isn’t up against that sort of quality here though. Mann has really struggled to get anything going so I’ll take the man with the better form in this one, especially at even money.
Later in the day I’m going to put my faith in Ken Doherty once again. He faces Chris Wakelin, who much like Mitchell Mann hasn’t really got anything going this season yet. Doherty has been playing some nice stuff and he hasn’t a million miles away from making it to the Championship League final a few weeks ago. He didn’t have his best game with him in the German Masters last week but to be fair to him he was up against a Liang Wenbo who didn’t do a whole lot wrong. This one feels much more 50:50 and in the way the current form lies you could make Doherty a favourite. The fact he isn’t makes me happy to take the Irishman.
Tips
WON – Back G.Yang to beat M.Mann for a 3/10 stake at 2.00 with Betfair
Back him here:
WON – Back K.Doherty to beat C.Wakelin for a 3/10 stake at 2.20 with William Hill
Back him here:
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