We have reached ‘Moving Day’ in the Scottish Open, where on Thursday there will be two rounds of matches played as the third Home Nations series tournament plays down to the quarter final stage inside the Marshall Arena in Milton Keynes.
We’ve seen a mixture of plenty of big names come through the draw so far this week mixed in with the odd shock along the way but there is a pretty decent line up for Thursday. Time restrictions will deny us the chance to preview the last 16 in the evening session but we’ll get stuck into the last 32 before then.
Morning Session
Kyren Wilson is the man assigned the TV table in the morning session on Thursday. He faces a competent and capable opponent in the form of the Michael Holt while over on the streamed table is arguably the pick of the matches in the third round as the Champion of Champions winner Mark Allen meets the UK Championship semi-finalist in Zhou Yuelong. There are two other matches on the live streams with the bookmakers on Thursday. They see Barry Hawkins going up against Liam Highfield and Stuart Bingham taking on Robert Milkins.
There are also four matches away from the spotlight of any cameras in this session. The pick of those ones sees Sam Craigie taking on Jamie Jones. The biggest name in these four matches is Ricky Walden. He takes on Zak Surety who has done well to make it this far. Sunny Akani meets Lyu Haotian in another of the games while Zhao Jianbo faces Eden Sharav in a match which offers up a good chance for both to make the last 16.
Afternoon Session
It is all about the top two players in the world on the main TV table in the afternoon session. World number one Judd Trump gets the TV table first up when he goes up against the Chinese firecracker Liang Wenbo. Over on the streamed table to begin with in this session is the defending champion Mark Selby. He will go up against the capable Mark Joyce. Two other matches have live streams with the bookmakers and there is a star on show in each of them. Mark Williams faces his protégé in one of them when he plays Jackson Page while Ding Junhui meets Martin O’Donnell in the other. The two matches away from the streams in this session see Li Hang facing Noppon Saengkham and Robbie Williams taking on Lu Ning.
Two matches have been saved for second clashes on the two main tables for this afternoon session. The world champion Ronnie O’Sullivan will be on the main TV table when he faces a Tian Pengfei who had a good win over Martin Gould in the first round. Over on the streamed table Shaun Murphy will continue his quest for a first title of the season when he goes up against the lowly ranked Jamie O’Neill who has already seen off two capable victims in Kurt Maflin and Hossein Vafaei.
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Betting
I’ll take a couple of bets in the last 32 where we have a pair of players who should probably be stronger favourites than they have been priced up at. The first of those is Noppon Saengkham who faces Li Hang. Hang hasn’t had a good season so far and although he has come through a couple of rounds here he has battled his way through rather than ploughing himself to this stage. It has been much more comfortable and convincing for Noppon Saengkham which includes a very good win over John Higgins in the previous round. The Thai is the sort of player who can make the latter stages of this event and he revealed after the win over Higgins that he is working with Sight Right which tends to immediately improve a player. Saengkham is the better player of these two for me anyway and given that he’s played the best this week I’ll take him here.
The other bet I like is for Lu Ning to take care of Robbie Williams. To be fair to Williams he is having a decent season and his win over Ali Carter in the second round was a good one but Ning looks to be in excellent touch at the minute and I’m very much someone who likes to ride a good wave of form. Ning scored well and played well in reaching the semi-finals of the UK Championship last week and he has continued that form here. Williams has seen off a couple of seasoned campaigners but you sense he has had to battle his way to this stage which could count against him. Given the form of Ning he’s an obvious pick here.
Tips
Back N.Saengkham to beat L.Hang for a 3/10 stake at 1.80 with William Hill
Back him here:
Back L.Ning to beat R.Williams for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Betfair
Back him here:
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