The final spot in the semi-finals of The Masters will be earned on Friday night when former finalist Kyren Wilson takes on Stuart Bingham for a place in the last four of the iconic second Triple Crown event of the season inside Alexandra Palace in London.
The tournament is wide open with two more days of action to come after this one, so both men will look to entertain the crowd on Friday night knowing there is the chance to get their hands on their first Masters title.
Kyren Wilson
In the bottom half of the draw heading into the quarter final, the only man who had previously been to the final of this tournament was Kyren Wilson, and he will be looking to use that experience to come through this match and then hopefully from his point of view, a semi-final too. He probably has the best all-round game of the four left in his half of the draw too so while that will be a confidence for him, that brings its own pressures as well.
Wilson looked up against it in the first round when Jack Lisowski blitzed him to go 2-0 up, but the Englishman showed all of his class to weather that particular storm and come through. He won the last six frames with a bunch of decent breaks and will expect to go well from here on in. There were question marks over his opponent the longer that game went on, but all you can do in snooker is pot the balls you are left with, and Wilson did that.
Stuart Bingham
It will not have been lost to Stuart Bingham coming to Alexandra Palace for his first round match on Wednesday night that his record in this tournament is very poor. This is his tenth visit and this is only the second time he has made it past the last 16 of the event. He is clearly better than that though, and now he has the chance to go very deep and challenge for what would be a second Triple Crown title to go with the World Championship crown he won five years ago.
Bingham wasn’t fantastic in the early stages of his win over Mark Williams in the first round, but once he settled and realised his opponent wasn’t offering too much up, he settled into his work and got the job done decisively. That will give him confidence and you just got the impression from his interview afterwards that he is right up for the battle this week and relishing it, rather than fearing the place because of his poor record.
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Head to Head
There is a huge head to head advantage for Wilson going into this match, and that comes as a bit of a surprise given that he has only been at the top level of the game for the last four years or so and Bingham has been at his best during that time. The two men have met on six previous occasions with Wilson holding a 5-1 lead. He leads 34-23 in frames as well so you get the feeling that the former finalist generally wins well against Bingham. This will be their first meeting at The Masters but they have met at the World Championship and UK Championship and have a win each in there.
Betting
Bookmakers can’t split these two but I’m going with the head to head and taking Kyren Wilson here. We’ve seen all week that it is no fluke that players have poor records in this tournament. There is something about this place that freaks them out and they just do not perform here regardless of the circumstances, and there is no getting away from the fact that Stuart Bingham’s record in this event is ordinary at best.
Bingham did beat Mark Williams in the first round but the Welshman wasn’t at the races and the Essex cueist will have known that. Bingham improved after the break in that match when he saw he wasn’t facing a lot but he’ll need to be better here. Wilson took what Lisowski had to offer in the first round and replied in kind and was comfortably the more assured looking of these two in their respective matches. Unless Bingham suddenly feels comfortable here I expect Wilson to come through.
Tips
Back K.Wilson to beat S.Bingham for a 4/10 stake at 1.91 with Coral
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