The first round concludes and the second round begins in the English Open on Wednesday as the latest Home Nations event begins to sort the men out from the boys inside the Marshall Arena in Milton Keynes.
The morning and afternoon session make up the remainder of the first round and then the second round fills the evening session and that guarantees that we see a decent standard on all four tables throughout the day.
Morning Session
The Masters champion Yan Bingtao is the star attraction in the morning session of the action on Wednesday and as such he will be involved on the main table. He meets the veteran Nigel Bond who will be looking to claim a decent scalp. Over on the other main table it is another former world finalist who will be on show when Ali Carter meets Li Hang in what could be a sleeper for being the match of the day. Two other matches take place in the morning session. Anthony Hamilton meets Rory McLeod in a match which could be best described as one for the purists while Hossein Vafaei meets Fraser Patrick in the other contest.
Afternoon Session
Shaun Murphy will look to make progress on one of the main tables in the first of the two sessions of action in the afternoon session. He takes on Joe O’Connor who has the potential to cause him trouble. Ding Junhui will be on one the other table when he takes on his countryman Tian Pengfei while Thepchaiya Un-Nooh will entertain those around the other table when he meets Peter Devlin. There are only three matches in the opening part of the afternoon because Lu Ning received a bye after Allan Taylor withdrew.
This is where the first round of the tournament concludes and it does so with two sets of matches once again. Ronnie O’Sullivan will be the first big name on show when he goes up against Michael Georgiou, who took care of Barry Hawkins in German Masters qualifying recently and will be buoyed by that. That will be on the main table and on the second table the Championship League winner Dave Gilbert will look to make progress when he takes on Martin O’Donnell. The other two matches in this session sees the classy Martin Gould meeting Scott Donaldson and Luca Brecel looking to follow up his fine win over Mark Allen when he takes on Stuart Carrington.
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Evening Session
This is where the second round of the event gets underway and it does so with a couple of sessions of evening action. Neil Robertson will be the first man on the main table in this session. He takes on Sunny Akani who had a good win over Ricky Walden on Tuesday evening. Anthony McGill will be on the other main table first up when he faces his fellow Scot, Ross Muir. Mark King was impressive in defeating Cao Yupeng on Tuesday morning and he’ll take on Tom Ford for a place in the last 16 while Mark Davis goes up against Fergal O’Brien.
Judd Trump continues his title defence to round off the day on the main table. He takes on a Steven Hallworth who readers of my European event qualifying previews will know is a player who impresses me. Whether he has what it takes to beat Trump remains to be seen. Kyren Wilson isn’t likely to be too impressed that he has been shoved off the main table once again but he’ll be on the second table when he meets Ben Woollaston. Barry Hawkins is also on show in this session when he takes on Robbie Williams while the other match sees Zhao Xintong facing Paul Deaville.
Betting
We are two from two for the week in this tournament and I’m continuing with my one bet per day into Wednesday where I can’t resist the price on Joe O’Connor to beat Shaun Murphy. Murphy has been winning matches recently but he hasn’t convinced me at all. I watched his German Masters qualifying match against Cao Yupeng where he fell over the line and there was nothing impressive about his European Masters win over Simon Blackwell. He fell over the line again in this held over match here on Monday.
Joe O’Connor hasn’t been winning as many matches as he would like recently but he is playing better than those results suggest and he has the all-round game to challenge Murphy if he isn’t at it here. While O’Connor lost in German Masters qualifying he went down in the deciding frame to Tom Ford in a match O’Connor banged in breaks of 140 and 99 in. He also knocked in an 82 in losing to Liang Wenbo in the European Masters. You don’t make those breaks if you are not hitting the ball well and if Murphy continues to flatter to deceive O’Connor has the class to get rid of him.
Tips
Back J.O’Connor to beat S.Murphy for a 3/10 stake at 3.75 with BetVictor
Back him here:
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