The Champion of Champions might only just have finished but the snooker circuit stops for nobody and the qualifying event for next year’s German Masters gets started in the new home of the sport for the present time, the Marshall Arena in Milton Keynes.
We have five days of action and two rounds of the tournament over the course of the week as we play down to the last 32, the players who will hopefully board a plane to Berlin in January to compete in the final stages.
Morning Session
We have a packed morning session of action on Tuesday with half of the eight games available on the bookmaker streams. Joe Perry is the biggest name on the schedule and he has a tasty looking clash with Li Hang to negotiate. The other three matches on the streams see Xiao Guodong taking on Lu Ning in an all-Chinese clash, Mark Davis meets the tour newcomer Ben Hancorn and former World Championship semi-finalist Gary Wilson goes up against Lei Peifan.
Elsewhere there are four more matches in this morning session with one of them seeing Sunny Akani taking on Peter Lines for a place in the second round. Two other lowly ranked players meet in another match when Allan Taylor takes on Duane Jones while Steven Hallworth plays Chang Bingyu. Two veterans line up in the other match in what could be something of a lengthy tussle as Barry Pinches faces Alan McManus.
Afternoon Session
There are four more matches available on the various streams on Tuesday afternoon including the big match of the round as the current UK champion Ding Junhui takes on the former winner of this tournament and runner up in the European Masters recently in Martin Gould. The other streamed matches sees Scott Donaldson taking on Luo Honghao, Indian Open champion Matt Selt facing Dominic Dale and Mark Williams going up against Paul Davison.
Just the two matches take place away from the streams in the afternoon with one of those seeing Fan Zhengyi taking on an Ashley Carty who hasn’t really built on his fine end to last season while two players who are in the first year of their two year tour cards meet in the other match when Sean Maddocks takes on Jamie Jones for a place in the next round.
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Evening Session
The defending champion Judd Trump gets his title defence underway in the evening session on Tuesday when he meets the former winner Anthony Hamilton in the headline clash. The other streamed evening matches sees Shaun Murphy in action when he takes on Chen Zifan while Barry Hawkins will look to get things back on track when he faces the tricky test of Hossein Vafaei and Ryan Day meets Andy Hicks in a match the Welshman will be keen to win.
There are two other matches on the outside tables which aren’t being streamed in this session as well. They see Ian Burns going up against David Lilley in what might actually be a decent enough contest while Jamie Wilson faces one of the top up players from Q-School in the other match when he takes on the veteran Leo Fernandez who will be wanting to make the most of the chance he has been offered.
Betting
I’ll go with a couple of bets for the first day of action. The first of them come in the afternoon session as Scott Donaldson takes on Luo Honghao in a match I expect the Scot to come through with a bit in hand. Honghao hasn’t been playing that well for a while now. Only he will know if that is a legacy of not winning his last match in the World Championship last season from 5-1 up or not but something is wrong with him. Donaldson is improving all the time and although his results don’t suggest it, he is actually playing quite well and should have taken out the eventual winner of the Champion of Champions in the first round last week. It might be that those elite events are beyond him at present but this one shouldn’t be. I think he has a 5-3 or easier win in him here.
The other bet I like is an overpriced Hossein Vafaei to beat Barry Hawkins. The struggles and travails of Hawkins have been pretty obvious for too long now but there still aren’t many signs of him turning things around yet. Vafaei doesn’t have those issues. He is a very solid player and only needs a run of snooker to propel himself right into the better echelons of the rankings and a win here would certainly help that. He saw off Joe Perry in the English Open and it took a Mark Selby at his best to stop him that week. The previous tournament he lost to Ding Junhui so it is taking good players to beat Vafaei at the minute. Hawkins is one of those but he isn’t playing like one at present so I’ll take the Iranian here.
Tips
Back S.Donaldson (-1.5 frames) to beat L.Honghao for a 3/10 stake at 1.80 with William Hill
Back him here:
Back H.Vafaei to beat B.Hawkins for a 3/10 stake at 2.88 with Coral
Back him here:
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