As one qualifying competition ends another begins and on Wednesday the preliminary stage of the European Masters gets going with players taking the baize looking to win one match which will get them through to the final stages next year.
12 matches take place on the opening day of the event on Wednesday which means that 24 players begin the day five winning frames away from booking a seat on the plane to Germany to battle it out for the title.
Morning Session
We have to wait until later in the day for the bigger names to come to the party which means we have a couple of lesser names headlining the morning session on the main tables. The highest ranked player is Xiao Guodong. He missed out on the German Masters so he’ll be eager to beat Lukas Kleckers and make it to the main draw. Robert Milkins is the other leading ranked player on the second main table. He meets Mark Davis with both men looking to make up for German Masters disappointment.
Sam Craigie was actually the main who got in the way of Mark Davis going to the German Masters and he’ll be looking to book his spot in the other German event on Wednesday when he takes on Sohail Vahedi, who has lost his tour status and should be a sitting duck for Craigie. The other match sees Craig Steadman looking to follow up reaching the German Masters when he takes on the veteran Andy Hicks.
Afternoon Session
Two members of the top 16 or the fringes of it are on show on the main tables in the afternoon session. Jack Lisowski is the highest ranked player in action in this session. He will look to qualify for the main draw when he takes on a Simon Lichtenberg who will be looking to qualify for an event in his homeland. Zhou Yuelong is the other leading player on show in the afternoon. He will be looking to make it to Germany by overcoming Jimmy White.
There are two other matches in this session as well with Gao Yang the highest ranked among the four players on show in them. He qualified for the German Masters last week at the expense of Stephen Hendry among others and will look to take care of another senior here in the form of David Lilley. The other match offers up a good opportunity for two men to make the main venue when Jamie O’Neill goes up against Hammad Miah.
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Evening Session
Two former world champions are on show in the evening session, one of which competes on the main table. That is Stuart Bingham and after failing to make the German Masters he’ll be eager to see off Fraser Patrick and make it through the main stages of this event. The other main table will see Kurt Maflin on show. He meets the much improved and dangerous Allan Taylor for a place on the plane to Germany.
Two other matches take place to round off the session. Reanne Evans is one of the two high profile players on the outside table in the evening. She suffered defeat in the opening round of the German Masters qualifying and will be looking to make up for that against Louis Heathcote. The other former world champion on show in this session is Ken Doherty. He did qualify for the German Masters and will be looking to book his spot in a second German event when he faces Jak Jones.
Betting
I’ll start off this qualifying competition by taking just the one bet and that comes in the form of Gao Yang, who was good to me last week when he beat one senior in Stephen Hendry and I’m hoping he can stay good to me when he faces the World Seniors champion David Lilley here. Lilley was beaten in the second round of German Masters qualifying last week, although to be fair to him Kurt Maflin was in excellent scoring form in their match.
Yang feasted on the safety errors of Hendry in that match and then went on to beat Xiao Guodong to make it through to the Tempodrom and I expect he can do the same to Lilley, who much like Hendry scores acceptably at this level but his safety is wide of the mark. Just like that match I fancy this one will come into a scoring battle and should that be the case then I would expect the Chinese youngster to come out on top here.
Tips
Back G.Yang to beat D.Lilley for a 3/10 stake at 1.90 with Betfair
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