The World Grand Prix has been played down to the one table stage for the quarter finals which take place across two sessions of action in Llandudno on Friday.
This has been a tournament full of big name shocks and that theme continued on Thursday when John Higgins, Mark Allen and Judd Trump were all beaten in surprise results in the second round. That has left us with a very open looking set of quarter finals which will be interesting to see who handles the pressure.
This hasn’t just been a graveyard event for the big names. It has been a bad event for me from a betting point of view with the form book seemingly non-existent this week but there are three days left in the event to try and recover some of the earlier losses.
The first quarter final is an all-Asian affair as Ding Junhui of China plays Thailand’s Thepchaiya Un-Nooh. Ding looked really good in his win over Peter Ebdon on Thursday while according to Mark Allen on twitter the Thai was extremely lucky against him.
I had a feeling Ding would come back to form before the World Championship and while his return to form does him good in terms of automatically qualifying for the Crucible he’s nowhere near safe yet. A couple more wins this week would help immensely.
I think Ding will be too good for Un-Nooh here. I might have been different if the Thai had been scoring this week but he hasn’t really and when he doesn’t score he often leaves himself open because of his aggressive style. Ding is scoring and I expect him to have far too much for Un-Nooh here.
Ali Carter and Joe Perry meet in the second quarter final and this is an interesting match. Joe Perry played well in beating Kyren Wilson in the second round but he’ll still have his work cut out against Carter.
We’ve not seen Carter on the TV table yet this week so it is hard to judge his form but this looks a tight match however Carter is playing so I’ll sit this one out.
Shaun Murphy and Liang Wenbo begin the evening session. I didn’t think much to Murphy in the previous round and the fact that Liang Wenbo has a positive head to head against him makes me think that the Chinese player could be good value in that match but I’ve not seen anything of him this week so I’ll leave that match alone too despite a heavy temptation to back Wenbo.
The last of the quarter finals sees the sole remaining Welshman in action as Ryan Day plays the world champion Stuart Bingham. Bingham beat Judd Trump on Thursday but afterwards he was interviewed and said he was full of flu and I think he could be there for the taking here.
Day is playing well anyway. He has been for a while now and to come past John Higgins in the previous round was no mean achievement. Day banged in a couple of tons in that match too to emphasise how well he is playing so I like him here.
Regardless of whether Bingham is fit or flued up I’m siding with Day here. Day beat Bingham in the German Masters recently and he’s good value to do it again.
Back D.Junhui (-1.5 frames) to beat T.Un-Nooh for a 4/10 stake at 1.91 with William Hill
Back him here:
Back R.Day to beat S.Bingham for a 4/10 stake at 2.60 with BetVictor
