The opening day of World Championship qualifying sees two sets of matches taking place inside the English Institute for Sport in Sheffield and at the end of the day eight players will be happy as they will have progressed to the second round while for eight others the season will be done.
We have three sessions of play over the course of the day on Monday with the matches in the morning coming to a conclusion in the evening and then the other matches in the afternoon playing the first of their two sessions.
Morning Session
Half of the matches are live on Discovery Plus this week while the other half have no coverage at all. In the morning session the streamed matches will have Marco Fu on one of the main tables. He meets the dangerous amateur Martin O’Donnell for a place in the second round. Also on a streamed table John Astley will meet Steven Hallworth while Andres Petrov goes up against the young star who will be on the tour next season in Stan Moody. The other match sees Dylan Emery taking on Ma Hailong.
The four matches away from the streamed cameras might actually offer up some of the more competitive action. One of those matches sees Daniel Wells looking to make it through when he takes on Himanshu Jain. Jamie O’Neill will look to put a pretty ordinary season behind him when he takes on the Hungarian player Bulcsu Revesz while Dean Young takes on Haydon Pinhey in what should be a really good match. The other one offers the chance for Mohamed Ibrahim and Anton Kazakov to make the second round when they meet.
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Afternoon Session
The highest ranked player on show in the afternoon session is the former World Seniors champion David Lilley and he will be on one of the streamed tables when he meets Rory McLeod who gets a chance in the qualifying competition. Elsewhere, Alfie Burden meets one of the two females on show in this session in Rebecca Kenna while Aaron Hill takes on the new women’s world champion Baipat Siripaporn. The other streamed match has Michael Judge on show when he takes Florian Nussle.
Four matches will now be streamed in this session. One of those will see Asjad Iqbal looking to make it through to the second round at the expense of Jenson Kendrick while Allan Taylor will take on the second of the Latvian players taking to the baize in this session in Filips Kalnins. Iulian Boiko is back in World Championship qualifying even though he fell off the tour at the end of last season. He will go up against Muhammad Asif while Adam Duffy plays Billy Joe Castle in the other match.
Betting
I’ve always thought that Steven Hallworth is good enough to be on the main tour as a professional and I think he can show that in his first round match with John Astley who has another year on the tour guaranteed but he really needs to go much better than he has done this season. The problem a lot of the professionals who are in the first round draw have is a lack of activity in recent times. There has only been the Six Reds, Welsh Open, Shootout and the WST Classic for these guys to play in during 2023 so far.
That isn’t the case for the amateurs. The leading ones, of which you have to be to get into this event, have had most of the professional events to play in and the Q Tour events so they have been much more active and because they are the leading amateurs they are winning a lot of matches so they will come into this event confident. Hallworth has been on the tour before so he knows what it is all about. He is a very good scorer and we are going to see that particularly over the first two rounds the scorers will come to the fore. I think Hallworth will come through this one.
Tips
Back S.Hallworth to beat J.Astley for a 3/10 stake at 1.80 with Betfred
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