There is one tournament left in the snooker season prior to the World Championship and it begins in Manchester on Monday when the leading 12 players from the campaign so far make their way to compete for the Tour Championship.
Shaun Murphy added this title to the Players Championship one that he won last season but he has had such a poor campaign that even in an extended field he isn’t in Manchester to defend the title so we will have a different winner.
Recent Winners
2023 – Shaun Murphy
2022 – Neil Robertson
2021 – Neil Robertson
2020 – Stephen Maguire
2019 – Ronnie O’Sullivan
The Format
One of the more appealing things about this tournament used to be that with only eight players taking part we have the whole event on one table with one match on each of the seven days of the competition. However that has changed this year and the top 12 players on the money list in ranking events this season are invited to the event. The other really inviting thing about this event is that from the quarter finals right the way through to the final every match in the competition is the best of 19 frames and that hasn’t changed. The champion will be decided in the final on Sunday. The players slot into the draw in the position they sit in the money list for this season.
Top Four Seeds
Judd Trump is miles clear on the money list for this season and he is the number one seed as a result of that. He has already won five titles this term and if he can add this to it he will be heading to Sheffield having set all kinds of records. He has never won this tournament and I always think that the star names are more motivated when an event that they haven’t won comes around so Trump could prove tricky to beat this week.
Ronnie O’Sullivan is the number two seed. The UK Championship winner added the World Grand Prix title to his collection this term as well and he enters what could be a record breaking six weeks in fine fettle. As always with O’Sullivan, we can ignore some of the nonsense he comes out with. We know he gets up for these elite events very easily and it is no surprise that he has won The Masters and the Shanghai Masters this season as well as the Riyadh Masters. He is worthy of being considered here.
Zhang Anda is the surprise package of the season so far and he gets in here as the third seed. The International Championship winner was ranked way down the rankings at the start of the season but having won that tournament and reaching the final of the English Open and the Players Championship he has accumulated enough points to be in this list in third place on what is his Tour Championship debut.
The other seed who goes straight through to the quarter finals is the other Chinese star in the tournament in Ding Junhui. He hasn’t won a ranking event this season but he has made winning event money courtesy of making the final of the two biggest money competitions in the UK Championship and the World Open and it took Ronnie O’Sullivan and Judd Trump to beat him. The bad news for Ding is that both are in this tournament but the good news is he can’t face either until the semi-final or final.
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Other Eight Players
There are eight other players in the draw ranked from five to 12 in the one-year rankings and they face off against each other for a shot at a top four player in the quarter final. Mark Allen is fifth in the rankings after he won the Players Championship while it is the Scottish and Welsh Open winner Gary Wilson who will be the sixth seed this week. Barry Hawkins won the first full ranking event of the season and he is seventh in the rankings while the British Open champion Mark Williams has hung onto the eighth spot.
Tom Ford is the highest ranked player who hasn’t won a title this season. He comes in at nine in the rankings for the year, marginally ahead of The Masters and Wuhan Open finalist Ali Carter who is the remaining player in the top 10. Mark Selby has made it in as the penultimate player in the tournament, helped by his recent win in the Championship League while the last man into the field is John Higgins. Those four players will look to take advantage of the extension of the field as they wouldn’t be here if it was the top eight as it was previously.
Betting
If I am honest I can’t see beyond the big two meeting in the final this week but if there is a chink somewhere it might be that Ronnie O’Sullivan is caught cold and opens up the bottom half of the draw. I’m not convinced it will happen but if he does have one of those days where he doesn’t fancy it then Barry Hawkins or Ali Carter could easily get rid of him, although to be fair the fact O’Sullivan can’t stand Carter might fire the Rocket up should that be a quarter final.
Zhang Anda has already beaten Ronnie O’Sullivan over two sessions this season though having beaten him in the semi-final on his way to winning the International Championship and he is the sort of person who doesn’t worry about reputation on the other side of the arena. In fact, Zhang beat O’Sullivan at the English Open, albeit over shorter distance, earlier in the season too so if there is someone who can play his natural game against the Rocket it appears to be him. That makes me think that the 20/1 on him winning this thing might be where the value lies this week.
Tips
Back Z.Anda to win Tour Championship (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 21.00 with Unibet (1/2 1-2)
