The first round of the main draw of the British Open concludes on Wednesday and the second round gets underway as we begin to meander towards the business end of the competition inside the Marshall Arena in Milton Keynes.
The big names kept on falling on Tuesday so already there is a real open feel to this event even allowing for the random draw element of it. The big names who are in action across the three sessions on Wednesday will certainly be on their toes.
Morning Session
The morning session isn’t actually televised but the matches will be available to be streamed on the bookmaker websites with the action on the main table seeing the former Masters champion Yan Bingtao on show. He meets Andy Lee. The other three tables are all in use in this session with an entertaining match on one of them seeing Thepchaiya Un-Nooh going up against Matthew Stevens. David Grace faces Xu Si in another match. The other game sees Chen Zifan going up against Ross Muir.
Afternoon Session
The first round concludes in the afternoon session where there are two sets of matches once again. First onto the TV table is the new tournament favourite Judd Trump who goes up against Dean Young. Mark Allen is a big name on show first up as well but he’ll only get to see table two for his clash with Li Hang. Tian Pengfei meets the man who lost in the semi-final here last year in Jimmy Robertson and the other game sees Noppon Saengkham taking on Fraser Patrick where the reward for the winner is a meeting with Zhao Xintong in the last 32.
Later in the afternoon we will see two ranking event winners on show on the TV table when Ding Junhui goes up against a Joe Perry who had a very good win over Hossein Vafaei in the held over qualifying round. The finalist of last year is in action in this session when Gary Wilson meets Zhang Anda while Ryan Day will look to make progress when he takes on Gerard Greene. The other match in the afternoon session sees Zhao Jianbo going up against Ian Burns where two lower ranked players have a great chance to reach the last 32.
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Evening Session
That last 32 begins in the evening session were there are another two sets of matches. The TV table will be occupied by Mark Selby, who incredibly is still looking for his first ever title on ITV. Cao Yupeng stands in his way. Graeme Dott has looked good in this tournament so far and he meets Xiao Guodong for a spot in the last 16. The other two matches in this first part of the session sees Ben Woollaston going up against Jak Jones and Jamie Jones facing Chang Bingyu.
Jack Lisowski will get to go up on the TV table in the second part of the evening session. He has a tricky little test ahead of him against the Championship League finalist Lu Ning while on the second table Barry Hawkins will look to build on his fine win over Kyren Wilson in the previous round when he meets Steven Hallworth. Anthony Hamilton meets Joe O’Connor in a third match in this session while the winner from the match between Chen Zifan and Ross Muir earlier in the day will face Lyu Haotian in the other match in the evening.
Betting
I’ll take the one bet over the course of the day and it comes in the afternoon session where I think Ian Burns might be at a disadvantage in his match against Zhao Jianbo. Burns hasn’t played a competitive match for a month since getting done 4-0 by Tian Pengfei in the qualifying competition for the Northern Ireland Open and he might need to shed some rust. That won’t be the case for his Chinese opponent, who comes in here having been much more active recently.
Jianbo isn’t on the main tour so he gets to play in all the amateur events and there have been two of them in September. The Chinese player hasn’t gone that well in either of them, although he did lose to the promising Gao Yang in one of them, but you can’t substitute competitive outings and he has had them. Jianbo scored well enough in those matches and against a Burns who isn’t the most natural scorer in the game I think the Chinese player has enough going for him to come through here.
Tips
Back Z.Jianbo to beat I.Burns for a 3/10 stake at 1.83 with Coral
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