The Champion of Champions has reached the final with two superstars of the modern game battling it out for one of the more prestigious invitational titles as Judd Trump takes on Mark Allen in what should be a cracking conclusion to a good week of snooker.
These two men are definitely no strangers to playing in big finals and they have faced each other in them in the past as well and they have 19 frames to clash over to determine who will walk off with the latest title.
Judd Trump
Judd Trump has already won three titles this season and were he to win a fourth without us being out of November he would be well on course for a record breaking campaign. Trump has already won the English Open, Wuhan Open and the Northern Ireland Open over the last couple of months and now he has cruised into this final and is looking really to lay down another challenge for what would be the biggest title of the set.
Trump has largely been on easy street this week. With the best will in the world Baipat Siripaporn was never going to trouble him and while Shaun Murphy and Barry Hawkins got relatively close to him, you always felt Trump had them just about far enough away for comfort. I don’t think we’ve seen vintage Trump this week but we have seen him develop into a player who doesn’t always need his best to win. He might need something close to it here.
Mark Allen
It had been a bit of a season to forget for Mark Allen on arrival at this tournament. He was the Judd Trump of this season a year ago but like we so often see after a player has a campaign to die for, he has found it harder to back that up. That is probably an expectation thing rather than any sign of poor form but the good thing for the man from Northern Ireland is that he looks like he has brought his best snooker with him this week.
Despite this tournament being one of two different elements for him having played in the first group of the week before the second semi-final six days later but he didn’t drop his level in that time. If anything, he produced his best display of the season to beat John Higgins in the semi-final and if he has that standard with him here, or even improves again, then he is entitled to be hard to beat. The big thing from that semi-final is it didn’t go late and didn’t take too much out of him.
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Head-to-head
These two are definitely no strangers to playing each other. They have met over 24 previous matches with Mark Allen having come out on top in 13 of those to the 11 of Trump. It is a narrow lead in the frame count for Allen has well with 104 frames to the 100 which Trump has won. This will be the fifth time they have met in a final. Trump won the first one at the UK Championship 12 years ago but Allen has won the three since then, including the last one at the World Grand Prix at the beginning of this year. This will be their fourth meeting at the Champion of Champions with Trump leading 2-1 from the first three and it is 1-1 in their best of 19 meetings.
Betting
There is a part of me that thinks that Mark Allen at around the 13/8 mark is a little too big for this final but I’ll see how the early frames pan out before I nail my colour to that particular mast because both men look in excellent touch at the minute and Judd Trump has had the day off to work on whatever he needed to on the practice table and be in tip top shape for this showdown. One thing I do expect to see is a close, high quality final.
That is what we got when these two met at the World Grand Prix final earlier in the year when Allen came out on top 10-9 and I think he is playing the sort of snooker to do that again here. These days when Trump does lose it isn’t by very much. He has lost a number of deciding frames in 2023 so if Allen does win this you sense it will be close. Finals between these two do tend to be close. Their two over this distance finished 10-8 and 10-9 and that is the sort of score I fancy here too. You can get even money on over 16.5 frames and that feels a little excessive to me.
Tips
Back Over 16.5 frames for a 3/10 stake at 2.00 with Betfair
