The snooker season is in full flow now and this week we get the first major event of the year in the UK when 16 recent tournament winners head to the Ricoh Arena in Coventry from Tuesday to decide who is the Champion of Champions.
This tournament immediately gets plenty of hype and attention because only one table is in operation all week which always gives an event a bigger feel to it but the whole week is live on ITV4 for those in the UK too so with free to air TV coverage anyone can watch.
The 16 men are all drawn into groups of four but rather than everybody playing each other in their group each section is a mini knockout tournament of its own. A pre-determined draw sees two best of seven matches in the first round of each group with the two winners going through to the group final on the same day. That is the best of 11 and the winner of that match moves into the tournament semi-final at the weekend.
In order to progress in the tournament you don’t actually have to play well for the whole week you just have to peak on your group day and then at the weekend in order to have every chance of winning it.
Like most tournaments we can split the overall draw up into two halves and when we do that we see the bottom half of the draw houses Judd Trump, Mark Selby, Stuart Bingham, Mark Allen and Stephen Maguire not to mention dangers in Kyren Wilson and Barry Hawkins. Needless to say that looks a tournament in itself so I’m going nowhere near that for an outright punt.
Instead I’ll head to the top half which looks a lot more straight forward by contrast. Barring something quite extraordinary the Group 2 final will be between Neil Robertson and Shaun Murphy. That match could go either way but as luck would have it I’m not massively interested in either.
That is because one man in Group 1 is in decent form and has been good to me so far this season and I’m not going to desert him now. That man is of course John Higgins. In fairness to Ali Carter he’s entitled to be a tough nut to crack in the opening round but should Higgins crack that he would be a massive favourite to see off Joe Perry or Michael White in the group final.
From there the way Higgins is playing he could be very hard to stop. He strolled to the International Championship title nine days prior to this tournament and looked like he might follow it up with another win in Bulgaria at the weekend until he ran into a rampant Mark Williams who banged in two centuries against him in the last 16.
Despite that the Scot is looking in sumptuous form right now and 10/1 looks a massive price for this tournament especially given the draw where all the in form big names are in the other half where Higgins will have secured the place pay out long before looking any of them in the eye.
Back J.Higgins to win Champion of Champions (e/w) for a 2/10 stake at 11.00 with Coral (1/2 1-2)
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