The opening ranking event of the snooker season will be won on Friday when the final stage of the Championship League Snooker tournament will be played out inside the Morningside Arena in Leicester.
The final day consists of two more groups with the winner of each then competing in the overall final of which the winner walks off with the title and the £20,000 first prize not to mention a place in the Champion of Champions, assuming Zhao Xintong doesn’t win as he is already in that event.
Group 1
Fixtures
Stuart Bingham vs Pang Junxu
Ricky Walden vs Lu Ning
Ricky Walden vs Pang Junxu
Stuart Bingham vs Lu Ning
Lu Ning vs Pang Junxu
Stuart Bingham vs Ricky Walden
Preview
The action over on Table Two sees Group 1 being played out on Friday. Stuart Bingham is the man who is seeded to go all the way from this section but he is going to have his work cut out to make it through because second seed Ricky Walden looked in decent nick on Thursday and will be in a nice groove to go again on Friday. This has been the competition of the Chinese players and two of them compete in this group with Lu Ning looking to make a first ranking final. Pang Junxu is aiming to do the same thing having seen off Ronnie O’Sullivan earlier in the week.
Group 2
Fixtures
Zhao Xintong vs Lyu Haotian
Luca Brecel vs Xiao Guodong
Luca Brecel vs Lyu Haotian
Zhao Xintong vs Xiao Guodong
Xiao Guodong vs Lyu Haotian
Zhao Xintong vs Luca Brecel
Preview
The pick of the groups on the final day is Group 2 which will be played out on the main table throughout the day and it will see the UK Championship and German Masters winner Zhao Xintong as the main seed. Luca Brecel was the man he beat to win the UK Championship and he gets the chance for a bit of revenge as he is the second seed in this group. Brecel is the only non-Chinese player in the group as Xiao Guodong and Lyu Haotian complete what really is a very tasty group to keep us entertained.
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Group Betting
I guess when you are lining up a bet on the groups on Friday motivation has to be taken into account here. We are probably going to see players eliminated early in these groups which doesn’t make betting on them easy. To be fair it wasn’t going to be easy anyway with the quality that is within them. The action on the main table is loaded with talent and while Zhao Xintong is hard to take on I wonder if the fact Brecel played on Thursday might give him an edge. If it does it isn’t enough of one for me to act on.
The same can be said for Ricky Walden on the other table in Group 1 as he takes on Stuart Bingham, who has come through in this tournament but I don’t think we’ve seen his best stuff. That isn’t to say he hasn’t saved it for Friday of course but I do think we need to see more from Bingham if he is going to come through here. The Chinese pair of Lu Ning and Pang Junxu are dangerous but probably skinny in the betting. It is a no bet day for me on the groups.
Match Betting
I will go for one in the match betting though. Stuart Bingham has come through both his groups so far but he hasn’t played brilliantly in his opening match in either. He lost to Peter Devlin in his first group and although he beat Ben Woollaston 3-0 in the second one, the first and third frames could and probably should have gone the other way. He meets Pang Junxu in his opening game here and looks fair value to be turned over.
Junxu has been solid in this tournament and has clearly improved and got more confident the longer the campaign has gone on, culminating in a fine win over Ronnie O’Sullivan in his second group. Anyone who beats him is on their game these days and with all the pressure in this match on Bingham to get off to a fast start I think Pang, who can score as well as anyone in this group, could cause something of an upset to open up proceedings.
Tips
Back P.Junxu to beat S.Bingham (DNB) for a 3/10 stake at 2.63 with Coral
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