A busy opening day of the China Open Snooker gets underway in the early hours on Monday 28th March as the matches held over from the qualifying round, the wildcard round and plenty of the first round gets going in Beijing.
China Open Snooker Preview
Although it is the first round of the competition some of the biggest names in the game take the green baize from the get go. Ding Junhui, John Higgins, Stuart Bingham and Liang Wenbo are all on centre stage on Monday as is Neil Robertson.
There are three sessions of play on Monday. The early session sees Neil Robertson taking on Noppon Saengkham on the main table with Stuart Bingham and Cao Yupeng on the other one so that is a decent way to kick off proceedings. You would expect Robertson to come through and the prices reflect that.
Bingham might not have it all his own way though. Yupeng is a competent player and in home conditions his danger increases. Normally I would say the Chinese player is a big price but his form this year has been awful and that isn’t a good sign so in hindsight perhaps the match is best left alone.
In truth there isn’t a huge amount I like in the first session of play so I’ll leave that one and head into the second session where the TV coverage starts. It does so with Liang taking on Peter Lines and Graeme Dott facing Matthew Stevens.
I don’t fancy anything in those matches but there is one I like in this session and it comes in the all-Welsh clash between Jamie Jones and Dominic Dale. I like Jones and have backed him on several occasions but it was clear to see how well Dale was hitting the ball in Manchester last week and if he has that game with him he is going to be hard to stop.
Dale beat Mark Williams in the Players Championship first round before running into a full power Shaun Murphy in the second round but there is no shame in that. Few in the world can compete with Murphy when he is in that form.
Jamie Jones has struggled for the most part this season since his run to the semi-final in Australia and unless he can find his scoring I think he is going to struggle greatly in this match too. Dale showed he can be ruthless in beating Welshmen last week and I fancy him to do that for the second week in a row.
The evening session in Beijing is headlined by Ding Junhui. He should cruise past Lee Walker to make it into the last 64 where he would take on Li Hang in an all-Chinese battle. On the other TV table Tian Pengfei plays a wildcard match against Niu Zhuang. Again the favourite should come through there.
Another match where the favourite should come through is the Alan McManus vs Mike Dunn match. These two have met twice in their careers and McManus has won 4-2 and 5-1, the 5-1 being in German Masters qualifying in December.
Both men played in Manchester last week and while Dunn went further I think you would be stretching it to say he played significantly better. Given all that I fancy McManus to make it a hat-trick of wins over the Englishman.
Tips
WON – Back D.Dale to beat J.Jones for a 4/10 stake at 1.90 with Boylesports
Back him here:
Back A.McManus to beat M.Dunn for a 4/10 stake at 1.78 with Unibet
Back him here:
