The first round of the English Open concludes and the second round gets underway in the final ranking event of 2022 on Wednesday when another busy day of action takes place inside the Brentwood Centre in Essex.
In the main the majority of the big names have made it through to play on Wednesday which means that we have a fantastic schedule of play. The morning and afternoon sessions will contain first round action with the second round beginning in the evening.
Morning Session
We were due to be having four matches in the morning session but the suspension of Lu Ning has brought that down to three and it is his Chinese compatriot Zhao Xintong who will headline the action. He will be on the main table when he goes up against Andres Petrov. Thepchaiya Un-Nooh will look to continue his good recent form in this session as well. He has a date with Tian Pengfei and there is Chinese involvement in the other game as well as Zhang Anda meets John Astley for a place in the last 32.
Afternoon Session
As ever there are two sessions of play in the afternoon session and the world champion Ronnie O’Sullivan will be the star attraction first up. He is sure to attract a huge crowd in what is a home event for him and he meets Dechawat Poomjaeng. Jack Lisowski is the other class act who will be on show in the early part of the afternoon. He meets Stuart Carrington while ranking event winners Marco Fu and Matt Selt will compete on the outside tables. They meet Peter Lines and Louis Heathcote respectively.
Shaun Murphy will be the man on the main table in the second part of the afternoon. He has a horrible draw against the confident Sam Craigie in what very well could be the match of the session. If it isn’t then it could be the one between Oliver Lines and Luca Brecel which will take place on one of the other tables at the same time. Barry Hawkins is also on show in the second part of the afternoon when he goes up against Muhammad Asif. The other match sees the former European Masters winner Fan Zhengyi facing Ashley Hugill.
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Evening Session
The second round of the tournament gets underway in the evening session where once again we have two sets of matches. Judd Trump will be the man who will open up play on the main table when he takes on Fraser Patrick. Two other tasty encounters will be on show in this first slot when Mark Allen meets Ding Junhui in what is a repeat of the UK Championship final from last month. John Higgins also takes to the table to take on the Gibraltar Open winner Robert Milkins. We don’t know the identity of the other match in this set of games but we do know Yuan Sijun will meet the winner of the morning match between Thepchaiya Un-Nooh and Tian Pengfei.
We do know the full identity of the second set of matches over the course of the evening though and Neil Robertson will continue his title defence on the main table when he takes on Elliot Slessor, who is yet to play this week having received a bye in the first round when his opponent was one of the Chinese players who have been suspended. Mark Selby is also on show in this part of the evening. He will meet Wu Yize while Ryan Day will face Ricky Walden in a good looking clash. The other match sees Kyren Wilson facing Jamie Jones in another good game.
Betting
I’ll go with a couple of bets and they are both in the evening session. Robert Milkins dumped John Higgins out of the Northern Ireland Open earlier in the season and he looks a massive price to repeat the feat at 2/1. Milkins is only 7-5 down on the head-to-head between these two but the last two Higgins wins in a deciding frame and any match prior to that was when Higgins was in his pomp which clearly isn’t the case right now. Recently the Scot has had trouble getting rid of Milkins and I’ve mentioned a few times that since he won the Gibraltar Open, Milkins has been playing with a lot more confidence and freedom. Higgins just cuts an unhappy figure and demeanour at the minute so I’ll take Milkins to repeat that Northern Ireland success here.
Another matchup which took place in the Home Nations this season is the one between Ryan Day and Ricky Walden. They met at the Scottish Open a couple of weeks ago and Walden won 4-0. I’m not sure they Englishman will win quite as convincingly here but I do think he’ll repeat the dose. He had a very good and emphatic 4-0 win over Liam Highfield in the first round here which shows he has carried the form over from Edinburgh, where he was only beaten in the quarter finals on a day he felt rough. You never truly know what to expect from Day. He won the British Open earlier in the season but has been hit or miss since then. Although he has scored well this week Asjad Iqbal took two frames from him and Hammad Miah picked up three frames against him and neither of those are in Walden’s league. I think Walden can repeat the win he had over Day a couple of weeks ago here.
Tips
Back R.Milkins to beat J.Higgins for a 3/10 stake at 3.00 with Betway
Back R.Walden to beat R.Day for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with William Hill
Back him here:
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