Two days after one Home Nations event concludes, the qualifying competition for another begins when the English Open qualifiers get underway inside the Morningside Arena in Leicester on Tuesday.
16 players will take to the baize looking for the four frames they need to book their spot in the main draw in Essex later in the season. The top 16 all have their matches saved to the main venue but there are still some fairly strong names on show this week.
Morning Session
If you have followed the qualifying competition for the British Open, Northern Ireland Open and Scottish Open you’ll know that in the main the morning session is one for the Chinese players and that is the case on Tuesday. Si Jiahui is the leading light on show in this session. He has a date with the Belgian player Julien Leclercq while over on the other table Wu Yize will be looking to make it through to the main draw at the expense of Anton Kazakov.
Early Afternoon Session
Two more Chinese players have been saved for the first of the two afternoon sessions on Tuesday and they play each other when Tian Pengfei looks to continue what has been a pretty positive start to the season when he takes on his fellow countryman Peng Yiseng. Probably the pick of the matches takes place on the other table when the former world champion Ken Doherty goes up against Robbie Williams, who has also started the season well.
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Later Afternoon Session
Joe O’Connor is the highest ranked player on show in the later of the two afternoon sessions. He will go up against his fellow English player Jenson Kendrick who will be looking to kick his season into life. The other table may well see a much more competitive affair when the German number one Lukas Kleckers goes up against another English cueist on show in this session in the form of Hammad Miah.
Evening Session
Michael White might not be the highest ranked player on show in the evening session but I think it is fair to say that he is the one who has the greatest ceiling among the four players taking to the baize. He goes up against the former World Seniors champion Michael Judge while over on the other table Craig Steadman will be looking to make the main draw when he goes up against the Indian player Himanshu Jain.
Betting
Robbie Williams will be playing for the first time since he made the British Open semi-final a few weeks ago and I fancy he can pick up a win with a bit in hand when he takes on a Ken Doherty whose only win this season was against an out of nick Dominic Dale. We might not quite be at the point where Doherty is way beyond his competitive days at this level. He certainly is against the better players on the tour as we have seen so far this season.
I wouldn’t say Williams is one of the better players on the tour but he is by no means the worst and he played really well at the British Open recently and if he has maintained his form in that time then I think he is entitled to win this and win it well. Williams took care of Ding Junhui and Lyu Haotian among others in the British Open and only went down in a deciding frame to the eventual champion Ryan Day in the last four. As long as he is at it here he should beat a Doherty who has only made five 50 breaks in 36 frames this term.
Tips
Back R.Williams (-1.5 frames) to beat K.Doherty for a 3/10 stake at 2.00 with William Hill
Back him here:
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