The second day of the English Open at Event City in Manchester sees the first round of the tournament conclude on a day where the sport’s biggest stars all come out to play as they begin their search for not just this title but the £1m bonus on offer for winning all four events.
As with the first day of action on Monday, play will take place over three sessions on Tuesday with as many as six sets of matches so we get to see up to 12 matches on the TV table which is plenty for us to enjoy.
Morning Session
There are seven matches to kick the day off. The televised tables will be occupied by Marco Fu and Xiao Guodong when they take on Martin O’Donnell and Michael Holt respectively.
The five matches in the other part of the arena involve Andrew Higginson taking on Nigel Bond, Sean O’Sullivan playing Scott Donaldson, Darryl Hill meeting Mei Xiwen with Noppon Saengkham playing Michael Georgiou and Zhao Xintong facing Wang Yuchen in an all-Chinese battle.
Afternoon Session
There are three series of matches in this session once again with the newly crowned European Masters winner Judd Trump first up on the main table when he takes on Ken Doherty. Liang Wenbo faces Graeme Dott in the other game.
On the outside tables Fraser Patrick plays Zak Surety while Rory McLeod goes up against Tom Ford. Robbie Williams plays Fergal O’Brien, Yu Delu and Rod Lawler meet as do Mike Dunn and Duane Jones with Peter Lines facing Paul Davison on the other table.
The next set of matches are split over two start times and first up on the TV tables are John Higgins and Neil Robertson. They meet Michael Wild and Hamza Akbar respectively with the second set of TV matches seeing Mark Selby play Gary Wilson and Mark Allen playing Jamie Barrett.
Away from the TV, Mark Davis plays Tian Pengfei and Yan Bingtao first up with Ben Woollaston meeting Cao Yupeng and Anthony McGill facing Jamie Cope after them.
Evening Session
There are two sets of matches to finish the round off with Ronnie O’Sullivan first up on the main table. He faces Jimmy Robertson while on the other televised table Ali Carter takes on Luca Brecel. The outside tables have Ricky Walden taking on Robin Hull and Dominic Dale meeting David Grace.
The action concludes on the main table with Shaun Murphy playing Chen Zhe. Barry Hawkins and Jack Lisowski battle each other on the second table. Away from the cameras Alfie Burden plays Daniel Wells and David Gilbert plays Hammad Miah.
Betting
It wasn’t a great first day for us betting wise but hopefully we can overcome that with two bets on Tuesday. The first is in the morning session where Scott Donaldson faces Sean O’Sullivan. I like the Scot in this match I have to say. He has been playing well in recent times.
He has qualified for both the Shanghai Masters where he had a chance of beating Ding Junhui in a final frame in the first round, and the European Masters where he only lost a deciding frame to Anthony McGill having beaten Stuart Bingham along the way.
He now faces a Sean O’Sullivan who hasn’t won many matches this season and who hasn’t played in many main events recently. Donaldson might have narrowly come up short against Ding and McGill but O’Sullivan isn’t either of those so I’m with the Scot in that one.
Sean O’Sullivan’s season has been bad but it hasn’t quite been as bad as the one Mike Dunn has had. Prior to an International Championship qualifying win he had lost five matches on the trot and while he won his match in that qualifying campaign it was against Jason Weston who has already been beaten in this tournament scoring one point in four frames in the process so it isn’t the greatest form guide.
Duane Jones lost in International Championship qualifying but he has won a few matches recently and took a couple of frames off of Judd Trump in qualifying for the European Masters and the way Trump played in the main event of that we should underestimate that achievement. I’m a long believer in momentum being key in snooker at the minute and it is Jones that has more of that going into this match.
Tips
WON – Back S.Donaldson to beat S.O’Sullivan for a 4/10 stake at 1.80 with Betfred
Back him here:
WON – Back D.Jones to beat M.Dunn for a 3/10 stake at 2.63 with Bet365
Back him here:
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