Another busy day is in store for everyone at Media City in Manchester on Wednesday when the English Open second round takes place in one full day of action. In total we will have another 32 matches played out across the three sessions and by the end of it just 32 men will still be able to win the lucrative £1m bonus for winning all four Home Nations events.
By and large the big names all made it through the first round so this tournament is bubbling up nicely but we have some great games on Wednesday and some of them will sort the men from the boys so it will be an interesting day.
Morning Session
As ever we kick off with eight matches in the morning session. Just as there have been in the first two days there are two matches on the televised or streamed tables. The first of those sees Michael White taking on Kritsanut Lertsattayathorn with Ian Burns facing Mark Williams on the other table.
Elsewhere in this session Fraser Patrick faces James Wattana, Joe Swail plays James Cahill, Ian Glover meets Craig Steadman, Fergal O’Brien goes up against Ross Muir, Rod Lawler and Stuart Carrington clash and Elliot Slessor plays Jak Jones with one of them having the opportunity to give their ranking a real boost.
Afternoon Session
You know the drill by now. There are three sets of matches in this session. The action kicks off on the main tables with Mark Selby against Liam Highfield and Scott Donaldson going up against Mark Allen.
The remainder of the first set of games in the session sees John Astley playing Yan Bingtao, Marco Fu plays Tom Ford, Noppon Saengkham meets Xiao Guodong who was excellent in the first round, Lee Walker plays Rhys Clark with Kyren Wilson meeting Daniel Wells and David Gilbert facing Peter Lines.
The TV games in the second set of matches are two juicy looking games as Stephen Maguire plays Ryan Day and John Higgins meets Mark King. Away from the cameras Martin Gould plays Zhou Yuelong in another good looking match and Ben Woollaston plays Zhang Anda in yet one more with potential to be good.
The final set of afternoon matches sees Shaun Murphy playing Liang Wenbo on one of the main tables and Ding Junhui and Mei Xiwen facing off in an all-Chinese battle on the other. Li Hang and Ricky Walden play on the outside tables as do Anthony Hamilton and Matthew Selt.
Evening Session
The evening kicks off with real big names on the main tables when Ronnie O’Sullivan faces Zhao Xintong in a great looking game. Neil Robertson plays Duane Jones on the other table with Barry Hawkins meeting Mark Davis and David Grace playing Andrew Higginson on the outside tables.
In the last set of matches of the day Judd Trump and Jamie Bodle play on one main table with Stuart Bingham and Alan McManus on the other with Ali Carter taking on Thailand’s Akani Songsermsawad and Anthony McGill playing Chris Wakelin on the outside tables.
Betting
Two matches are of interest to me here and they both come in the afternoon session. One is on the main table and the other one isn’t. Stephen Maguire against Ryan Day is the main table match which takes my fancy.
There is something about facing Maguire that Day doesn’t like. They’ve met 16 times in their careers. Day won the first meeting and he’s only won one since then which was a match at the Crucible a couple of seasons ago which the Welshman won in a deciding frame. The rest of their history is dominated by Maguire to the extent I’m sure Day is aware of it.
Maguire came through a deciding frame in the first round but he scored well throughout that match and arrives here in decent enough form having made the semi-finals in Shanghai. Normally you would say that Day would be a tricky customer to overcome but Maguire rarely finds it that way so the Scot is an obvious choice there.
It was hard not to be impressed with Matthew Selt in the opening round. He cued like a dream to beat Joe Perry and if he can come up with a repeat of that then he is going to have too much for Anthony Hamilton. Hamilton did well to come past Adam Duffy in the opening round but there were a couple of frames he won in that which he should have lost. I don’t see Selt letting him off the hook so I like the handicap at even money in this one.
Tips
Back S.Maguire to beat R.Day for a 4/10 stake at 1.80 with Betfred
Back him here:
Back M.Selt (-1.5 frames) to beat A.Hamilton for a 4/10 stake at 2.00 with Coral
Back him here:
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