The snooker season might have begun with the Championship League but it is the European Masters which will be the first silverware won in the new campaign and the tournament starts on Monday inside the bio-secure bubble of the Marshall Arena in Milton Keynes.
Neil Robertson won this title last season and he’ll be looking to make a successful defence of his title and bank a decent pot in the BetVictor Series, a six event pool where the player who makes the most money from those six tournaments wins a bonus prize.
Recent Winners
2019 – Neil Robertson
2018 – Jimmy Robertson
2017 – Judd Trump
2016 – Judd Trump
The Format
The entire tour has been invited into this tournament so it is a 128 player field. The first round right the way through to the quarter final is the best of nine frames with the semi-finals being the best of 11. The final is the best of 17 frames on Sunday where the champion will be crowned. Saturday is the big day as the quarter finals and the semi-finals will be played on the same day so it could be a survival of the fittest to determine the winner of the tournament. The event is live on Eurosport throughout the week.
Top Quarter
As the defending champion Neil Robertson is the number one seed this week and he’ll be hoping to make a successful defence of his title from there. There are four members of the top 16 in every quarter this week and the three men from the elite group in this section of the draw are Shaun Murphy, the Tour Championship winner Stephen Maguire and a Joe Perry who is back in the top 16 after various ranking points came off ahead of the new season.
The man who Perry replaced is one of the household names in this quarter from outside the top 16. That is Barry Hawkins and he will be joined by Liang Wenbo who could be dangerous this week. Noppon Saengkham, Tom Ford and Zhou Yuelong are all in the top 32 and in this quarter while Alan McManus, Ben Woollaston, Sam Craigie and Mark King are just some of the other very capable players in this part of the draw.
Second Quarter
The World Championship semi-final finalist Mark Selby is the top seed in the second quarter and he’ll want to bounce back from that Crucible disappointment by going deep in this tournament. If he is to do that he might need to overcome Mark Allen, Ding Junhui and Masters champion Stuart Bingham along the way as they are the other players from the top 16 in this part of what looks like a pretty open quarter it must be said.
Former champion Jimmy Robertson is one of the top 32 players in this quarter while Graeme Dott is another. Thepchaiya Un-Nooh and Zhao Xintong are the other two but it isn’t all about them. Ken Doherty is in this quarter looking to pick up some early season wins while Ronnie O’Sullivan has told us to watch out for Louis Heathcote as a rising star. Hossein Vafaei, Yuan Sijun and Michael White are some of the other names to follow here.
Third Quarter
The world number one Judd Trump is actually the third seed this week. That is because the world champion will always be the number two seed unless he is the defending champion of an event. That means Trump heads a quarter where the other big seed is the man who ended his world title defence last month in Kyren Wilson. That would be a juicy quarter final if it comes to it but Jack Lisowski and Dave Gilbert will be aiming to put a spanner in those particular works.
World Championship semi-finalist Anthony McGill is in this quarter and he’ll be looking to build on that fine run while Michael Holt, Ali Carter and Kurt Maflin are other players in the top 32 who will be looking to push for the first silverware of the new season. Championship League winner Luca Brecel, Martin O’Donnell and Dominic Dale are all recognisable names in this quarter. Anthony Hamliton is also here as he plays for the first time since his controversial withdrawal from the World Championship.
Bottom Quarter
Ronnie O’Sullivan begins his latest stint as world champion from the bottom quarter and you get the feeling the longer tournaments are going to be played behind closed doors the better his campaign will be. John Higgins is the highest seed to oppose him in this quarter and they are joined by the third member of the coveted ‘Class of 92’ as Mark Williams is in this section as well. The other top 16 member is Yan Bingtao so this is a loaded section.
Martin Gould got his career back on track in the World Championship and he’ll be out to build on that here. Jimmy White is also in this quarter while the likes of Matthew Selt, Scott Donaldson, Gary Wilson and Xiao Guodong are seed to get through a couple of rounds. Matthew Stevens, Ryan Day, Ricky Walden, Li Hang and Stuart Carrington are just some of the players who will be looking to deny them that.
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Betting
As ever in these 128 man fields I like to take one from each quarter and hope we get a couple go deep in the tournament. My main bets come from the top half and I’ll have a couple of darts in the bottom half. My main bet is Mark Allen, a player who I expect a big season from. We know these behind closed doors events are little more than glorified practice sessions so after a poor World Championship I expect Allen to want to prove a point here. It was only a couple of months ago that Allen was making it through to the Tour Championship final so we shouldn’t write him off just yet. With Trump, O’Sullivan, Wilson and Higgins all in the other half there is the chance for someone to progress deep. I’ll take that to be Allen.
Barry Hawkins has dropped out of the top 16 so I wonder if that will snap him out of the poor run that he is currently in. There were positive signs for Hawkins last week when he won his group in the Championship League and he scored pretty well along the way. We know the quality that Hawkins has but he just needs a few wins to restore the confidence. That Championship League outing will help and if he can pick up a few wins early here I wouldn’t be surprised if he hits top form when it matters. His quarter has a really open feel to it and at 40/1 he could be worth taking.
In the third quarter I’ll pay to see whether Anthony McGill has maintained his form since Sheffield. If he has he could very well be a big price at 80/1. We saw how well he went in Sheffield and really he should have made the world final. That run should have given him the confidence to have a big season this term and if it has he has the potential to go well in this quarter. We are early enough in the season that the bigger names are all still a little bit vulnerable which makes the Scot more appealing. He’s worth a bet at the prices.
Another man who showed his worth at the World Championship is Martin Gould and I think he could be worth siding with in the bottom quarter. Clearly he is going to need to play well if he is going to go deep in the tournament but that certainly isn’t beyond him, and he showed in thrashing Stephen Maguire at the Crucible that he is hitting the ball well again. I got the feeling during that run that he has fallen back in love with snooker again and if he has we can expect him to climb the rankings over the next few months. Gould has John Higgins in the first round but if he can come through that the draw could well open up a bit. At 125/1 I’ll pay to see how he does.
Tips
Back M.Allen to win European Masters (e/w) for a 1.5/10 stake at 19.00 with Coral (1/2 1-2)
Back B.Hawkins to win European Masters (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 41.00 with Coral (1/2 1-2)
Back them here:
Back A.McGill to win European Masters (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 81.00 with Boylesports (1/2 1-2)
Back him here:
PLACED – Back M.Gould to win European Masters (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 126.00 with Sky Bet (1/2 1-2)
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