It is a busy day of action in the German Masters on Friday as the second round finishes in the afternoon session and all of the quarter finals are played in the evening session. By the end of Friday’s play we will know the four men left to do battle for the title over the weekend.
It was a day of carnage in Berlin for the favourites on Thursday as a number of top 16 players were sent packing in no uncertain terms. There were defeats for Mark Allen, Marco Fu, Liang Wenbo, Barry Hawkins and the defending champion Mark Selby as the tournament opened right up.
The bottom half of the draw plays down to the quarter final stage in the afternoon on Friday which means we have the world champion Stuart Bingham back in action. He wasn’t entirely happy with his first round performance and hasn’t had a lot of time to work on what was wrong so it will be interesting to see how he fares against Ryan Day.
Bingham has won the last four meetings between these two but I sense all isn’t right with his game at the minute so I’m reluctant to take him and will look elsewhere for the better punts.
Kyren Wilson takes on Michael Holt in a match he should win but having been 4-1 down to Rory McLeod in the previous round I’ll sit tight with that given that he is my lone outright punt remaining in the tournament.
Luca Brecel takes on Kurt Maflin in a continental battle and one of them will be in the quarter final but I couldn’t really call which one it will be. Brecel looked good on the TV table on Thursday but Maflin should be respected after taking care of Marco Fu in the previous round.
That leaves us with one match which I’m happy to bet on in the afternoon and it involves Mark King and Mark Joyce. Joyce had a good win over Mark Allen in the previous round but I sense that he is in Allen’s head right now as I alluded to in Thursday’s preview so it isn’t entirely clear what Joyce beat in that first round.
Mark King has been in decent form and he had to come through a real battle with Stuart Carrington in the first round. King will have seen the draw open right up here and will be eager to take advantage of it.
King has been in the semi-final and the quarter final of a couple of European Tour events this season so playing on the continent seems to bring out the best in him so it might be that he’s not finished yet this week.
King has won the previous three meetings between these two players which will give him further confidence going into this match and at an attractive looking 10/11 I’ll side with the left hander here.
In the evening we will get all four quarter finals played out but there is only two of them confirmed at the time of writing. There is an all-Scottish battle between Stephen Maguire and Graeme Dott while Judd Trump faces Martin Gould.
Maguire and Dott tend to play out tight matches but they’ve not met since 2013 so whether that trend will continue is anyone’s guess really. Trump and Gould are generally close when they meet but I’ve got a bit of a feeling about Trump this week so I’m reluctant to take him on in the form he has shown so far so I’ll leave the match betting on those two matches alone.
As Friday goes on and more markets go up and the other two quarter finals are confirmed and priced up I’ll have another look at the betting. There won’t be time to do an article on this site but keep an eye on my Twitter feed and if I have any extra bets I will flag them up. For now though it is just King for me.
Back M.King to beat M.Joyce for a 4/10 stake at 1.91 with Bet365
