The opening day of the Indian Open snooker tournament is quite a busy one with the wildcard round, the qualifying matches held over for the main venue and some of the first round all on the schedule as the packed tournament gets underway.
Among the big names on show on day one of the tournament are the defending champion Michael White and his namesake Jimmy while the first of our outright picks Kyren Wilson also takes to the table. Graeme Dott, Matthew Stevens and Stuart Bingham are also on show.
Morning Session
The wildcard round is first up on the opening day which sees the Indian star Pankaj Advani looking to make it into the main draw. David Grace, Zhao Xintong, Andrew Higginson and Fang Xiongman are the four men looking to avoid the fate of losing to a wildcard.
The pick of the first round matches in the morning are the ones between Joe Swail and Jimmy White as well as Matthew Stevens vs Mark Joyce while Stuart Bingham faces Steven Hallworth. Graeme Dott is also in action when he plays Oliver Lines.
Afternoon Session
There are seven matches in the second session of play with the likes of Kyren Wilson, Martin Gould, Jamie Jones and the defending champion Michael White all in action. White takes on Anthony Hamilton in a qualifying match while the other three all play first round matches against Martin O’Donnell, Allan Taylor and James Wattana respectively.
All eyes will be on the other qualifying match which sees the Indian former finalist Aditya Mehta taking on Jimmy Robertson for the right to face Xiao Guodong in the first round proper on Wednesday.
Betting
I’m not going to go too mad with bets in this opening day. We don’t have a huge amount of form to go by this season and the matches are best of seven frames which make them a little bit more of a lottery but there are a couple which stand out to me.
In the morning Matthew Stevens looks to continue his decent form when he takes on Mark Joyce. Stevens has won matches in all the qualifying events so far this season and in Riga he made it through a couple of rounds before he ran into the eventual winner Neil Robertson.
Mark Joyce is yet to win a match this season and he might not even have made it here had he not received a bye due to his opponent picking up a suspension so he can’t be making the journey with much confidence. It is good to see Stevens in good nick and I’m going to take him to build on that here.
In the afternoon Michael White and Anthony Hamilton meet for the second time in the space of two events having played a qualifying match for the World Open. White won that but he needed a deciding frame and with the pressure of defending his title, and doing so for the first time, he might be vulnerable here especially after that revelation about his depression.
I often think the best of seven distance is better for Anthony Hamilton as it suits his aggressive style and given that there wasn’t a lot between these two earlier in the season you would have to think that the value is very much on the Nottingham man particularly when you factor in the extra pressure on White’s shoulders.
Tips
WON – Back M.Stevens to beat M.Joyce for a 4/10 stake at 1.80 with Ladbrokes
Back him here:
WON – Back A.Hamilton to beat M.White for a 3/10 stake at 2.40 with 12bet
Back him here:
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