Saturday sees the final day of qualifying for the International Championship take place as the final 30 hopefuls get their cues out in Barnsley in the hope of qualifying for the Chinese showpiece.
As always there are some big names in action on Saturday combined with some up and coming stars in a good mix of action. Six matches are on the various live streaming consoles for those who like to watch the action on the baize.
John Higgins, Ken Doherty, Judd Trump and Jimmy White are among the star names looking to book their spot in the main draw at the end of the month. Young stars such as Jamie Jones, Zhao Xintong and Ben Woollaston are among those looking to follow them.
As with the rest of the week so far there looks to be the potential for a number of one sided matches but in those matches the favourites are being asked to cover pretty big handicaps and I’m never a fan of betting on that because the priority is just to win and get through rather than looking particularly good.
There are also a couple of tight matches on the Saturday schedule. They look so tight they are hard to call so finding standout value looks much harder here. In the end I’m going with one to hopefully finish off a decent week so far.
Mike Dunn has been in good touch so far this season. He qualified for and won a couple of matches in the Shanghai Masters recently including turning over Marco Fu and he also has a win over Matthew Stevens in one of the European Tour events so he’s playing well currently.
He faces Mitchell Mann for a place in China in the morning session on Saturday and Mann looks to be there for the taking. He hasn’t won many matches this season so could be struggling for a little bit of confidence. That is a worry for him given that he is playing someone in decent nick so I’m happy to take Dunn to cover a small 1.5 frame handicap.
Back M.Dunn (-1.5 frames) to beat M.Mann for a 4/10 stake at 1.80 with Bet365
Blog snooker YTD: +49.37pts
