The second day of qualifying for the International Championship takes place in Barnsley on Thursday with 30 more players looking to win a match and book their spot in the main tournament in China.
With decent prize money in the main event and matches best of 11 in the early rounds the big names come out to play with a little more confidence this week which makes finding value a little more difficult but with 15 matches being played over three sessions on Thursday there is enough to go at.
There are some really big names looking to book their spot in the main event on Thursday. Shaun Murphy, Ali Carter, Stephen Maguire and Marco Fu and among those in action on the second day of qualifying.
In truth this is a day where there are a lot of one sided scorelines expected as those high up in the rankings take on those lower down the list so we’re either going to have to take on big handicaps or keep our powder largely dry and wait for the rest of the week. I’m going to take the latter option although there is one bet I like for Thursday.
Jamie Cope has been in the doldrums for a while but there have been signs this season that his game is coming back to a position he would like it to be in. He has gone well in a couple of events this season and has a win over Graeme Dott and Neil Robertson to his name already this campaign.
Cope goes up against an Anthony Hamilton who is seeing his ranking heading into freefall at the minute. The ‘Sheriff of Pottingham’ hasn’t been getting many positive results at all recently and is starting to come under mounting pressure for his tour spot.
I often state in these qualifying events that form and momentum beats reputation more often than not and I’m definitely siding with that here. The odds suggest this could be one of the closest matches of the day but I expect Cope to make it as one sided as many others.
Back J.Cope (-1.5 frames) to beat A.Hamilton for a 4/10 stake at 1.87 with Coral
Blog snooker YTD: +42.89pts
