The opening day of action in the International Championship is a very busy one with three sessions of play out in China and there are some big names beginning their quest for this lucrative title.
They include the last two world champions Mark Selby and Stuart Bingham as well as the Chinese hero Ding Junhui. Throw in Mark Allen, Mark Williams, Ricky Walden, Barry Hawkins and Marco Fu and the cast list becomes a pretty strong one.
As you would expect in the first round of a tournament of this stature there are a lot of one sided matches anticipated so finding the value isn’t all that easy although it helps that the matches are the best of 11 frames so we can get stuck into some handicaps and that is what I’m going to do.
I’m going to ignore the elite players who are expected to come through with ease because we saw in the qualifiers it doesn’t always work like that and after a long flight over they’ll be pleased just to win and move on. There are three I like though.
I don’t usually like taking Mark Selby in the first round of tournaments but his opponent Mike Dunn kindly told us all on twitter this week that he is suffering with a huge cold which has stopped him practicing and made him feel rotten so I’m prepared to take the former world champion here.
Surprisingly with that news now public Selby is only having to give up 2.5 frames and you would think he would trouble that line even were Dunn fighting fit. With news that he isn’t and that he has only turned up for the prize money we can get stuck into Selby there.
Thepchaiya Un-Nooh is a real form horse at the minute and he should be perfectly fine in these heavier conditions. He takes on Ross Muir who came through a right old marathon in the qualifying round against Alan McManus.
Muir won 6-5 in that qualifying match in a game which lasted over six hours so while he deserves to be here we shouldn’t be expecting big things from him now he is here. Un-Nooh has won the six red tournament earlier in the season and he went well in the Asian event last week as well so he’s playing some nice stuff at the minute and should have too much here.
Finally I’m going to take another man who is on the up and that is Anthony McGill. I expect McGill to kick on this season after his excellent World Championship last season and he has landed himself with a nice draw against Sean O’Sullivan here.
The two have met twice in the past and McGill has won pretty comfortably on both occasions and I expect him to win with plenty in hand here. He has kicked on from those meetings whereas O’Sullivan might have a big snooker name but he is nothing like as talented as his namesake Ronnie. I expect the Scot to be too good here.
Back M.Selby (-2.5 frames) to beat M.Dunn for a 4/10 stake at 1.73 with Betfair
Back T.Un-Nooh (-2.5 frames) to beat R.Muir for a 4/10 stake at 2.20 with Paddy Power
Back A.McGill (-2.5 frames) to beat S.O’Sullivan for a 4/10 stake at 2.00 with Betfred
Blog snooker YTD: +46.57pts
