After the highs of the Hong Kong Masters last week, another well attended snooker tournament takes place this week and the first Home Nations event, the Northern Ireland Open, is played out at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast.
Mark Allen thrilled a huge home crowd here last season to win the title in tough circumstances for him personally. The British Open finalist will be looking to make a successful defence of his crown but this tournament looks wide open.
Recent Winners
2021 – Mark Allen
2020 – Judd Trump
2019 – Judd Trump
2018 – Judd Trump
2017 – Mark Williams
2016 – Mark King
The Format
These Home Nations events have been around for a while now and while the format of them hasn’t changed, the way the arenas have been put together have. There are now just three tables in action throughout the event, which allows us to follow the action a lot easier, and there has been a qualifying round to avoid taking the whole 128 players in the field to the main venue. Some of those qualifiers have been held over and will be played on Sunday through to Monday with the main draw beginning on Monday. The tournament is the best of seven frames up to the quarter finals which are played over the best of nine frames on Friday with the two semi-finals the best of 11 frames on the Saturday and the title will be won on the second Sunday of the event over the best of 17 frames.
Top Quarter
The defending champion is always the number one seed in a snooker tournament which means that Mark Allen will be the leading light in the top quarter as he looks to make a successful defence of the title. All of the top 16 when the draw was made had their qualifying match held over to the venue so they all remain in the bracket. In this top quarter the other three players are Mark Williams, Kyren Wilson and Ricky Walden who had a good year last season.
Right throughout this draw there are a number of household names in it and in this quarter we have the Shootout champion Hossein Vafaei, Stephen Maguire, who will be looking for a good run to arrest his slide down the rankings, Xiao Guodong, Jimmy Robertson and the former world champion Ken Doherty. This is a pretty competitive quarter which is sure to give us plenty of close action and tight matches.
Second Quarter
The former world champion Mark Selby is the top man in the second quarter. He has started this season positively and will be looking for a title to confirm his good form. He is seeded to meet Neil Robertson in the quarter final with the Australian a tougher one to judge with him consciously taking longer breaks at the start of a season to be spot on for the bigger events of it. The other two top 16 players in this quarter are Jack Lisowski and Barry Hawkins.
There are plenty of other decent names in this section of the draw. They include the second ranked Northern Irish player Jordan Brown. The European Masters winner from last season is in here too in Fan Zhengyi while the likes of Thepchaiya Un-Nooh, Michael White, Championship League finalist Lu Ning and Sam Craigie will all be looking for a big week. Another recognisable name who is in this quarter is Ding Junhui.
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Third Quarter
Judd Trump owned this tournament for three years prior to last season and he is the top dog in the third quarter looking to get the title back. His campaign started in fair fashion at the British Open but he’ll be looking for silverware here. John Higgins is the man seeded to stop him in the last eight but as in all the other quarters there are two other top 16 players looking to stop that from happening. They are Stuart Bingham and Shaun Murphy who have been quiet for a while in terms of title success.
There are some big players outside the top 16 who have made it through their qualifying match to take their place in this draw. Dave Gilbert is the biggest one of those but Robert Milkins is a relatively recent title winner in the Gibraltar Open and he’s in this section too. Tom Ford, Scott Donaldson, Zhou Yuelong and Noppon Saengkham are all in here too while the veteran Dominic Dale will hope for a big week as well.
Bottom Quarter
Ronnie O’Sullivan was crowned the Hong Kong Masters champion last week and he will head to Belfast looking to win this title for the first time. The world champion will head the way in the bottom quarter of the draw where Zhao Xintong will be the man seeded to face him in the quarter final. The Championship League winner Luca Brecel and former Masters champion Yan Bingtao are the other two top 16 players in this section.
Anthony McGill dropped out of the top 16 ahead of the draw for this tournament being made but he is in this quarter as is the former Indian Open champion Matthew Selt. Martin Gould is another player with titles to his name who is in this section. Tian Pengfei has made a good start to the season while the former winner Mark King will hope to revive positive memories this week. Lyu Haotian and Pang Junxu are a pair of Chinese youngsters who could go deep.
Betting
I am not one for backing defending champions in sport because there is a lot of demands on their time but the one positive they have is they get top billing in the schedule and will always be on the main table and I think that can play into the hands of Mark Allen who has started the season on fire with his run to the British Open final a real highlight. He scored well in that tournament and his safety play was in good order. He has spoken about wanting to be involved in events like the Hong Kong Open and he’ll know he has to win tournaments for that to happen. This is his own one of those as he gets good support and he has the draw to go deep here so I’ll take him to retain the title.
I always think form at this stage of a season is a big thing and given that Luca Brecel won the opening event of it he is clearly in decent enough touch. I’m wary of backing anyone who was in Hong Kong last week both because of the travelling involved and also there has to be a comedown from playing in that atmosphere to here. That might count against Ronnie O’Sullivan who is in Brecel’s quarter. Zhao Xintong missed that event due to testing positive for Covid so we don’t know if he is 100% for this either. Brecel ran into a rampant Graeme Dott at the British Open so will be eager to make up for that here. He won the Scottish Open last season so we know he can go all the way in these Home Nations events and at 50/1 he feels a big price this week.
Tips
Back M.Allen to win Northern Ireland Open (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 15.00 with BetVictor (1/2 1-2)
Back him here:
Back L.Brecel to win Northern Ireland Open (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 51.00 with William Hill (1/2 1-2)
Back him here:
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