The second Home Nations event of the season gets underway on Sunday when the tour heads to Belfast for the main stages of the Northern Ireland Open, the latest event which takes us closer to the UK Championship ranking cut off.
Kyren Wilson was the winner of this tournament a year ago and the former world champion is in the field looking to make a successful defence of his title but we have seen plenty of players show good form who are capable of dethroning him.
Recent Winners
2024 – Kyren Wilson
2023 – Judd Trump
2022 – Mark Allen
2021 – Mark Allen
2020 – Judd Trump
2019 – Judd Trump
2018 – Judd Trump
2017 – Mark Williams
2016 – Mark King
The Format
We have the same format for the Home Nations events which was put in use for the first time last year. The top 32 players in the rankings have bypassed the opening two rounds and will face one of the players to come through in the third round of the event. The draw is in order of the rankings and is a straight knockout. The first round through to the last 16 are the best of seven frames while the quarter finals take place on the Friday over the best of nine frames. The two semi-finals are the best of 11 frames and the Alex Higgins Trophy will be won over the best of 17 frames in the second Sunday final. The winner pockets £100,000.
Top Quarter
The defending champion is always the number one seed in the snooker world which means that Kyren Wilson will be placed right at the top of the draw bracket. We’ve got a couple of withdrawals from this event so it means that Mark Selby will be the man seeded to face the Shanghai Masters winner of earlier in the campaign. It also means that Wu Yize is in the draw in the 16 slot with Zhang Anda the other top 16 member in this part of the bracket.
The four other players in this half of the draw entering at this stage of the tournament are the former Scottish Open finalist Joe O’Connor, Dave Gilbert, Matthew Selt and Jack Lisowski while among the qualifiers in this section we have players such as Ryan Day, Thepchaiya Un-Nooh and Oliver Lines who can beat anyone on their day. Scott Donaldson, He Guoqiang, Mark Davis, Haris Tahir and Ian Burns complete the top quarter.
Second Quarter
The second quarter of the draw has suddenly become incredibly wide open because the two main players in it have withdrawn from the tournament. Mark Williams withdrew after winning the Xi’an Grand Prix while Neil Robertson pulled out on the eve of the event because of breathing issues. That leaves a massive opportunity for the two remaining top 16 players in the quarter to have a big week. They are the former finalist here in Chris Wakelin and Ali Carter.
The four other players in this quarter from the top 32 in the world rankings are Tom Ford, Yuan Sijun, the former world champion Stuart Bingham and the Chinese ace Zhou Yuelong who is looking to go one better than he did in the previous Home Nations event when he made the final of the English Open. Others in this quarter after the withdrawals are Stan Moody, Jimmy Robertson, Dylan Emery, Daniel Wells and Lan Yuhao. This is an open quarter.
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Third Quarter
Judd Trump is yet to get his hands on silverware this season but he’ll look to put that right as he bids to get his name on the Alex Higgins Trophy once again from the third quarter. If everything goes to the rankings he is set to run into John Higgins in the quarter final. There are two other members of the top 16 in this quarter and they are the Wuhan Open finalist Gary Wilson and the former World Championship semi-finalist Si Jiahui.
Four other top 32 players are in this quarter too. They are the 2024 world finalist Jak Jones, the man who won the season opening Championship League in Stephen Maguire, the dangerous Jackson Page and Pang Junxu. Eight players have qualified for this quarter with the former world champion Luca Brecel one of them. Louis Heathcote, Chang Bingyu, Martin O’Donnell and the British Open finalist Anthony McGill are among them.
Bottom Quarter
The world champion Zhao Xintong hasn’t had the season he would have been expected to have after landing the big one at the Crucible back in May so this feels like a big week for him. He is housed in the bottom quarter where withdrawals mean that Barry Hawkins is his potential quarter final opponent should this one go to the rankings. If it doesn’t then both the home star Mark Allen and the recent British Open winner and Xi’an Grand Prix finalist Shaun Murphy will be looking to go deep.
The other four players in this quarter who begin their tournament in the main draw are the Saudi semi-finalist Elliot Slessor, Hossein Vafaei, Noppon Saengkham and the man who will defend the Scottish Open later in the season in Lei Peifan. This is a really good quarter though because the form man Aaron Hill is in it from the qualifiers as are dangerous challengers in Zak Surety, Robert Milkins, Ben Woollaston and the other home ace Jordan Brown.
Betting
I’ll take a couple of bets for this tournament. I have to go with someone in the second quarter now that both Mark Williams and Neil Robertson are out of the equation. They have left it open for the rest. Two of the players I had my eye on were Ali Carter and Stan Moody but they face each other in the first round which isn’t ideal so I’ll go with the other top 16 player in the form of Chris Wakelin, the man who made the final here a couple of years ago which should motivate him this week because he is defending that money on his ranking. Wakelin hasn’t pulled up too many trees this season but he did make it to the Saudi Arabia semi-final where he ran into that Ronnie O’Sullivan performance which included two maximum breaks. He’s had a couple of nasty draws since then in Wu Yize and Kyren Wilson early in events but that obviously isn’t the case here. He has a kinder draw and at 28/1 he feels overpriced given the absences in his section.
The other bet is a slightly longer shot in Jackson Page but he is one of those players who when he is switched on he can do big things and given the success of his stablemate Mark Williams in the Xi’an Grand Prix last week, Page certainly won’t lack for inspiration this week. He could run into Judd Trump in the second round but this isn’t the Trump that we’ve seen in recent seasons. Page made the quarter final of the English Open where he had taken care of Neil Robertson and Shaun Murphy before Mark Selby got him in a deciding frame. Page is more of a long shot but there is a tournament win somewhere along the line for him. I’ll pay to see if it comes this week.
Tips
Back C.Wakelin to win Northern Ireland Open (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 29.00 with Betway (1/2 1-2)
Back J.Page to win Northern Ireland Open (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 81.00 with Coral (1/2 1-2)
