The Players Championship continues on Wednesday when the first round of the tournament concludes in Telford and the opening quarter final takes place on what looks to be a decent day of snooker.
We’ve seen many of the leading challengers for the week already in this tournament and two of them return for the quarter final in the evening. Before then, four other players look to lay their own marker down in the first round.
Afternoon Session
Barry Hawkins vs Mark Selby
The action on the main table in the first round on Wednesday afternoon sees two regular tournament winners going at it when the European Masters champion Barry Hawkins takes on a man who surprisingly is still looking for his first title of the season in Mark Selby.
Selby might not have won a title this season but he has reached a final and a couple of big semi-finals so he isn’t exactly having a bad campaign, it is more a sign of how hard it is to win tournaments these days than an indictment on the Selby levels. Hawkins has won a competition this season but you would have to say since he won that he has gone very quiet. This is a potentially big week for Barry Hawkins. On the provisional rankings ahead of the end of the season he is sat at 17 and is a grand away from getting back into the top 16 ahead of the World Championship cut off point and with the three players above him in the standings either not in the tournament or already eliminated from it, Hawkins has a golden chance to ensure a Crucible return. Selby isn’t going to go lightly though, although I didn’t think he looked great at the Welsh Open last week. I suspect this will be a close one but I’d have liked to have seen some good form from Hawkins coming in to trust him. I’ll leave this one alone.
Zhang Anda vs Noppon Saengkham
We have an all-Asian clash over on table two where the International Championship winner Zhang Anda is the headline attraction when he faces off against the Scottish Open finalist Noppon Saengkham for the right to have a crack at John Higgins in the quarter final.
Zhang had that purple patch around the time of winning the International Championship, having reached the final of the English Open a couple of weeks previously, but since then he has been a little up and down and you are beginning to wonder if he is the real deal as he looked back then or whether that was just a golden month. Saengkham was having a pretty quiet season up until that Scottish Open but he hasn’t really pulled up trees since then. This is a match Zhang should be capable of winning if he is of the level he showed earlier in the campaign but I’m not convinced enough to pull the trigger on him so I’ll leave this one alone.
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Evening Session
Judd Trump vs Ali Carter
The evening session sees the start of the quarter finals as the number one seed Judd Trump looks for a spot in another semi-final this season when he takes on the man he beat in the Wuhan Open final earlier in the campaign in Ali Carter.
That was one of two finals Carter has been involved in this term so he is back to playing his best stuff on the big occasion and he looked very good against Tom Ford in the first round on Tuesday night. It is almost like the prestige and magnitude of this tournament brought the best out of him and if that is the case then there is no reason why he can’t perform well here. Trump usually builds his way into a tournament so you have to think he will kick on from what was a pretty acceptable performance against Chris Wakelin on the opening night. These two have met three times over the last 12 months with two of the matches going to a deciding frame and then that final in Wuhan where Trump won 10-7 but that was 6-5 at one point so meetings between the two men have been quite close in recent times. I see no reason why that won’t be the case here so the strong odds against on over 9.5 frames could offer up some value.
Tips
Back J.Trump vs A.Carter – Over 9.5 frames for a 3/10 stake at 2.30 with BetVictor
