The Players Championship has reached the semi-final stage and despite the tournament being played over the best of seven frames so far the cream has generally risen to the top and we are left with four of the best players in the world to battle it out for the title over the weekend.
Sadly our two outright bets bit the dust in a dramatic day of quarter finals on Friday and at the end of it we are left with Barry Hawkins, Ricky Walden, Mark Allen and Shaun Murphy to play in the semi-finals over the best of 11 frames on Saturday.
Hawkins and Walden meet in the afternoon match. These two famously played in the World Championship semi-final back in 2013 and they met at the Crucible the year after too. Hawkins won on both those occasions but Walden won when they played over this distance in The Masters a couple of years ago.
Hawkins played his best snooker of the week to see off Ding in the quarter final on Friday and he’ll need a repeat of that in this match else he might come up short against a man who is clearly in excellent touch.
Ricky Walden has scored so well this week. He has made three tons and an 85 break in the last five frames he’s played in the tournament and Walden is one of those who if he scores well it is a sign of the confidence he has in his all-round game.
The fact these two have done so well at the World Championship in recent times shows that they tend to come into their best form at this time of year. Walden’s form has been the better of the two this week though and I fancy him to edge his way into the final here.
The other match sees two friends taking each other on when Shaun Murphy meets Mark Allen. Both men gave weird performances in the previous round. Allen put his poor performance down to a lack of confidence in his game which was a really frank admission given that he is still in the tournament.
Murphy followed Allen on the match table and looked just as poor but he was always going to have a poor match eventually after his form of the last fortnight has been so good. That said it was to his credit that he came through and now that he is up against an opponent he knows he has to play well against I expect him to do just that.
Allen won their last meeting which came at The Masters at the beginning of the year which was the match when Murphy gave a frame away for missing the ball on three times in a row. I don’t expect any mistakes like that from him here. Allen seemed pretty genuine about his confidence issues so I’m expecting Murphy to get back to full speed and power away from the Northern Irishman here.
WON – Back R.Walden to beat B.Hawkins for a 4/10 stake at 2.20 with Bet365
Back him here:
Back S.Murphy (-1.5 frames) to beat M.Allen for a 4/10 stake at 2.00 with William Hill
Back him here:
