It is the third round of the Saudi Arabia Snooker Masters on Sunday which means that the players ranked just outside the top 16 come into the competition as we continue to move through the inaugural staging of the tournament.
The players ranked 17-48 in the world enter the tournament at this stage looking for the first of the two wins that they need to join the top 16 players in the business part of the event so the bigger names are starting to materialise in Saudi Arabia.
Afternoon Session
As has been the case throughout the week so far, we have two sets of matches in the afternoon session on Sunday with the first of them seeing the highest ranked player entering at this stage of the event on show when Robert Milkins takes on Rory Thor. Chris Wakelin and Stuart Bingham are both looking for a big week to push towards the top 16 and they begin their campaigns against Robbie McGuigan and Xing Jihao respectively. Anthony McGill and Ricky Walden are two others who start their title quest here. Ashley Carty and Liu Hongyu are their opponents. The other three matches sees Fan Zhengyi facing Jimmy Robertson, Jamie Jones going up against Anthony Hamilton and Thepchaiya Un-Nooh meeting Artemijs Zizins.
Si Jiahui is the highest ranked player on show in the second set of matches on Sunday afternoon. His opponent is the veteran Jimmy White. Hossein Vafaei also begins his campaign in this part of the day. He takes on Ishpreet Singh Chadha while Joe Perry goes up against Ben Woollaston. We have a Leicester derby as Joe O’Connor meets Louis Heathcote while Robbie Williams takes on Lei Peifan. Matt Selt has had a rough time of it with his cue being smashed en route to Saudi Arabia and he takes on Allan Taylor presumably with a cue he will borrow from someone else. The other match in this session sees Pang Junxu taking on Stuart Carrington.
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Evening Session
Jack Lisowski is the highest ranked player to enter the tournament in the first part of the evening session and he will be expected to overcome the challenge of Andrew Pagett without too much fuss. Neil Robertson is another one who comes in at this point of the event. He will meet the promising amateur Paul Deaville for a place in round four while Stephen Maguire meets the Belgian youngster Ben Mertens. Matthew Stevens will be looking for a decent week and he starts out against Martin O’Donnell. Dave Gilbert has had a good few months and he will be hoping that continues against Alfie Burden while Jordan Brown starts out against Bulcsu Revesz. The other two matches see Wu Yize playing Antoni Kowalski and Jackson Page meeting Gong Chenzhi.
The second part of the evening will be headed up by Ryan Day who takes on Stan Moody who has already won two matches to make it this far. The support acts are Zhou Yuelong and Noppon Saengkham. They face Jiang Jun and Amir Sarhkosh respectively. Elsewhere, Elliot Slessor starts what he hopes will be a big week when he meets Haydon Pinhey while Yuan Sijun takes on Sanderson Lam. The other three matches have Xiao Guodong meeting Duane Jones, Lyu Haotian facing Marco Fu and Scott Donaldson goes up against Tian Pengfei.
Betting
There isn’t a huge amount that I fancy over the course of Sunday, largely because I’m not a massive fan of betting on these best of seven matches but the one bet that I do like comes in the afternoon session where I think Ben Woollaston is an ounce of value at even money to get the better of a Joe Perry who appears to be very much in the twilight of his career and running down the clock on it. Perry enters the tournament here so he’ll be coming in cold and having only winning one match away from the Championship League he isn’t carrying much form with him.
Woollaston has started the season positively. He has won all of his qualifying matches bar one where he lost out in a deciding frame in the Xi’an Grand Prix preliminary outing and he also qualified from his initial group in the Championship League too. He has had a match here where he had a good win over Oliver Lines where he made a century on the way to that win. He is definitely the man in better form of the two and the even money that he converts that into a victory looks good to me here.
Tips
Back B.Woollaston to beat J.Perry for a 3/10 stake at 2.00 with William Hill
Back him here:
