The qualifying competition for the Scottish Open begins on Tuesday with the players ranked 65-128 and some invitees do battle for a place in the second round where they would be one more win from making it through to the main draw.
This is the third of the qualifying events in the Home Nations and with many players involved in this having made it to Belfast at the weekend there is a chance to top up their form while hopefully making another main draw.
Morning Session
There are four tables in operation this week and they are all occupied throughout the day on Tuesday. Liam Davies is the highest ranked player on show in the morning session when he takes on the Egyptian player Hatem Yassen while Amir Sarkhosh is another player looking to make it into the next round. He will meet one of a few amateurs in the event in Amaan Iqbal with the other two matches seeing Liam Highfield going up against the Polish youngster Michal Szubarcyk and Haris Tahir facing another amateur in Stuart Carrington.
Early Afternoon Session
The Latvian ace Artemijs Zizins is the leading light in the first part of the afternoon. He meets the other Polish player on tour in Mateusz Baranowski for a place in the second round. We have an all-Asian battle in this session as well with Huang Jiahao meeting the female star Ng On Yee. Sam Craigie is a player who should be coming into these events much later than he does but he’ll be aiming to make the second round when he faces Florian Nuessle with the other match seeing Chris Totten begin the qualifying campaign for his home tournament when he takes on the English amateur Ryan Davies.
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Later Afternoon Session
There are four more matches taking place in the second part of the afternoon on Tuesday where the Belgian star Julien Leclercq is the highest ranked player on show. He meets the German amateur Umut Dikme who is getting into most of the events at the minute. Reanne Evans is having a fine season and she will hope that she can continue that when she goes up against Jiang Jun while Zhao Hanyang will look to make progress to the second round. He might face an amateur in Ashley Hugill but that status is only in name as he is much better than that. Haydon Pinhey will face Mink Nutcharut in the other game.
Evening Session
Louis Heathcote will have the honour of being the highest ranked player on show in the evening session. The talented player will look to make it through to the next round at the expense of Yao Pengcheng. The majority of the attention will be on the match between Iulian Boiko and Jimmy White while two Chinese players also face off in this session when Lan Yuhao faces his countryman Liu Wenwei. The other match on the evening is a repeat of a clash from the English Open when Mitchell Mann faces Ian Burns.
Betting
It is that last match which has my attention on Tuesday. Mitchell Mann was 3-0 down in that English Open clash with Ian Burns last month but he still came back to win 4-3 and with a better start here you would have to think that he is good enough to get the job done in this one. Burns hasn’t exactly pulled up trees since that match so you wonder whether it took a bit out of him and if it has then Mann would be in a good place to capitalise on that.
Mann went out in the next round in the English Open but since then he has reached the quarter final of the British Open, beating the likes of Barry Hawkins along the way before he ran into a Shaun Murphy in the last eight who was unstoppable that week. Mann has clearly taken confidence from that run though because he took care of the English Open winner Mark Allen in the qualifying event for the International Championship so he is going along quite nicely and at odds against he feels a fairly obvious play here.
Tips
Back M.Mann to beat I.Burns for a 3/10 stake at 2.20 with William Hill
Back him here:
