The second day of action in the Shanghai Masters takes place on Tuesday with the wildcard round coming to an end and the first round continuing.
The opening day’s play saw comfortable wins for John Higgins and Martin Gould in the main draw while we lost our first seed too when Ryan Day dumped out Graeme Dott. Four of the five professionals came through the wildcard round unscathed but Jamie Jones was a surprise casualty.
The three remaining wildcard matches all take place in the early session on Tuesday with Tom Ford, Jamie Cope and Kyren Wilson looking to avoid a wasted journey. Wilson might have the hardest task of the three but hopefully they come through unscathed.
I’m not for betting on those wildcard matches so I’ll leave them alone and focus on the first round games. Stuart Bingham takes on Jamie Jones’ conqueror Fang Xiongman in a match he really should win but the Chinese amateur has had a game on the tables and that can be advantageous so I’ll leave that alone.
Moving into the later session there are four more matches. The highlight of them sees local hero Ding Junhui taking on Alan McManus. Stephen Maguire faces Michael Holt, Judd Trump plays Robert Milkins in what should be a quick match and Marco Fu plays Mike Dunn.
Everyone in the arena will want Ding to come past McManus but I don’t think he is a certainty to do it by any means. We saw Ding really struggle last season and he hasn’t played much this season so he could definitely be rusty.
Any chance of McManus being rusty disappeared when he played in a wildcard match on Monday. Not only did he come through that 5-1 with plenty to spare but he banged in a couple of centuries along the way so that shows he is in good nick at the minute.
Given McManus’ wonderful safety game and the fact he’s clearly scoring well the Scot could end up giving China’s number one a much tougher game than he’d like. I’ll chance McManus there.
I’m taking one Scot in McManus but I’m opposing another one in the form of Stephen Maguire. He didn’t look fantastic in Thailand last week losing to a couple of players you’d have expected him to beat easily and while he got out of the group he went no further.
Michael Holt played last week and went well enough compared to expectations and that continued a good run of form that he has been on. Holt made the semi-final of the Paul Hunter Classic last month where he lost to the eventual winner Ali Carter but prior to that he beat Judd Trump so his confidence will be high right now and at 7/4 he looks overpriced to see off the Scot.
Back A.McManus to beat D.Junhui for a 3/10 stake at 3.40 with Coral
Back M.Holt to beat S.Maguire for a 4/10 stake at 2.75 with Boylesports
