We’ve made it to the final round of qualifying for the Shanghai Masters and at the end of the three sessions of play on Friday we will know the identity of the 16 men heading to China to take on the top 16 in the world in the main draw later in the month.
Friday sees those ranked 17-32 in the world come out for the first time. They face the winners of Thursday for the right to a plane ticket to Shanghai in three weeks time.
Morning Session
As with Thursday we have six matches in the first session of the day with two of them being on the streamed tables and the other four away from the cameras. The two streamed matches in the session is the all-Chinese battle between Liang Wenbo and Anda Zhang and the one seeing Anthony Hamilton taking on Pail Davison.
Away from that there are matches between Michael White and Jimmy Robertson, Michael Holt takes on Mark King, Peter Ebdon faces Scott Donaldson and Ben Woollaston plays Jack Lisowski in a potentially entertaining match.
Afternoon Session
There are only five matches in the afternoon and evening sessions on Friday. The streamed matches in the afternoon see Stephen Maguire looking to get his season going early when he takes on Andrew Higginson and Dave Gilbert faces Ian Preece in the other match.
The other matches include Alan McManus vs Jamie Jones, Robert Milkins against Adam Duffy and Mark Davis against Kurt Maflin in one of the closer looking matches on the day.
Evening Session
The qualifying event concludes with five more matches and the two that we can watch are Matt Selt against Hammad Miah and the clash between Martin Gould and Matthew Stevens.
The other three matches sees Luca Brecel facing Stuart Carrington, Graeme Dott going up against Mei Xiwen, the surprise package who is only one match from a historic qualification and there is also a match between Ryan Day and Nigel Bond.
Betting
I’m going with two matches to finish off a busy week. We’ve seen a lot of the seeded players struggle as their opponents have had match practice on the tables and I wouldn’t be surprised if that continues in places on Friday.
In the afternoon session I like Kurt Maflin again. He was in really good form against Rod Lawler on Thursday notching up a 50 break in every frame in a 5-0 win and the Norwegian has already been tough to beat when he scores heavily. Mark Davis is his opponent and he had a good run in Germany last weekend but in truth he didn’t beat a lot and if Maflin continues how he has been playing this week he is more than capable of winning that one.
Another man who made a 50 break in every frame he won on Thursday was Stuart Carrington and he looks good value off the back of that against a Luca Brecel who hasn’t really got his season up and running just yet. Carrington added a century to four half centuries in the previous round and that followed up a ton and four 50+ breaks the day before. He’s playing really well and has to be backed at odds against.
Tips
WON – Back K.Maflin to beat M.Davis for a 4/10 stake at 2.25 with Bet365
Back him here:
WON – Back S.Carrington to beat L.Brecel for a 4/10 stake at 2.10 with Coral
Back him here:
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