The second quarter final at The Masters takes place inside Alexandra Palace on Thursday evening when two lower seeded players meet for a spot in their first semi-final of the biggest invitational tournament of the year.
You get the feeling this is a huge match for both men and it will be interesting to see who can rise to the occasion or whether this turns into one of those nervy matches in which the end prize shackles the two men.
Hossein Vafaei
Whenever a player gets into a tournament at the detriment of someone else you immediately wonder if their name is on the trophy. If we go back three years Ali Carter got into this tournament when Ronnie O’Sullivan withdrew and he made it all the way to the final and Vafaei will be looking to follow suit as he was only invited into the event when Zhao Xintong was suspended in the week leading up to the competition.
The Iranian has already started making the most of his unexpected chance when he took down the former champion Mark Selby in the opening round. He is becoming something of a nemesis of the Jester so that matchup might have felt like a comfortable one for him. This one might not feel so good. The one thing Vafaei has going for him is that he relished the occasion, the atmosphere and the spotlight and that is usually the undoing of a debutant here. You get the impression he’ll need to be beaten rather than beat himself.
Jack Lisowski
There is no doubt that year on year there is improvement in Jack Lisowski and I think we saw it against John Higgins in the opening round. Lisowski isn’t ranked in a position where he is going to get an easy draw in this tournament and the Scot was one of the tougher ones he could have got, but he took the game to Higgins and then when he had to he was able to defend his position very strongly. That is the area of the Lisowski game which has come on leaps and bounds.
There is a different dynamic to this match for Lisowski though. For maybe the first time ever at The Masters he is going to be the favourite to make it through to the semi-final. Expectation is a tough beast to carry at the best of times let alone when there are 2,000 people in the arena trying to pull you through. You get the impression that Lisowski will score well in this match so the outcome might be determined on the quality of the safety game of the Englishman.
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Head-to-head
These two have met seven times in the past and it is Jack Lisowski who has very much had the better of those battles. He has won six of them to the one of Vafaei and when you look at the frame count it paints a very dominant fixture. He leads 32-17 which highlights the margin he wins by when he comes out on top. This will obviously be their first meeting at The Masters with this being the debut year for Vafaei. They have played each other on three occasions over the best of 11 frames with Lisowski winning the lot including in their last battle which was at the UK Championship earlier in the season. History is firmly in the Lisowski camp here.
Betting
Hossein Vafaei played excellently in the first round but he knew he had the beating of Mark Selby having done it earlier in the season. He has the opposite vibes here because Jack Lisowski has such a good record against him and I don’t think we can ignore that. Lisowski doesn’t just beat Vafaei, the closest the Iranian has got in the six defeats to him is 5-4 at the European Masters a few years ago. The other five Lisowski wins have been 6-3, 4-0, 4-0, 6-4 and 6-2.
Those are comprehensive wins so you would imagine if Lisowski gets out in front here he could very easily run away with this match quite quickly as we have seen a few players do this week. We know that both players are in decent scoring form so the difference here could well be the more improved tactical play of Lisowski. At times he was better than Higgins in that department in the first round so you’ve got to think he’ll have the measure of Vafaei in it too. I think Lisowski can continue his dominance of this matchup here.
Tips
Back J.Lisowski (-1.5 frames) to beat H.Vafaei for a 3/10 stake at 1.95 with William Hill
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