The Tour Championship is a tournament which is gathering importance and plenty of prestige on the snooker calendar and it begins on Monday when the eight best players on the money list for the season head to Hull to battle it out in the final event of the Duelbits Series.
Neil Robertson won this tournament a year ago but such has been the surprising struggles he has had this term he hasn’t qualified for the event. In fact, no former champion is in the field this week so a new name is guaranteed to be etched on the trophy.
Recent Winners
2022 – Neil Robertson
2021 – Neil Robertson
2020 – Stephen Maguire
2019 – Ronnie O’Sullivan
The Format
One of the more appealing things about this tournament is that with only eight players taking part we have the whole event on one table with one match on each of the seven days of the competition. The other really inviting thing about this event is that from the quarter finals right the way through to the final every match in the competition is the best of 19 frames. The champion will be decided in the final on Sunday. The players slot into the draw in the position they sit in the money list for this season.
Top Four Seeds
Mark Allen has been confirmed as the number one seed for pretty much the entirety of the second half of the campaign. Allen has won in Northern Ireland, at the UK Championship and in the World Grand Prix this season so will be looking for a magnificent fourth title on the season over the course of this week. He hasn’t played well since that Grand Prix success though so that will give the rest of the field a bit of belief, but Allen has had maximum time to prepare for the tournament and you just suspect it might bring the best out of him. Allen was a finalist here in 2020 so knows what it is all about.
Shaun Murphy is the number two seed. He looked to be going nowhere this season but then from the clouds he made it into the Welsh Open final which earned him his spot at the Players Championship which he went on to win to catapult himself up to the second spot on the season rankings. Murphy didn’t just win the Players Championship, he demolished all in his path and if he has that form with him here he is going to take a lot of stopping. I certainly wouldn’t want to be against him right now.
Mark Selby had to battle right to the end of the qualifying campaign to book his place at the Tour Championship. He was in the top eight heading into the WST Classic courtesy of winning the English Open but he made sure he was in the field here in Hull when he took down the WST Classic last week. He won that in pretty fine style and saw off some good players on the final day which will give him confidence heading this week. He is a very good long match player but as I’m sure he will be reminded this week, he has never won an ITV event. He’s the one to beat for me though despite that.
Ali Carter is another who has had an excellent second part of the season and that was enough to catapult him up to fourth in the season money list. His highlight came at the German Masters when he won that in pretty emphatic and ruthless fashion and then he followed that up with a run to the final of the Players Championship where only Shaun Murphy was too good for him but Carter is back among the big time, has secured his place at the Crucible Theatre next month and might feel he has a free shot at this as a result.
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Lower Four Seeds
Kyren Wilson has been high up in the season rankings ever since he took down the European Masters to kick the campaign off. He hasn’t gone in again since then but he has been consistent enough to make sure he has banked enough money to finish fifth in the order of merit heading to Hull. Wilson is always considered a challenger for the World Championship so this longer distance should suit him but he has lost in the first round in both of the years he has qualified for this. Having not qualified last year he’ll be keen to make his mark this year.
Ryan Day is another player who as good as guaranteed his place in the Tour Championship fairly early. He soared high in the rankings when he won the British Open and has done enough since then to preserve his spot in the top eight even though he has come down the list in recent weeks. Day has never been in this tournament before so it is to his credit he has made it and now that he is here he will be looking to find some form both for this week and to take to the World Championship qualifiers with him should he not make the final here.
Robert Milkins has had a wonderful 2023 so far and he has done enough in making the semi-finals of the German Masters before winning the Welsh Open to make it into this tournament as the penultimate seed. He will make his debut in the tournament but can do so knowing that whatever happens this week he will not need to go through World Championship qualifying so he can just attack the tournament and then give himself enough of a rest before Sheffield.
The final man into the field is Ding Junhui. He scraped in by the skin of his teeth because had Gary Wilson won one more frame in his WST Classic semi-final last week it would have been him here and not Ding. The reason why the Chinese player only just got in is he hasn’t won a ranking tournament this season. He is the only player in the field who hasn’t won a ranking event. His tournament win was in the Six Red World Championship which doesn’t count for this competition. He did make the UK Championship final though and by sneaking into the field he has one last chance to automatically qualify for Sheffield. He needs to make the final here for that to happen.
Betting
This is becoming a very different tournament to the rest of those on the circuit. This is the only event on the entire calendar with multi-session matches played on the one table throughout and as such it is becoming quite a spectacle and you need to be on a player who you know will thrive in those conditions because not all do. Kyren Wilson is one of those and I think these longer format matches will bring the best out of him.
I also think he’s in the better part of the draw too because Mark Allen hasn’t really played well for a while now and there is a reason why Ding is still down in the 20s in terms of ranking even though only seven men have picked up more ranking points than him this season. The other man in his half of the draw is Ali Carter but while he’s played some big matches recently, it has been a while since he has been a regular in events with the stature of this one. I can’t say it isn’t ideal that the bulk of the Wilson points for this season came early in it but he’s a class act and 13/2 in the easier looking half of the two will do for me.
Tips
Back K.Wilson to win Tour Championship (e/w) for a 2/10 stake at 7.50 with BetVictor (1/3 1-2)
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