The first of the two Judgement Day schedules at the UK Championship qualifiers gets played out on Wednesday when eight spots in the main draw at York next week are on the line across two tasty sessions of play in Leicester.
The stakes are getting high now because whoever wins on Wednesday will earn themselves a shot at a seeded player in the opening round of the main draw and bank £10,000 in the process while the losers will be watching the first Triple Crown event of the campaign from home.
Afternoon Session
We are down to just the four tables for the remainder of the qualifying competition and in the afternoon session we will see the highest ranked player on show in Leicester this week looking to book his place in the main draw when the World Championship finalist Jak Jones goes up against Fan Zhengyi in a good looking game. Stuart Bingham is another big name who is taking to the baize. He is this tournament away from completing the Triple Crown and will hope to make the main draw at the expense of Jimmy Robertson while Elliot Slessor will be aiming to continue his fine season when he meets Stephen Maguire. The other match in the session sees Jackson Page taking on Hossein Vafaei for a spot at York.
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Evening Session
There are plenty of big names on show in the evening session on Wednesday as well with Barry Hawkins the highest ranked player taking to the baize. The former world finalist has dropped out of the top 16 and knows he needs to get to York and go well if he is going to be at The Masters. The lowest ranked player left in the draw in Wang Yuchen stands in his way. Jack Lisowski is another one who will be looking to get to the main draw and push for a top 16 spot. He will need to overcome the challenge of the women’s world champion Bai Yulu for that to happen. Wu Yize was a couple of frames away from winning the English Open earlier in the season and he’ll be aiming to set up a shot at the UK Championship title when he takes on David Lilley while the other match sees Ryan Day facing off against Sanderson Lam.
Betting
There isn’t a huge amount that I like the look of over the course of the day on Wednesday but I do think that Fan Zhengyi is value to get the better of Jak Jones. To be fair to Jones, he looked better at the Champion of Champions last week but until then he looked like a man who was struggling to cope with the new status as the world finalist. Even in his first win here he only really performed to the level we would expect rather than anything special.
Fan Zhengyi is probably described best as inconsistent but when he is good he can be very good as we saw when he won the European Masters a few years ago. He hasn’t really done much this season but in the last four events he has been knocked out by Judd Trump, John Higgins twice and Neil Robertson so it has taken an elite player to beat him. Jones is good and probably has plenty more to come but I’m not sure he is elite yet so at the prices I’ll take the chance on the Chinese player here.
Tips
Back F.Zhengyi to beat J.Jones for a 3/10 stake at 2.25 with Betway
