The Welsh Open moves into the second round on Wednesday when the entire set of matches take place across another day of three sessions of action inside the Venue Cymru in Llandudno as the last Home Nations event of the year continues to pick up speed.
Some big names exited the tournament in the opening round but this is the first stage where top 32 players can meet each other and we do have some good matches on the schedule throughout the day as a result of that.
Morning Session
As has been the case throughout the week so far, we have just the two matches in the morning session and on the main table we have a clash of former winners of the competition as John Higgins, a multiple champion of this tournament, goes up against the winner of two years ago in Robert Milkins. The other table will see arguably the biggest rising star in Wales on show when Jackson Page goes in search of a place in the last 16 of his home event when he takes on the man who dumped out the defending champion Gary Wilson in the first round in the form of Ishpreet Singh Chadha.
Afternoon Session
As always in the early stages of a Home Nations event we have two full sets of matches across all four tables in the afternoon session and it will be the home star Mark Williams who graces the TV table first up. He faces Stephen Maguire while on the other main table Zhang Anda will look to make it into the third round when he meets his countryman Pang Junxu. There is a huge match in terms of the rankings as Tom Ford plays Neil Robertson with the top 16 on the minds of both men while Wu Yize, another who is pushing for the top 16, takes on Sanderson Lam who had a good win over Barry Hawkins in the previous round.
The second part of the afternoon will be spearheaded by Mark Allen. He meets the recent German Masters semi-finalist Yuan Sijun in a good looking game on the TV table. Matthew Stevens will look to reach the last 16 of his home event once again when he plays Dave Gilbert while Jamie Clarke gets his campaign underway having had a bye when Ronnie O’Sullivan pulled out of their first round clash. Matthew Selt is his opponent. Jamie Jones is yet another Welshman looking to progress when he faces off against Robbie Williams.
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Evening Session
The remaining matches take place in the evening session where the world champion Kyren Wilson will be the first player onto the TV table. He takes on Joe O’Connor who will be looking to put up a good account of himself. Ali Carter hasn’t won many matches recently but having won his first round match he’ll be looking to get the better of Hossein Vafaei. Ryan Day will look to maintain the Welsh charge on this tournament when he takes on Ma Hailong while Jack Lisowski will be looking to reach the last 16 at the expense of Chris Wakelin.
Two matches have been saved for the main tables once again for the second part of the evening and the TV table will see the recently crowned Championship League winner Mark Selby going up against the competent Elliot Slessor in what could turn into a bit of a battle. Luca Brecel will look to continue his turnaround in form over on the other main table. He meets Noppon Saengkham in a match that has banana skin written all over it for the Belgian.
Betting
Ryan Day made it into the second round of the competition at the expense of Ben Mertens but it might have been so much different had the Belgian not thrown two of the four frames he lost away. Day is yet to win two matches in the same main draw event this season and I’m not convinced that changes on Wednesday evening when he faces Ma Hailong either. Day didn’t score great against Mertens and some of the chances he gave up will be gobbled up more often than not.
You would imagine that after a fine win over The Masters champion Shaun Murphy in the previous round the Chinese player will be in fine fettle and ready to go after any chances he is offered up. He made a 50 break in all four frames that he won against Murphy and this is a player who also took care of Joe Perry in qualifying and had Ali Carter and Chris Wakelin among his victims on the way to the last 16 of the Northern Ireland Open earlier in the season so he is capable of taking big scalps and he can add another large name to his CV here.
Tips
Back M.Hailong to beat R.Day for a 3/10 stake at 2.63 with Bet365
