The first round of the qualifying competition for the Welsh Open concludes on Wednesday and the second round begins which means that the opening set of players to book their spot in the main draw will be determined.
This is the day where the players ranked 33-64 enter the tournament in the second round where they are a win away from reaching the main draw next week. We have four sessions of what should be competitive snooker to enjoy.
Morning Session
Jiang Jun is the highest ranked player in the morning session of the action on Wednesday. It is first round matches all the way in this session and the Chinese player meets the Austrian ace Floiran Nuessle while Ma Hailong has a meeting with the home amateur Oliver Briffett-Payne for a place in the second round. Rory Thor is another player who will take on a home amateur. He meets the youngster Riley Powell. The other three matches sees Andrew Pagett facing Mink Nutcharut, Bulcsu Revesz plays Anton Kazakov and Ben Mertens meets Simon Blackwell.
Early Afternoon Session
Five matches take place in the first part of the afternoon with two of them coming in the first round. They see Marco Fu meeting Jonas Luz while the other one sees Gong Chenzhi playing Ken Doherty. We move into the second round for the other matches with Jimmy Robertson the highest ranked player in qualifying. He meets Allan Taylor while Joe O’Connor, the next highest ranked player in the field, takes on the former women’s world champion Reanne Evans. The other match has Ashley Carty facing Ishpreet Singh Chadha.
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Later Afternoon Session
It is second round action from here on in on Wednesday with the Scottish Open champion Lei Peifan who meets the home amateur Dylan Emery in the highest profile match of this part of the day. We have two other Welsh players on show in this session with Dominic Dale looking to qualify for the main draw in his final Welsh Open when he plays Mitchell Mann while Daniel Wells goes up against Michael Holt. Elsewhere in this session, He Guoqiang plays Andrew Higginson, Mark Davis faces the Shootout finalist Liam Graham and David Lilley plays Ross Muir.
Evening Session
There are five matches in the evening session with the winners all heading to the main draw next week. Anthony McGill is the highest ranked among them. He will look to build on his run to the quarter final of the German Masters when he takes on Liam Davies while Jamie Jones will look to qualify for his home event at the expense of Ian Burns. Robbie Williams plays Liam Pullen in one of the other matches while Long Zehuang faces Stuart Carrington and Tian Pengfei meets Haydon Pinhey.
Betting
I don’t necessarily like taking on home players looking to qualify for their home event but in the case of Jamie Jones I just can’t avoid it because his form has not been good for a while now really. He has lost some bizarre matches this term to players who you would have expected him to beat fairly comfortably. The likes of Haris Tahir, Ross Muir, Bai Yulu and Alfie Burden have all beaten Jones and you would think Ian Burns would fancy adding himself to that list.
Burns had a good win in the first round over Mostafa Dorgham which he won 4-0 but what was most impressive about it was he made a 50 break in every frame. This might be more of a challenge for him but if he can score when the chances come along in this match he could quickly have Jones under pressure and he might find that he breaks the back of the contest quite easily. Burns lost a couple of deciding frames to end 2024 but he took two frames off John Higgins at the Scottish Open prior to that and given that he has had a competitive hit in 2025 which Jones hasn’t, I think the value is on Burns in what is a closer match on paper than it might look.
Tips
Back I.Burns to beat J.Jones for a 3/10 stake at 2.50 with Bet365
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