It is the final day of qualifying for the Welsh Open on Thursday and by the end of the day we will know the official line-up for the main draw with the last 18 spots in the competition which gets underway on Monday being filled.
We have four sessions of play taking place over the course of the day with everyone on show needing four frames to book their spot in Llandudno next week and with that tournament impacting the rest of the season spots there will be keenly sought after.
Morning Session
The German Masters semi-finalist Yuan Sijun will be the highest ranked player on show in the morning session on Thursday. The Chinese star takes on Amir Sarkhosh for a place in the main draw. Martin O’Donnell will be involved in one of the other matches when he plays Wang Yuchen while Graeme Dott will look to qualify for the main draw when he takes on Oliver Lines. Anthony Hamilton and Jamie Clarke are the other two players entering the competition in this session. The former meets Stan Moody while Louis Heathcote is the opponent for the latter.
Early Afternoon Session
Ricky Walden is due to be the highest ranked player on show in the first part of the afternoon. It will be a remarkable feat if he is able to compete having been in a hospital in Germany this time last week. If he is then Artemijs Zizins will be his opponent. Xu Si is another leading player on show in this session when he meets Bulcsu Revesz while there will be plenty of attention on the match between Scott Donaldson and Jimmy White. The other two matches have Ben Woollaston facing Joshua Cooper and Sanderson Lam meeting Alfie Burden.
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Later Afternoon Session
We have a full session in the second part of the afternoon as well where Thepchaiya Un-Nooh is the highest ranked player competing. He has a match against Ben Mertens for a place in the main draw. Fan Zhengyi is a former ranking event winner and he’ll be looking to deny Andrew Pagett a chance to compete in his home tournament while Aaron Hill will look to build on his run to the quarter final of the German Masters when he faces Rory Thor. The other two matches in this session see the former winner Joe Perry playing Ma Hailong while Liu Hongyu takes on Florian Nuessle.
Evening Session
That leaves us with three matches in the evening session but it could very well be that we have saved the best for last in that regard. The highest ranked player on show is another former champion of this event in the form of Jordan Brown. He will look to qualify for the Welsh Open again at the expense of Gong Chenzhi. Matthew Stevens is a popular Welsh player who the home crowds will hope to see in Llandudno next week. If that is going to happen then he needs to overcome Hammad Miah while David Grace will look to give his chances of remaining on the tour a boost when he takes on Marco Fu.
Betting
I’ll go with a couple of bets over the course of the day with the first one coming in the morning session where Oliver Lines looks a big price at 13/10 to get the better of a Graeme Dott who is clearly fading in his career. Dott has always been better over the longer formats and the longer the season has gone on the more he has struggled for results. To be fair to him, he did qualify for the German Masters last week and probably should have beaten Zhang Anda when he got there but there is nothing to suggest that he is anywhere close to his best form. Lines has had a decent season. He was a semi-finalist at the British Open and then beat both Wu Yize and Mark Allen in the Northern Ireland Open before being edged out in a deciding frame in UK Championship qualifying by Neil Robertson. Lines opened his qualifying campaign here with a win over Ahmed Aly Elsayed where he slammed in a ton and a couple of other decent breaks. I just think he has more winning momentum and looks a big price here.
Moving into the evening session and I just have to take Jordan Brown on. He is another who hasn’t had a great season with just six wins in total since the Championship League and of those six wins, one came against an amateur and three others ranked outside the top 100 so he has to be vulnerable even against Gong Chenzhi. Chenzhi probably hasn’t had the season he would have wanted but he did beat Brown in International Championship qualifying earlier in the campaign and that should give him confidence here. He has also had a match on the tables this week where he cruised past Ken Doherty without losing a frame. This will be the first time Brown has played a competitive match in 2025 because he lost to the aforementioned Doherty so there is a form line in the favour of Chenzhi directly between these two men and via Doherty so I have to take the Chinese player here.
Tips
Back O.Lines to beat G.Dott for a 3/10 stake at 2.30 with Betfred
Back G.Chenzhi to beat J.Brown for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with William Hill
Back him here:
