The final Home Nations event of the snooker season takes place this week when 64 of the best players in the world head to Llandudno for the Welsh Open, a tournament which will yield the winner of the BetVictor Series and confirm the field for the World Grand Prix.
Gary Wilson make full use of the benefits that came with winning the tournament a year ago and he is back in the field looking to double his Welsh Open tallies but as always in these events a decent field will be out to stop him.
Recent Winners
2024 – Gary Wilson
2023 – Robert Milkins
2022 – Joe Perry
2021 – Jordan Brown
2020 – Shaun Murphy
2019 – Neil Robertson
2018 – John Higgins
2017 – Stuart Bingham
2016 – Ronnie O’Sullivan
2015 – John Higgins
The Format
The format for the Home Nations events has changed this year. The top 32 players in the rankings have bypassed the qualifying competition and will face one of the qualifiers in the first round of the event. The draw is in order of the rankings and is a straight knockout. The first round through to the last 16 are the best of seven frames while the quarter finals take place on Friday over the best of nine frames. The two semi-finals are the best of 11 frames and the Ray Reardon Trophy will be won over the best of 17 frames in the Sunday final. The winner pockets £100,000.
Top Quarter
The defending champion is always the number one seed in the Home Nations events so Gary Wilson is the top seed and at the top of the draw bracket as a result. He has successfully defended a Home Nations event in the past so he won’t be averse to a big run here but his form hasn’t been great this season which will keep the other three top 16 highest ranked players interested. They are Luca Brecel, Zhang Anda and Tom Ford.
The biggest name among the other players in the top quarter is the English Open champion Neil Robertson who will be looking to bookend the Home Nations series with title wins. Jackson Page has made it in as an automatic qualifier and he’ll want to impress on home soil while Welsh qualifiers Dominic Dale and Dylan Emery will hope to go well too. Pang Junxu, Noppon Saengkham, Andrew Higginson, Jimmy Robertson and Mark Davis are others who could go well.
Second Quarter
Mark Allen has his name missing on this trophy and he’ll be looking to rectify that from the second quarter this week. He is on a collision course with the recently crowned Championship League winner Mark Selby in the quarter final but Si Jiahui is one of the other two top 16 players who will be out to stop that particular match from happening. The other one is no stranger to winning this title in the form of John Higgins, although you have to go back to 2018 for the last time that he won the tournament.
There are some big names among the rest of the players in this quarter. The biggest one might well be the man who is defending a lot of money this week in the form of Robert Milkins. He won the tournament two years ago and so he has first prize money coming off of a ranking with is getting lower without that. Others looking for a big week include Stuart Bingham, Zhou Yuelong, Elliot Slessor along with qualifiers Yuan Sijun, who was in the semi-finals of the German Masters a couple of weeks ago, Jamie Jones who will want to perform on home soil and the former world champion Graeme Dott.
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Third Quarter
At the time of writing the highest seed in the third quarter is Ronnie O’Sullivan but based on 2025 so far it certainly wouldn’t be a surprise to hear that he has pulled out before he opens up his campaign for another Welsh title on Tuesday afternoon. If that does happen then Mark Williams will be the highest seed in the quarter as he looks to thrill the home crowds once again. The other two top 16 players in the third section are the former Shootout winner Chris Wakelin and the German Masters finalist of earlier in the month in Barry Hawkins.
This is actually a loaded quarter given some of the other names that are in it. Jack Lisowski is teetering on the edge of the top 16 again and it can only be a matter of time before Wu Yize, finalist in two of the three Home Nations events this year already, will be in the elite band. Stephen Maguire and Matthew Selt are the other automatic entrants. Michael Holt is a big name qualifier while Xu Si made a 147 in qualifying. Jamie Clarke will be out to have a big week on home soil.
Bottom Quarter
The world champion Kyren Wilson looks to back up his win at the German Masters at the beginning of the month from the bottom quarter of the draw. He has already won the Northern Ireland Open this season so will go in search of a second Homa Nations crown in the campaign. He could be on a collision course with Shaun Murphy in the quarter final in what would be a repeat of The Masters final which Murphy won last month. Ali Carter and the home star Jak Jones are the other two top 16 players looking to stop that from happening.
The other automatic qualifiers in this quarter are pretty tasty too. Dave Gilbert really should have won one of these events in the past while Hossein Vafaei always has to be taken seriously. Ryan Day needs no added incentive to go well on home soil and Lyu Haotian can beat anyone on his day. The qualifier of note in this section is the home star Matthew Stevens while Marco Fu has made it back into the tournament. Jordan Brown was the winner of this thing in 2021 while both Joe O’Connor and Fan Zhengyi are capable of big runs in events.
Betting
I’ll take two members of the top 16 to go well this week with the first of them being Zhang Anda who I fancy is ticking and is ready to announce himself back in the big time of tournaments. He looked in good touch at the UK Championship before he ran into the eventual winner Judd Trump in the quarter final and then in Saudi Arabia he was on course for the 167 before the lights went out and then ran into the best showing of Luca Brecel since he won the world title. He was in great scoring form in the German Masters too and then Anthony McGill performed above himself in their third round meeting. Zhang has been scoring well for a while now and eventually that will translate into big results. I’ll pay to see if that comes here in a bracket where he is in a quarter with vulnerable top seeds Gary Wilson or Luca Brecel.
The other player I like outright this week is Jak Jones. At the Championship League over the last month he was scoring like a bit of a lunatic. He looked in decent enough order at the German Masters before he forced the very best out of Kyren Wilson in the last 16. He led 3-1 at the interval in that match which is encouraging because those two could meet at the same stage of this tournament and Jones would get three goes at the one frame he needs in a repeat of that scenario. Jones is on home soil so he’ll be full of motivation to go well anyway but he’ll also be keen to run hot this week and push to secure his automatic qualification for the World Championship. He is playing well and isn’t short of incentives so I’ll pay to see if he can deliver silverware on home soil.
Tips
Back Z.Anda to win Welsh Open (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 23.00 with Unibet (1/2 1-2)
Back Jak Jones to win Welsh Open (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 29.00 with Coral (1/2 1-2)
