The World Championship continues inside the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield on Monday when another three first round matches get underway and three conclude on another good looking day of snooker in this iconic venue.
We are seeing seeds fall everywhere you look at the minute with three of them gone in the first five matches of the tournament and a fourth will surely follow on Monday. That will keep everyone on their toes throughout the third day of play.
Day 2 Recap
It wasn’t really the dramatic day that we envisioned on Sunday with four matches being completed and 10-7 was the closest score. That saw Stephen Maguire overcome Ali Carter while Judd Trump finished off the job against Hossein Vafaei when he won 10-5. It was a frame easier for Jak Jones as he took care of Zhang Anda 10-4. The last match to be completed on the day saw Tom Ford seeing off Ricky Walden 10-6.
It was an up and down day for us betting wise on Sunday. We cashed the 6/4 bet on Jak Jones to see off Zhang Anda and never had anything to sweat about in that one. Unfortunately we were a frame away from landing both of the over bets which we went with as Tom Ford beat Walden 10-6 when we needed 17 frames and Stephen Maguire won the last four from 7-6 down to win 10-7 when we needed 18 frames so that was annoying.
In Play Betting
We have two matches in play heading into Monday but I’m not really rushing to get involved in either of them in truth. The first one to finish will be the one between Shaun Murphy and Lyu Haotian which the former leads 6-3 and I get the feeling that he’ll complete the job and probably do it fairly comfortably. It wasn’t a great first session but Murphy generally leads from the front pretty well. The other match which is at the midway point is the one between Mark Selby and Joe O’Connor with the latter leading 7-2. Usually you would put up a thought of Selby coming back from behind but he looked a man who knows his fate at the end of that opening session so I’m not even contemplating a turnaround there.
Gary Wilson vs Stuart Bingham (Monday 10am & Monday 7pm)
We have three matches getting underway on Monday and the one which finishes on the same day sees the Scottish Open and Welsh Open winner Gary Wilson going up against the man who completed the entire marathon here in 2015 in the form of the former world champion Stuart Bingham.
Bingham will be relieved to have come through the qualifying competition and will be able to attack this as something of a free hit but he had to really battle to make it through the two matches he needed to win to get to this stage of the tournament and with him not getting any younger that is a concern, as is the two sessions in one day. Wilson looks to have gone from strength to strength this season. He keeps babbling on about not feeling great but it might just be that he has been hanging around Ronnie O’Sullivan too much because there is nothing wrong with the quality of his game. I expect Wilson to win this but he is my outright bet and so there is no need to get involved again.
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Mark Williams vs Si Jiahui (Monday 2.30pm & Tuesday 2.30pm)
The second match to get underway on Monday is one of the pick of the ties of the round as the former champion Mark Williams will begin his quest to build on his Tour Championship win when he meets the semi-finalist from last year in Si Jiahui.
The Chinese ace could be forgiven for thinking that he is free rolling here given that he needed a snooker to stay in the competition during his first qualifying match and then had to come from 4-0 down in his second round. We saw here last year just how fearless and dangerous he can be and he is very much a threat if the Williams long game is a little off. It wasn’t off in Manchester earlier in the month though so the Welshman might be the man with the tools to see off Si here. I’m intrigued to how this one is going to play out but I’ll watch the first session before potentially getting involved in the outcome.
Robert Milkins vs Pang Junxu (Monday 7pm & Tuesday 7pm)
The other match to get started on Monday does so in the evening session where the last seed into the competition gets his campaign underway when Robert Milkins meets the Chinese qualifier Pang Junxu for a shot at Dave Gilbert in the second round.
Both these men will know that the draw has already opened up for them with Luca Brecel departing and much further into the competition Mark Selby could be about to exit their half of proceedings as well so this one has taken on extra significance for the pair of them. Pang comes here the more match sharp but he really didn’t impress me much in the final qualifying round, where he beat Cao Yupeng 10-8 with a high break of just 66. He is going to need to improve on that to come through here. Even in the previous round against Oliver Brown he only made two breaks over 70 and was lucky his opponent was so bad. Milkins hasn’t had a great season but I refuse to believe he won’t be an upgrade on those performances, certainly in the scoring department, and he isn’t exactly a novice in the safety game. If Milkins can stay in this over the opening six frames or so while he builds up a rhythm after a while without playing then I would expect him to pull clear at the end of the first session and get the job done.
Tips
Back R.Milkins to beat P.Junxu for a 3/10 stake at 2.10 with Coral
