The third day of action at the World Grand Prix sees the first round of the tournament concluding and the second round of the event getting underway on another busy day of action inside the behind closed doors setup at the Marshall Arena in Milton Keynes.
We saw some excellent snooker over the course of the play on Tuesday, a day where two star names made it through in Judd Trump and Ronnie O’Sullivan and they will be back in action on Wednesday. There was no joy for Mark Allen though who was knocked out.
Afternoon Session
Two Triple Crown winners headline the action on the main table on Wednesday afternoon and it all gets underway with the recently crowned Scottish Open champion Mark Selby on show. He takes on the dangerous Liang Wenbo who you get the feeling will deliver a big showing in one of these marquee events soon. The second match on this table in the afternoon is arguably the pick of the matches in the first round as Shaun Murphy takes on Jack Lisowski in what should be a cracking contest.
There is a real Asian flavour to proceedings over on table two in the afternoon session and it begins with the UK Championship semi-finalist Zhou Yuelong who takes on Hossein Vafaei who has another chance to show what he can do at the highest level. When they are done arguably the most talented of all the Chinese players outside of Ding Junhui takes to the stage when Zhao Xintong faces last week’s Scottish Open semi-finalist Jamie Jones for a place in the second round.
Evening Session
We are into the second round in the evening session on Wednesday and what a line up there is on the main table as the top two players in the game are scheduled to keep us entertained. The number one seed Judd Trump opens up the show when he faces The Masters champion Stuart Bingham for a place in the quarter finals before the world champion Ronnie O’Sullivan is back in the spotlight when he takes on a Barry Hawkins who seems to be coming back to somewhere near his best form after a year or so of poor results.
The action is pretty tasty over on table two in the evening session as well where quarter final spots are up for grabs out there. Martin Gould will look to build on his fine comeback win over Mark Allen from Tuesday when he takes on the recent UK Championship semi-finalist Lu Ning before two class acts take to the baize when last season’s Riga Masters winner and Players Championship finalist Yan Bingtao takes on a Kyren Wilson who eventually came through his first round match at 1am on Wednesday morning and goes out again here.
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Betting
I’ll go with a couple of bets over the course of the play on Wednesday with both of them coming in the evening session. The first of them is for Lu Ning to get the better of Martin Gould. Gould did well to comeback against Mark Allen on Tuesday but Allen couldn’t pot a long ball to save his life and even then the Englishman only made one 50 break in the entire match which suggests he isn’t firing on all cylinders because when he is then he scores much better than that. Ning is in the form of his life at present. After making the UK semis recently he then beat Thepchaiya Un-Nooh in the Scottish Open last week and played well in beating Robbie Williams, with a 137 and two other decent breaks against an opponent who had a ton of his own. I sense Gould isn’t completely happy on the baize at the minute and he cut a bit of a frustrated figure in his interview after his win over Allen. At 11/8 Ning is decent value here.
Speaking of decent value, the 6/5 that Barry Hawkins wins three frames against Ronnie O’Sullivan would certainly fall into that category with the way ‘The Hawk’ is playing of late. You get the feeling Hawkins is one real big name scalp away from getting back to where we expect him to be in the game and this might be it, although having been out of the spotlight for a while I’ll take him with the +1.5 frame start in case this one goes down to a deciding frame where he can’t get over the line. O’Sullivan has made a couple of finals in recent times but he has looked there for the taking all season. The likes of Aaron Hill and Alexander Ursenbacher beating him highlight that and although he tends to find his better form against the bigger players, if you look back to those two Home Nations runs, Ding Junhui should have beat him in the quarter finals of both but bottled it and then when he came up against Judd Trump and Mark Selby he was sounded beaten. O’Sullivan beat Ali Carter well on Tuesday but Carter had plenty of chances but I’m not convinced he thinks he can beat the Rocket these days. That might apply to Hawkins too given his poor record against him but I’m confident Hawkins will get the chances to win three frames and at the price I’ll pay to see if he takes them.
Tips
Back L.Ning to beat M.Gould for a 3/10 stake at 2.38 with Coral
Back him here:
Back B.Hawkins (+1.5 frames) to beat R.O’Sullivan for a 3/10 stake at 2.20 with William Hill
Back him here:
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