The opening day of the World Open tournament takes place out in China on Sunday and we have a mixture of the held over qualifying matches and some first round games taking place across three sessions of snooker in Yushan.
Sometimes we are made to wait for the big names to come out to play in a tournament but with the held over qualifying matches taking place on Sunday that isn’t the case here as the top three seeds are all on show over the course of the day.
Morning Session
We open up with seven matches in the morning session of which six of them are from the held over qualifying round. The world champion Kyren Wilson gets the action underway on the main table when he takes on Hammad Miah for a place in the main draw. The home favourite Zhang Anda will be looking to do likewise in this session when he takes on Stan Moody while Xu Si faces the home amateur Zou Pengfei. Sanderson Lam, David Lilley and Scott Donaldson also face home amateurs. They meet Zhou Jinhao, Cao Jin and Wang Yuhang respectively. Elliot Slessor faces another Chinese player in Lyu Haotian in the only main draw match in this session.
Afternoon Session
We have had a few withdrawals in the tournament so the afternoon session on Sunday has been reduced to just five matches. Ronnie O’Sullivan was due to play his held over qualifying match in this session but his withdrawal means that Daniel Womersley will face Stuart Carrington for a place in the main draw. The other matches are all first round matches where Mark Selby will be the headline act when he goes up against Liu Hongyu who could be an awkward test. John Higgins is another big name on show. He meets Mark Davis while elsewhere we have Aaron Hill taking on Sunny Akani and Jimmy Robertson going up against Noppon Saengkham.
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Evening Session
We have a full seven matches for the evening session where Judd Trump will look to make it into the main draw and set up a defence of his title. He takes on Xing Jihao while the other held over qualifying match sees Ding Junhui going up against Jiang Jun in what might be a more intriguing match than it looks. Elsewhere we have first round action all the way with Ali Carter the one top 16 player on show. He faces He Guoqiang while Wu Yize meets Jackson Page in a really good looking game. The other two matches have Antoni Kowalski facing Matthew Stevens and Michael Holt meeting Martin O’Donnell.
Betting
I’m very surprised that most bookmakers are unable to split Aaron Hill and Sunny Akani ahead of their meeting. Maybe that is because Akani beat Mark Williams to qualify for this but Williams was getting to grips with a new cue for that match and didn’t perform particularly well it has to be said. That was the last competitive match that the Thai played though and that was before Christmas so he has to be carrying some rust into this one with him. That win was the first one Akani had against someone in the top 100 in the world rankings since the Xi’an Grand Prix in August too.
Hill goes into this one as the much more active man. He reached the quarter final of the German Masters and while that didn’t end well for him with a 5-0 beating at the hands of Xiao Guodong, he should be able to take plenty from wins over Mark Williams, Jimmy Robertson and Tom Ford to reach the last eight in Berlin. Hill didn’t do much wrong against Rory Thor in Welsh Open qualifying where he ran into runs of 92, 136, 87 and 63 in a 4-2 defeat. I’m prepared to give him another chance though because Thor isn’t having the worst season. For me, Hill has to be a favourite based on the season so far and the recent activity so I’ll gladly take him at 10/11.
Tips
Back A.Hill to beat S.Akani for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with William Hill
Back him here:
