The second round of the World Championship qualifying event concludes on Saturday and the third round gets underway on a day where the highest ranked bracket of players in this competition begin to show their cards.
Those who play their second round match know they are three wins from the Crucible but the players involved in third round action will move into Judgement Day if they can pick up a win of their own so we’re in for a good day of snooker.
Morning Session
The morning session is where the second round of the competition will conclude. Stuart Carrington is the highest ranked player on show and as such it will be his match which will be on TV. He meets the Chinese player Lei Peifan. There are actually Chinese players on show in all four matches in the morning. The next highest ranked player on show is Pang Junxu. The talented youngster begins his campaign against Farakh Ajaib.
Jamie Clarke has qualified for the Crucible in the past and he starts his quest to do it again with arguably the worst of the draws he could have got. That is because he meets the world amateur champion Si Jiahui in a real tough clash. The other match in this session sees Simon Lichtenberg looking to join his countryman Lukas Kleckers in the third round. If he is going to get there he’ll have to get the better of Wu Yize.
Afternoon Session
Ricky Walden is the highest ranked player in this qualifying competition and it will be his third round match which opens up the penultimate round of action on the TV table. He will look to make the final qualifying round at the expense of Allan Taylor. There was meant to be four matches in this session of play but Liang Wenbo has been suspended by the WST so his opponent Dominic Dale gets a bye into the final qualifying round.
That leaves two more matches to take place in the afternoon session with Li Hang and Lu Ning the two men who will be beginning their campaigns. Hang hasn’t had the best season of all time so he could probably do without drawing Scott Donaldson who played well in the previous round. Lu Ning has a meeting with his fellow countryman Lyu Haotian in what is another trappy game for the higher ranked player.
Evening Session
The former Welsh Open champion Jordan Brown will get the TV treatment in the evening session. Brown needs to win two matches to be at the Crucible and the first of those comes up against the talented teenager Liam Davies. Stephen Maguire really should be at the Crucible by rights but having done nothing since he won the Tour Championship a couple of seasons ago he is left having to qualify. He will start out against Zhang Jiankang hoping that class comes to the top.
There is an all-Chinese battle in this session when Zhou Yuelong gets his qualifying campaign underway. He will go up against Zhang Anda with all the pressure on Yuelong given how close he has been to the top 16 for much of the season. Mark King will be looking to make it through to the final stages of the tournament. His quest to get there begins with a clash against a Michael White who is potentially one win away from guaranteeing a tour card next season.
Betting
Li Hang has had a poor season, especially since the turn of it. With the exception of the Scottish Open he has done little of note throughout the entire campaign. To be fair Scott Donaldson didn’t exactly pull trees up at the start of the season but the Championship League came along and he had a couple of decent spins in that as defending champion and it looks like it has sparked him into life because the second part of this term has been much more encouraging.
He made the winners group of the Championship League and beat Zhao Xintong when he was there which is decent form. He also had a win over Kurt Maflin at the Welsh Open and although the Turkish Masters and Gibraltar Open didn’t go to plan but he only went down in a deciding frame to Graeme Dott in Turkey. He has already walloped the competent amateur Robbie McGuigan this week and that should allow him to hit the ground running in this match and if he does that and builds some confidence I expect him to bring the season of Li Hang to a premature end.
Tips
Back S.Donaldson to beat L.Hang for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with William Hill
