The penultimate round of action at the World Championship qualifying competition continues on Sunday as 12 more matches get played out as we close in on finalising the line up for the two Judgement Days where the 16 qualifiers will be crowned.
The stakes are getting real now and we saw that in evidence on Saturday with some dramatic action and history and what we’ve seen already will tell us it would be foolish to expect any different over the course of Sunday.
Morning Session
The Turkish Masters finalist Matt Selt is the highest player on show on Sunday morning. He begins his quest for a place at the Crucible with a clash against the German player Lukas Kleckers. Two men who aren’t yet completely safe on the tour for next season are also in action in this morning session. One of those is the former Shootout champion Michael Holt. He has a tricky test against Tom Ford knowing only a win will keep him away from Q-School.
The other player who isn’t totally safe is Thepchaiya Un-Nooh although he is in a much better situation than Michael Holt as it will need six players to overtake him in the rankings for him to lose his tour place. He can take those worries out of the equation if he can beat Jak Jones. The other match in the morning session has no such issues as Jamie Jones starts his campaign to reach the Crucible Theatre against Mark Joyce.
Afternoon Session
When he won the Championship League in the early stages of the season the former world semi-finalist Dave Gilbert will have been hoping to bypass the qualifying competition but that isn’t how it has played out and he opens his campaign on Sunday afternoon. He will meet Rory McLeod on the TV table while the British Open and Players Championship semi-finalist Jimmy Robertson will also start his campaign in this session. He faces the dangerous Oliver Lines.
Fan Zhengyi bypassed a couple of rounds of qualifying when he shocked Ronnie O’Sullivan to win the European Masters earlier in the season and his reward is an opening clash against Chris Wakelin while the other match in this session sees the experienced Anthony Hamilton beginning another World Championship campaign. He will take on Elliot Slessor who guaranteed he’ll be on tour next season when he won his match in the previous round.
Evening Session
Two men jump off the page at us in the evening session with Martin Gould the highest ranked player on show. He is no stranger to making it through qualifying successfully and he’ll start out in his bid to do that again when he takes on Ashley Hugill. The biggest name of them all in this qualifying competition is Ding Junhui. The Chinese superstar has to win two qualifying matches to take his place in the main draw and the first of those sees him taking on Tian Pengfei.
Kurt Maflin is another one of those players on show whose tour future is at stage. If he fails to beat David Lilley he’ll be off to Q-School so there is serious pressure on the Norwegian albeit he is only in that position due to inactivity during the pandemic rather than poor form. The other match on a decent day of snooker sees two Leicester potters going at it when Ben Woollaston faces off against Joe O’Connor in what could be a sleeper for match of the day.
Betting
Elliot Slessor had a poor few months after he made the final of the British Open but he has come alive in recent times, winning a few matches and only going down narrowly to some decent players with the exception of Michael Georgiou in Gibraltar but with all the travel issues that weekend I’m not convinced he was fully in tune for that event. He has already played a match this week which he won 6-0 against Ian Burns where he put together contributions of 50, 71. 60, 135 and 57 so he played very well there.
Anthony Hamilton will be his next opponent but apart from a run to the last 16 of the UK Championship, this hasn’t been the best of campaigns for the ‘Sheriff of Pottingham’. He was fortunate there as well because he looked like losing to Mark Williams in the second round before his Covid effects kicked in. Since then he has won just three out of eight matches away from the Shootout so he hasn’t exactly kicked on. I think Hamilton is vulnerable here against a Slessor who I believe is much better than his ranking would tell us. I like him here.
Tips
Back E.Slessor to beat A.Hamilton for a 3/10 stake at 1.91 with Coral
