The World Championship continues inside the Crucible Theatre on Sunday with another three sessions of top quality snooker taking place in Sheffield on a day where another two first round matches get going and four conclude.
The tournament is already recovering from the shock early demise of the defending champion on Saturday and with some other seeds in trouble on Sunday we are sure for another tense and dramatic day at the Crucible.
Day 1 Recap
We saw a huge shock in the only match to have finished on the opening day of the tournament when Kyren Wilson fell to the Crucible Curse when he went down to the Scottish Open champion Lei Peifan in a deciding frame epic. Four other matches got up and running on the opening day with Xiao Guodong opening up a 7-2 lead on Matthew Selt. That is the score by which Neil Robertson trails Chris Wakelin heading into their final session. The other two matches have Mark Williams and Barry Hawkins leading Wu Yize and Hossein Vafaei 5-4 respectively.
Although the match between Hawkins and Vafaei is yet to conclude, our opening bet of the tournament has already landed because the Iranian made a break of 123 in the sixth frame of that contest which is more than the 107.5 we backed his highest break to be so that gets us off to a winning start and with two seeds potentially going out of the top quarter that helps our bet in that as well so all good so far!
In Play Betting
There are four matches in play heading into Sunday with two of them seeing 7-2 leads being held. Matt Selt came from 8-3 down to Jimmy Robertson to win his final qualifier 10-9 but doing it against Xiao Guodong feels a tougher task while I don’t really see a way back for Neil Robertson either unless Chris Wakelin falls at the finishing post. I’ve already won in the Barry Hawkins against Hossein Vafaei match but I do like a bet in the other one.
Wu Yize looked incredibly nervous in the opening stages of his match with Mark Williams and fell 3-0 down without really offering anything to the party at all but then he came back with runs of 120, 90, 72 and 136 to show his form. Williams did respond to open up a 5-4 lead but I don’t see the Chinese player being as slow out of the blocks in this second session so I think thee is value in a turnaround here. This was also the first time Wu Yize had played Williams so it is only fair it took a while to get to grips with things. He is only 5-4 behind though so could quickly go back in front and pull away and at 6/4 I think there is value in that happening.
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Jak Jones vs Zhao Xintong (Sunday 10am & Monday 10am)
Just two matches get underway on Sunday and in the morning session the 2024 finalist Jak Jones will get his quest to go one better up and running when he takes on the qualifier that none of the seeds wanted in the former UK Championship winner Zhao Xintong.
Xintong is appearing here as an amateur and given that he is guaranteed to be back on the tour next season he is playing with the house money and has to be a dangerous campaigner here, especially having come through qualifying where he made a ridiculous 12 centuries in the 40 frames that he won there. Jones has had an indifferent season but that is nothing new. He has arrived here in the last two years without too much form behind him but has made the quarter final and the final. Jones is going to have his work cut out here and might need to hope that his opponent gets stagefright. You would think he is too good for that though. Bookies quite rightly have Xintong as the favourite but the Jones record here has to be respected so I’ll watch the first session and see if anything stands out.
Mark Allen vs Fan Zhengyi (Sunday 2.30pm & Monday 2.30pm)
The second of the two matches to get started on Sunday does so in the afternoon where a Mark Allen who few appear to be talking about starts his latest campaign to win the world crown when he meets the former European Masters winner Fan Zhengyi.
Allen has had a very quiet season by his standards and he has visibly been struggling with himself a bit but a month off almost since he bowed out of the Players Championship will have given him plenty of time to sort himself out and get up for one big push to end his season. You would have to say that Fan Zhengyi hasn’t had a great season either but he came alive in the qualifiers and will hope that he has that form with him on this stage. I’ve already invested in Allen to win the top quarter and with Kyren Wilson out and Neil Robertson on his way out that bet has been enhanced enough to allow me to leave this one alone and see if something pops up after the first session.
Tips
Back W.Yize to beat M.Williams for a 3/10 stake at 2.50 with Betway
