We are down to the last 16 stage of the Wuhan Open and the entire round gets played out over the course of two sessions as we begin to head towards the business end of the first ranking event in China since the pandemic.
We have a mixture of big names and those maybe not so accustomed with being at this stage of a big tournament so it will be interesting if the experience prevails or whether the new stars present themselves over the course of the day.
Afternoon Session
We have the two best matches of the entire round taking place in the afternoon session where Judd Trump will look to make it through to the quarter final when he goes up against the European Masters winner Barry Hawkins in what is actually a repeat of the final of that competition. That will be on one of the main tables and on the other the player of last season, Mark Allen, will take on the exciting Jack Lisowski in what should be another really entertaining match.
Tom Ford is on the fringes of the top 16 and he could finally get himself in among the elite if he can go all the way this week. His latest challenge to overcome is Xiao Guodong who got the better of him in the quarter final of the British Open a couple of weeks ago. Stephen Maguire has been in the top 16 and is looking to turn his ranking slide around but faces a very awkward looking challenge in the form of the Chinese player Wu Yize.
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Evening Session
It will be all about Ronnie O’Sullivan in terms of attention in the evening session. The Shanghai Masters champion continues his quest for successive Chinese titles when he takes on a home player in the form of Yuan Sijun, who had a very good win over Ding Junhui earlier in the week. Ali Carter is the other top 16 player on show in the later session. He might feel he is free rolling from here on in having turned around a 4-1 deficit in the previous round to Stuart Bingham. Liam Highfield is the man looking to finally end the run of The Captain.
That leaves two matches for the outside tables and there are three home players on show in them. The all-Chinese match sees Lyu Haotian looking to reach another ranking event quarter final when he takes on a Zhang Anda who is looking for a second last eight appearance in as many weeks as he follows up his run to the English Open final last week. The other match sees the rookie on tour in He Guoqiang taking on the Irish talent Aaron Hill.
Betting
There are a lot of 50:50 matches as far as the odds go on Thursday and while I am so tempted to oppose Zhang Anda and Judd Trump who must surely have a bit of jet lag kicking in, they would probably need to in order to get beaten or me be comfortable that they get beat so I will tentatively overlook them and go with one other which comes in the earlier session match when Stephen Maguire takes on the home player Wu Yize.
Wu Yize has had a couple of good wins this week over Marco Fu and Ryan Day and he has scored heavily in both of those matches so he is clearly enjoying being on home soil and in conditions he will know. To be fair to Maguire, he has had a couple of good wins, maybe not in terms of the opponents he has beaten with him expected to be Xing Zihao and Joe O’Connor but to beat them for the loss of three frames is impressive. He hasn’t scored great in those matches though and that is always the tell over whether Maguire is playing well or not. Wu Yize has a win over Neil Robertson on his CV this season and he can add the Scot to his list of victims.
Tips
Back W.Yize to beat S.Maguire for a 3/10 stake at 2.20 with William Hill
Back him here:
