The first round of the Xi’an Grand Prix concludes out on China on Tuesday as the second day of the competition takes place over two sessions of what should be excellent action given the cast list we have on show.
We saw a couple of shocks on the opening day of the tournament but the seeded players who had their qualifying match held over largely made it through unscathed and they are all back in action on a decent looking Tuesday.
Afternoon Session
The main focus in the first of the two sessions will be on the world champion Kyren Wilson. He has already had a match on Monday and that might stand him in good stead when he takes on He Guoqiang. Zhang Anda is another who will have plenty of attention on him when he goes up against Graeme Dott in a high profile contest while there will be plenty of eyes on Neil Robertson as well. He takes on the home player Yuan Sijun with Hossein Vafaei also in action in the first session of the day. Dylan Emery will be his opponent. It might be that the pick of the matches in this earlier session will be the one between Zhou Yuelong and Thepchaiya Un-Nooh. The other three games sees Anthony McGill meeting Ricky Walden, Xu Si taking on Alfie Burden, who had an excellent win over Ding Junhui on Monday, and Daniel Wells facing Julien Leclercq.
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Evening Session
There is a lot of big games and potentially good snooker to be had in the evening session where the world number one Mark Allen will be on show. He has a meeting with David Lilley to overcome but once again all eyes will be on Ronnie O’Sullivan to see if he can pick up another win when he takes on Bulcsu Revesz for the first time. Mark Selby is another big name on show in the later session. He takes on Aaron Hill while the Shanghai Masters finalist Shaun Murphy meets Jamie Clarke. There is a good looking match between Xiao Guodong and Stephen Maguire also on the schedule while Jamie Jones faces Stuart Bingham in another. The other two matches have Pang Junxu looking to make progress against Paul Deaville and Noppon Saengkham playing Dominic Dale.
Betting
Stephen Maguire is looking for a decent couple of weeks to attempt to get back into the top 16 of the world rankings but he might be thwarted in that on Tuesday because Xiao Guodong has started the season very well and I think he is value to come out on top in this one. Maguire has had a quiet start to the campaign. He cruised into this tournament but he won’t be at the Wuhan Open so he needs to maximise this week.
He will need to be at his best though because in the qualifying round for this tournament Guodong made three tons on his way to beating Iulian Boiko and then added another in his British Open qualifying match so he is scoring well. He will obviously be motivated to win this match and have a decent run on home soil and he looks to have a great chance against a Maguire who has never started a season on top form yet so you would imagine that is unlikely to change now. I think the 13/10 on Guodong is a little too big to ignore here.
Tips
Back X.Guodong to beat S.Maguire for a 3/10 stake at 2.30 with Bet365
