The Snookerbacker Blog

It's no wonder he's got a bad back. Will the rivals contest the final?

At Last!! While all the smaller tournaments have been a great precursor to the main events, next Monday sees the start of the first full ranking event of the season, barring the World Open qualifiers, with the Shanghai Masters over in ‘That China’.

Ronnie O’Sullivan lifted his last trophy here a year ago and will hopefully have recovered from his ermm, bad back, which forced him to withdraw from the Paul Hunter Classic at the weekend, so as he can come and defend the title he won last year defeating local favourite Liang Wenbo in the final.

This event is another characterised by wildcards, the completely unfair system of inviting players that have no right to be there to play players that do.

Some of the wildcards are dangerous, not least Tian Pengfei who beat Ronnie in the China Open and faces Jamie Burnett in the wildcard round. Jin Long is another that can turn in decent performances and has actually beaten his opponent Rob Milkins in their only other meeting. Li Hang is another that could upset Martin Gould if he isn’t on his game, all three are capable of progressing at the expense of the more deserving qualifiers.

The full draw for the event is here and the event will be covered on Eurosport, whose commentators will again try and have us believe that they are actually there, bless them. In terms of live scoring, World Snooker have promised that their new scoreboard will be up and running in time for this event. Let’s wait and see before getting too excited about that though.

The matches are yet to be priced up so I’ll do a seperate post if any decent odds become available on a few that might be worth a punt, so we’ll stick to the outrights and the quarters for this.

Quarter One:

This sees Ronnie face a potential rematch with Tian Pengfei should he get past Burnett, it also sees Stephen Maguire, Marco Fu and recent winner Judd Trump vying for a semi final spot. Since the blog began I have never tipped up Ronnie for anything other than the odd match win and I will continue to ignore the claims of the Rocket in the outright market. So much so that I will recommend a bet on young Judd Trump to win the quarter at what I think is a stand out price at Boylesports, who appear to be happy to lay big odds on the young mock Bavarian prince. His recent win will fill him with confidence (as it has me) and I reckon he’s going to have his breakthrough season this year and do what he’s been threatening to do for two seasons. This might be the last time you get prices like this about him. OK he has Maguire first up, a tough match which might well have me eating my words, then either Fu or Mark Davis, then possibly Ronnie. But I’ll stay loyal to Juddly.

Recommended Bet : 0.5 Point win Judd Trump to win Quarter One (12/1 Boylesports)

Will it be King Ding?

Quarter Two:

This is a difficult one to call. Ding Junhui makes his seasonal debut having failed to show up for any of the summer events and I can’t help thinking that this immediately places him at a disadvantage, despite the undoubted home advantage he always enjoys in China. We’ve seen it with Mark Allen and though Ding in my view is a better player than him he will have to hit the ground running against tough opposition. Mark Williams, Jamie Cope, Graeme Dott, Steve Davis and Ken Doherty are in this very difficult quarter to call. Mark proved that he travels well by winning the China Open and he will have his followers no doubt, but in terms of any value in the quarter betting I’m going to have a punt on an outsider here and back Ken Doherty.

Recommended Bet: 0.25 point win Ken Doherty to win Quarter Two (18/1 Boylesports)

Quarter Three:

Blimey this is difficult, in this section we have Ali Carter, Shaun Murphy, Mark Allen and Liang Wenbo alongside others with chances. Wenbo and Allen are best watched early season in my view, neither have done anything so far to suggest they can win this event which leaves the obvious choices Murphy or Carter and Matthew Stevens or Stuart Bingham as likely semi-finalists. I don’t think Murphy is firing on all cylinders just yet but that might still be good enough to see him through this, but to me the value is elsewhere so I’m going to recommend two outside punts.

Recommended Bet: 0.25 point win on each Matthew Stevens (12/1 Betfred) or Stuart Bingham (20/1 Betfred) to win Quarter Three.

Quarter Four:

World Champion Neil Robertson and early season hotshot Mark Selby are the main players in this quarter and despite some potentially dangerous opponents I would be surprised if they didn’t meet in the Quarter Finals which makes the 11/4 on Robertson to win this quarter with Boylesports a tempting bet for back and lay punters, as he’ll be nothing like that price if he does face Selbs. But I have a feeling about Selby this season, I think he’ll win more than one ranking event and I think he’ll benefit a lot from his early season escapades. Sorry Robbo, but it has to be the Jester for me.

Recommended Bet: 2 Points win Mark Selby to win Quarter Four (7/5 Paddy Power)

In terms of outright bets, I’m going to stick with Selby and Trump, the odds on the latter at Boylesports is too good to pass up, he is less than half these odds at a couple of the other firms, but I’m slightly favouring Mark to be carrying some excess baggage through customs on the return flight and I’m not talking about any weight gained by eating the local grub.

Recommended Outright Bets:

2 points win Mark Selby to win Shanghai Masters (6/1 Paddy Power)

0.5 points each way Judd Trump to win Shanghai Masters (45/1 Boylesports)

Good luck to all punters. News of the prediction competition will be with you tomorrow.

At last something decent is on TV.

It seems like about a year or so has passed since we saw a bit of snooker on the TV, but that all changes next week as we can watch the boys in action at the Shanghai Masters and just a week later on the BBC at the World Open.

In the meantime tomorrow night on BBC2 they are screening an hour long documentary on the life of Alex Higgins.

Judging by the preview here they have some quality contributors, the quote from Clive Everton in the preview alone brings a smile to the face.

They promise that ‘the archive is astonishing, the stories often heart-breaking but the snooker is always breathtaking’ and that the tale is ‘at times uplifting, but at other moments very sad – this is a rollercoaster journey charting the life of snooker’s first ‘rock and roll star’.  Hopefully it will live up to the billing.

Incidentally, Ian a regular poster on here found this clip in the 1980′s loft conversion he currently lives in and posted it on Youtube, the frame lost and the match almost lost Alex still can’t resist the urge to entertain and steal a bit of the limelight from the Nugget (still hard to believe that he made a Quarter Final at the weekend, but not as hard to believe as this), anyway brown to blue is magnificent and the black…well, just give it a watch.

Another Higgins, young Master John will also learn his fate next week as his hearing is scheduled for the 7th and 8th. It’s being widely predicted in snooker circles that his punishment will be lenient and we may well see him competing again very soon. A retrospective 6 month ban and a large fine would be my best guess, seeing him back to compete in the UK and the Masters.

I’ll be posting up a preview to Shanghai very soon and also details of next week’s continuing ‘Top of the Pots’ prediction contest.