Alex69

HELLO, good morning and welcome to my blog. I’m turning my attention to snooker for the next few weeks, but fear not I will also be providing my usual tip top darts tips in between. The recently-completed China Open is a useful bellwether for the World Championship, as it’s the last major snooker tournament to be played before the boys take to the baize at the Crucible in Sheffield.

I have a number of strong fancies for round one of the 2011 World Championship, backed up by solid statistics garnered from recent form and results.

LAY: Neil Robertson to beat Judd Trump, with a view to trading out in-running. Trump played superbly in the China Open, slaughtering some very experienced campaigners, such as Shaun Murphy and Peter Ebdon en route to victory over Mark Selby in the final. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t continue in this rich vein of form at Sheffield. The Australian, on the other hand, was unceremoniously dumped out by Ebdon 5-1 and could live to regret the knock-on effect of missing out on valuable table time. I believe Trump will give Robertson a hell of a game and I wouldn’t be surprised if this one went to a final frame decider.

LAY: Ronnie O'Sullivan to beat Dominic Dale. The mercurial cockney apologised to Chinese fans after he slumped to a 5-2 defeat against Ryan Day in the opening round of last month’s China Open. Triple World Champion O'Sullivan has not won a televised ranking match since September 2010 and has lost in the opening phase of the last four tournaments in which he has played. Once again, look to trade out in-running as while The Rocket isn’t performing like we all know he can, you can guarantee he’ll knock up at least one century break in the match. He is, after all, brilliant, and could beat most of the top 16 with his 'wrong hand' if he fancied it.

BACK: Martin Gould to beat Marco Fu. Historical precedent goes in favour of Gould, who beat Fu 10-9 in round one last year. He looks the value bet of the round as his odds (currently around the 2.5 mark) don’t reflect his chances. Meanwhile, Fu’s defeat in the first round of the China Open to Trump will have robbed him of match practise and dented his confidence.

FOUR-FOLD: Ding Junhui, John Higgins, Ricky Walden, Mark Selby. All four are in good form, are proven Crucible performers and will have plenty in the tank to cruise past weaker opposition.

BACK: A 147 break to be made at some stage the 2011 Snooker World Championships
With the standard of snooker universally accepted to be at its highest ever level, a dozen of the competitors at The Crucible are more than capable of scoring maximum breaks. With 31 matches to be played over the course of two weeks from April 16, at least one player will make the perfect visit to the table and justifiably take their place in snooker’s hall of fame. Pile into this at anything better than even money before the off.

REMEMBER: It’s possible to score a break of 155 if your opponent fouls and leaves you with a free ball so long as you pot the black after the colour you nominate as the ‘extra’ red. You’d then win the frame by anything from 159-162 to nil, depending on which ball your opponent struck when he committed his foul. This type of occurrence is, admittedly quite rare.

I’ve only won in this way a handful of times in my career.

Good luck and happy punting!

The World Snooker Championship commences on April 16