UK Championship

Starts tomorrow at 0900!

Was hoping B365 would have the TV tables for the morning session highlighted already, but they don't (hopefully we get four again, given it's the same venue, and there are some quite ugly looking match ups).  I've got to take my lad to college in the morning and won't have a chance to put anything together before play gets underway, so here's my thoughts now on five of the six matches that kick things off.  I'll leave you to think about the sixth for yourselves:

Tom Ford isn’t playing at all well this season, and his scoring is well down on where it normally would be.  Pang Junxu was rather brought back to earth with a bump last week after beating Tubbs in the second round of the German Masters qualifiers.  Even after that, he’s still outscoring Ford this season, and there is no way he should be as big as 3.5+.  This is someone who has also beaten Baz this season and scored well in defeat to Robbo. 

Davey Grace had one of the weeks of his life last week, reaching the semi-finals, before crashing out to Judd, 6-2.  On the face of it, he looks a big price against Ian Burns, who you would fancy him to outscore, but Burns isn’t a prolific scorer and can ugly things up a bit.  I’m a bit worried that it might be another of those Soheil Vahedi-type matches….  There’s also the concern that he might be a bit tired. 

Li Hang isn’t a player who has ever scored heavily, but despite that, he does win more than his fair share of matches, which suggests he’s quite tactically astute.  His scoring this season, however, has fallen off a cliff.  Fraser Patrick is also not a heavy scorer.  In fact, he and Li’s numbers this season are quite similar.  He’s still to show much on the tour, which is of concern, but I’m not utterly convinced he’s playing that much worse than Li at present.  Li’s likely to have a bit too much craft for him, but I don’t think I could be a player in the low 1.2s.

MJW’s not playing great this season, and he has lost to Paul Davison in the last couple of week.  His scoring’s still not been horrific, though.  Hancorn won the English Amateur Championship in February and turned pro at the age of 38 after earning his card at Q School.  His scoring’s not earth-shattering, but he has beaten Theppy already this season (who is admittedly a hot/cold player).  I don’t think there’s a lot of juice in MJW at 1.1, though he obviously is the likeliest winner.

Anthony Hamilton is yet to win a match this season, but his scoring’s not significantly worse than usual.  He’s met three players who have been in great form in Judd, Tubbs and Holty, to put some perspective to it.  The one eye-brow raiser is the defeat to Simon Lichtenberg, who did score unusually freely against him.  Xu Si is posting career-best numbers and is outscoring him slightly. He has won a couple of matches this season, most notably against Matt Selt.  The Sheriff is a tough opponent, and he deserves to be favourite on that basis alone, but he’s arguably short enough around 1.5, IMHO.