Snooker: UK Championship Qualifiers

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The qualifiers for the UK Championship are ongoing for the next few days and with two of the matches in each session being live streamed the potential for betting is a lot easier and these qualifiers are no longer the unknown quantity from a betting point of view that they once were. There's two I like the look of tonight. One on the streamed table and one not. Streamed table first. 3pts J.White (-1.5 frames) to beat P.Suwannawat 6/5 Sportingbet I'm going to have to have a small bet on the Whirlwind on the handicap in this match as I feel the price is too big for Jimmy to win 6-4 or easier. Passakorn Suwannawat come through a pretty routine first round of qualifying last night when he beat Irishman Joe Meara 6-0 but he really wasn't up against much in that game and this will be a lot tougher for the Thai. If Jimmy White was coming into the event cold then I might have had second thoughts but he hasn't he's been playing in front of good crowds and under the TV lights in the competitive World Seniors over the weekend where he scored really well and his safety game in the main was good too. In a way I feel it could favour Jimmy that the format has changed to best of 11 for the tournament this year as opposed to the best of 17 it has been in previous years because he can maintain enough consistency over this length of match. Jimmy White has impressed me on the occasions I've seen him this season and although this is a tricky match for this stage of qualifying I expect the Whirlwind to take a step nearer to York with a win here and a win which is no worse than 6-4. 4pts D.Gilbert to beat J.Swail 9/10 Boylesports I like what I've seen from Dave Gilbert this season too. He's got some really good names on his record in the PTC events, better names than Joe Swail too in the form of Judd Trump, Jamie Cope, Ding Junhui and Jimmy White. He's also beaten Dave Harold and Mark King on his way to making it all the way to the Australian Open where he troubled Mark Williams before going down 5-2 in the end. Importantly though he's been scoring well which is half the task for Gilbert and he has 8 centuries for the season so far. Joe Swail is having a bit of a struggle at the minute, as so often happens to be the case with the Ulsterman before he'll go a couple of tournaments where he plays really well and makes the latter stages of an event. Swail hasn't won many matches all season and he's lost in the first round of qualifying for both major tournaments so far this season. He's also lost in the first round of the last 2 PTCs to players I'd call inferior to Dave Gilbert. Given that he's the form horse and he's had a match on the tables in coming through his first qualifier against Aditya Mehta 6-5 last night I'll take Gilbert to win this one.

[kevshat]

Re: Snooker: UK Championship Qualifiers They both won for a 7.20pt pick up. Tuesday's qualifiers begin at 12 noon and I'll take two in that session. I like the look of Pengfei and Woollaston too but I'll stick with these two. 4pts M.White to beat L.Wenbo 11/10 Sportingbet I really like what I've seen of Michael White. He's picking up a reputation of being a heavy scorer and his 6 frames which he won against Barry Pinches on Monday were all won with breaks of 50 or more which emphasises his scoring. Liang Wenbo struggles against heavy scorers because his game is all or nothing and when he misses he opens himself right up to be attacked. That's when he's playing well let alone when he's been playing poorly like he has so far this season. Michael White made the semi final in one of the PTC events recently so his confidence will be sky high and Monday showed his form is good so he should really be a bit shorter than this if not favourite if it was priced up by form. I'm happy to take the Welshman here. 4pts X.Guodong to beat M.Dunn 10/11 Bet365 I'm really surprised that bookmakers don't have Xiao Guodong favourite in this match. Mike Dunn has barely won a match in recent times and has been having health problems too with a kidney stone which affected the amount of time he was able to practice and his mobility during tournaments. I believe that is behind him now but his form has shown no signs of an immediate return. Xiao Guodong has been having an excellent season. He reached the semi final of a PTC event earlier in the season and the quarter finals of two others and in those PTC tournaments he has a 4-1 win over O'Sullivan to his name in the last tournament having beaten Peter Ebdon in the first round and a 4-0 win over Judd Trump in an earlier PTC so this Chinese kid can definitely play. As with a lot of Chinese players these days, Guodong is full of confidence and scores heavy when he's in the balls and I expect him to be too good for Mike Dunn here.