A stellar field has been assembled for snooker's Players Championship which begins in Wolverhampton on Monday – Richard Mann has two selections in his outright preview.
Snooker betting tips: Players Championship
1pt Mark Williams to win the Players Championship at 11/1 (General)
1pt Zhao Xintong to win Players Championship at 11/1 (Sporting Index)
John Higgins will be back to defend his crown at next week’s Players Championship, but it’s another member of snooker’s famous of Class of 92 who gets the vote in Wolverhampton.
Like Higgins, MARK WILLIAMS has enjoyed a glittering career that has seen him win just about every title going, and he was in the winners’ enclosure as recently as August when cantering to his 24th ranking title at the British Open.
The 46-year-old has remained in good touch throughout the season, despite suffering from Covid-19 at one stage, and he produced some fine snooker when reaching the semi-finals of the Masters at Alexandra Palace, only narrowly losing to Neil Robertson in a dramatic finish to the deciding frame of their match.
Williams backed up that run by barely breaking sweat on the way to reaching the final of the Shoot Out, where the break off proved to be his only shot as Hossein Vafaei compiled a brilliant, match-winning break that secured his first ranking title but did nothing to detract from Williams’ own efforts and the form he produced.
He wasn’t the only high-profile casualty in the first round of the German Masters even more recently – Masters hero Robertson being another – where he really didn’t do a lot wrong as he became another victim of Zhao Xintong, who would go on to lift the trophy a few days later.
In fact, Williams rallied manfully from 3-1 down in that match to draw level at 3-3 and it needed a spectacular finish from Zhao to ensure it was he who came out on top. Williams put together three breaks of over 50 to back up the heavy scoring he produced at the Masters, where he beat 2021 finalists Yan Bingtao and Higgins.
"Never change!" 🤩
— Eurosport (@eurosport) January 9, 2022
Mark Williams is putting on a show for the Masters crowd at Alexandra Palace 👏#CazooMasters | @WeAreWST | @markwil147 pic.twitter.com/ZEV5A6AaPK
There’s so much to like about Williams this week that he rates a solid play at 11/1 (General), especially when you consider his sound record in this event – he was a beaten finalist in 2015 – and the fact that his draw is as favourable as one could hope for in a tournament comprising the top 16 players in the world on the 1 Year Ranking List.
Wilson rematch no worry for Williams
That’s no slight on Gary Wilson, the man Williams will face in the first round, but he has been relatively quiet since he came off second best when this pair met in the aforementioned British Open final at the beginning of the season. I expect Williams to confirm that form on Monday night.
Things will get tougher thereafter, but the top half of the draw is much more appealing than the bottom half, and Williams wouldn’t be afraid of facing Mark Allen or Ricky Walden in the last eight.
Allen is a wonderful operator who I rate highly, and I wouldn’t be surprised were he to go all the way in Wolverhampton. Already a winner this season, he could have easily beaten Judd Trump at the Masters and Yan in their semi-final at the German Masters. With his off the table issues seemingly moving closer to being resolved, expect his fortunes on the table to move back in the right direction and another title shouldn’t be too far away.
The issue here is that for all his endeavour, by his own admission, Allen couldn’t produce his best against Trump or Yan and while I’m sure it’s coming, I don’t think he’s shown quite enough to suggest he’s a better bet than Williams, or even Walden, who also reached the last four in Berlin.
Walden is a class act and multiple ranking-title winner who would surely have achieved more in the game were it not for chronic back problems, and he’s playing well enough again to suggest he will give Allen a tough match.
Still, he’d justifiably start as the outsider were he to meet Williams in the quarter-finals and the Welshman is the one to be with from the second section of the draw.
Red-hot Zhao hard to resist
I do want a second bullet to fire at the outright market, though, and the minefield that is the bottom half of the draw means I’m happy to add ZHAO XINTONG to make my staking plan.
In truth, even without looking at the draw, I’d have had Williams, Zhao and Allen on my shortlist for this week, and while there is the real possibility that first the two names on that list could meet in the semi-finals, their prices and favourable first-round ties mean I’m happy to back both in the strong belief we might have a finalist on-side and a good price to go with it.
The case to be made for Zhao is a relatively straightforward one. The number one seed for this event having moved street clears at the top of the 1 Year Ranking List, Zhao has enjoyed a remarkable few months that have seen him grow from a dangerous, all-action potting machine to a dual winner and, arguably, the best player in the world.
Of course, the likes of Trump and O’Sullivan will have something to say about that, but it was Zhao, not either of them, who bullied his way to a brilliant victory at the UK Championship in December, and it was also the Chinese star who whitewashed Yan in the final of the German Masters just a few days ago. It was also Zhao who slammed Trump 5-1 in the quarter-finals of that same event.
In a season where titles have been shared around in quite unusual fashion, Zhao is the only player to suggest he might end the campaign having dominated it, and as Neal Foulds argued in his Sporting Life column this week, his scope for further improvement and development is massive. In fact, if he keeps progressing at anywhere near the level he has over the last few months, there will soon be no argument as to who the best player in the sport is.
Rich talent can take Zhao to the top
The biggest thing that stands out with Zhao is talent. To win trophies at this level, you clearly need to possess plenty of it, but while players such as Yan and Kyren Wilson are building fine careers on the back of hard work and guile, as much as their natural ability, Zhao is just more gifted than the rest – perhaps with the exception of O’Sullivan and Trump.
It’s that talent that has allowed him to move to the next level where others haven’t been able to, and it’s that talent – if the appetite for hard work he has so far displayed remains strong – that will surely carry him to even greater heights. It’s certainly why punters must now consider Zhao a leading player for all major events, for all the layers won’t miss his rapid rise through the ranks when compiling their books from now on.
The one nagging doubt when betting Zhao to go back-to-back next week is that he followed his UK Championship victory with an early exit at the World Grand Prix, but he has enjoyed a run out at the Championship League in recent days, followed by an impressive defeat of Louis Heathcote in qualifying for the Turkish Masters on Saturday. Furthermore, York was his first major title, and the hope is that he will have learnt plenty from those experiences and be fully dialled in for his first match.
All things considered, 11/1 (Sporting Index) makes plenty of appeal given his current form and the fact his first-round opponent here, Barry Hawkins, was powerless to stop Zhao when they met in the last four of the UK Championship. In addition to that, avoiding the likes of Trump, O’Sullivan or Robertson until the final has to be a good thing and if he does make it that far, he could be very hard to contain.
Star-studded bottom half one to swerve
As I’ve already alluded to, the bottom half of the draw is fraught with danger and the match of the round sees Trump and O’Sullivan renew hostilities, while in the same quarter, Wilson meets Robertson.
On what we’ve seen of late you’d have to think Trump is vulnerable, and Robertson would be my pick if in anything like the form he displayed when victorious at the Masters. That’s no guarantee, though, and I’m happier looking away from that quarter for a bet in the outright market.
Defending champion Higgins starts off against Shoot Out winner Vafaei in a match I expect the Scot to win. Higgins was unstoppable when cruising to this title 12 months ago and while four final defeats this term must have hurt, he’s still playing well enough to win major tournaments.
He could have easily beaten Williams in their memorable clash at the Masters and for all one of the big three from that third quarter will be widely expected to contest the final, I wouldn’t discount the prospect of Higgins putting up a strong title defence and reaching his fifth final of the season.
He has more than a puncher’s chance, but with the bottom half of the draw housing any number of heavy hitters, I’ll be backing Williams and Zhao to land the knockout blow in an event that has quickly become one of the highlights of the snooker calendar.
Posted at 1725 GMT on 06/02/22
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