The Masters quarter-finals commence on Thursday and James Cooper likes the look of one bet.
Snooker betting tips: The Masters
1pt Mark Allen to beat Mark Selby at 6/5 (General)
At the time of writing, three of the four quarter-final ties are known and to say the tournament is shaping up nicely would be an understatement given all six are previous Masters winners.
Neil Robertson, who must feel as though he’s on something of a freeroll given his late call-up coupled with miracle comeback against John Higgins, is 4/6 to get the better of Shaun Murphy.
That looks about right, while Judd Trump’s sustained period of excellence shows no signs of abating.
In Barry Hawkins, a rematch of the UK Championship final was nothing like as close on Tuesday with Trump recording a 6-1 success without the need to compile a barrage of high breaks.
Ding Junhui won the last two frames to edge by Mark Williams 6-5 and while the Chinese undoubtedly has the tools to mix it with anyone, it’s hard to get away from Trump (even at 2/5) given he has become a shorter-format machine.
The tie that does make some appeal from a betting point of view though is MARK ALLEN against Mark Selby (Thursday, 1900 GMT).
I referenced before the pair clashed in Riyadh that pricing up matches (at least away from the World Championship) between the pair is fairly straightforward, with Allen’s Saudi success giving him a 14-13 lead in head-to-head matches over a long period of time.
Courtesy of cuetracker.net, the frame head-to-head records are also incredibly close, with Allen edging it 129 to 126.
Selby has had the upper hand both previous World Championship outings and therein lies the theme I’m prepared to run with when analysing this game.
In multi-session matches, Selby remains a seriously tough nut to crack but in a best-of-11 match, Allen can match Selby’s game without it becoming too mentally taxing.
Allen himself has come in for a bit of stick over his pace of play and while I’m sure every top player would like to play exciting and flowing snooker, adopting a more circumspect game against Wu Yize at York and to a lesser extent, Si Jiahui here on Tuesday, does make some sense.
It really is a case of not how you do it when it comes to snooker results and whether Allen can play with that intensity over a fortnight at Sheffield is one thing, but he’s a player I want on my side more often than not.
Both Selby and Allen did what they had to do in round one against error-strewn opponents, if truth be told.
I fancied Ali Carter to cause an upset on Monday but he seemed to lose his head after a second-frame reversal in which Selby reduced the deficit in what was a very messy table before Carter’s ill-judged cannon when attempting to get on frame-ball brown.
Si's strength is undoubtedly his elite-level potting so there’s no blame attributed to how he approached his match against Allen, but he just wasn’t on a “going” day, missing more balls than he usually does, while his cue-ball control left plenty to be desired at this level.
In short, the 6/5 available in several places for Allen to triumph looks a shade too big to me.
Preview posted 1640 GMT on 15/01/25
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