James Cooper is back to preview the last-32 ties at the German Masters, which begins in Milton Keynes on Wednesday.
Snooker betting tips
1pt Jamie O'Neill to beat Shaun Murphy at 9/2
1.5pts Jamie O’Neill to beat Shaun Murphy (+2.5) at 6/5
2pts Michael White to beat Fergal O’Brien at 8/11
It is a German Masters in name only this year, as snooker fans are deprived of a week’s action at the spectacular Tempodrom arena in Berlin. But the show is still on the road at Milton Keynes and with two rounds completed back in the autumn, the last 32 standing resume on Wednesday, negative covid results permitting.
The tie of the round pits Stuart Bingham against the excellent Zhou Yuelong, but the prices look right given I make it a 4/6 v 6/4 match over the best of nine frames, so we look elsewhere for betting opportunities, with Jamie O’Neill perhaps not accorded quite enough respect against Shaun Murphy.
Murphy is a frustrating player in many ways, one of the most talented to ever play the game but his two Masters performances were a microcosm of his last few seasons: brilliant in patches against Mark Williams before making far too many errors against Stuart Bingham.
He outclassed inferior opposition in his Pro Series Group but that didn’t really tell us anything new and in O’Neill, he meets a player whose results towards the end 2020 may have gone under the radar. A run to the last 16 in the Scottish Open was a superb effort, and while I don’t place as much stock in head-to-head records as some, it’s clearly no bad thing that O’Neill beat Murphy on a winning sequence that also saw him get the better of Kurt Maflin and Hossein Vafaei, both of whom are knocking on the door of top-16 calibre on my ratings.
Victory over Zhao Zintong in round twp of this event was another eye-catching effort and I make this a near 1/4 (0.79) v 4/1 (0.21) encounter, so the 9/2 on O’Neill is worth a wager. In addition to that, I forecast that O’Neill would cover the 2.5 handicap 49% (21/20) of the time in a match of this length, so it’s well worth a second bet on that scenario at 11/10 or bigger.
'He’s far too good to be this low in the rankings' is perhaps one the of the most overused lines when analysing someone in the lower echelons of the sport and for balance, It would be nice for a commentator/pundit to announce a player who is flattered by his current lofty position.
Evidently the two-year rolling system in place can leave a player vulnerable (though it is a metric I like) and in the case of Michael White, he lost his playing privileges on the main tour following a very disappointing spell and subsequent failure to earn a place through Q School.
There is little doubt in my mind that he is a top-32 player, though, and he is rated accordingly with me, with wins over Barry Hawkins, Scott Donaldson, Matthew Stevens and Elliott Slessor in recent months illustrating that the Welshman hasn’t let adversity get to him.
A deep run in a ranking event would be just the tonic and given the relative lack of depth, it may well happen this week, with Fergal O’Brien first up. I confess Fergal is a player I’ve had mixed fortunes with betting both for and against down the years, but what is clear is that he’s yet to find his form this season away from a quick-fire brace of wins in this event, causing a big upset in taking the scalp of Mark Selby.
While he emerges with plenty of credit for that win, first-round defeats in the English and Scottish Open along with the European Masters and UK Championship indicate that the veteran Irishman is there for the taking. The model calculates a Michael White win at 62% (8/13) so the 8/11 (or 4/6) on offer has to be snapped up.
Posted at 1700 BST on 24/01/21
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