There are Crucible places as well as tour survival to play for at the Institute of Sport in the next week or so at the World Championship Qualifiers. James Cooper has looked at the Tuesday morning matches and recommends two bets.
Snooker betting tips: World Championship qualifiers
2pts Stuart Carrington -2.5 frames to beat Xu Yichen at 5/6 (bet365)
2pts Oliver Sykes to beat Liam Graham at 10/11 (bet365)
It was a real triumph for perseverance for Xu Yichen, who gained a first ever tour card aged 38 in the most dramatic of circumstances last summer, his opponent jawing the final black in the decider.
That was via the Asia-Oceania route, a considerably easier path to tour status than Xu’s native China and in truth, Xu hasn’t really looked up to the level required on the main tour.
A trio of Championship League defeats to start the campaign has been followed by four wins from 16 outings in regulation events (Xu did beat Shoot Out specialist Thepchaiya Un-Nooh in the opening round at Blackpool)
If you are a glass half full person he did stun Jack Lisowski in Xi’an and also got the better of Scott Donaldson in Yushan but clearly, Xu has found the going tough in this rarefied air.
Xu’s best performances have come in his homeland and he’s also had no exposure to best-of-19 matches (not at this level, anyway) and in STUART CARRINGTON, he is playing a wily veteran.
Having fallen off the tour last season, Carrington finished sixth in the Q Tour standings and while he’ll be seriously disappointed to have lost in the Play-Off final to Craig Steadman, his game clearly remains in a pretty good place.
A methodical player at the best of times, Carrington has a reputation for being an awkward best-of-19 opponent and he’s had his share of success in this over the years, qualifying for the event proper on three occasions.
This probably won’t be pretty to watch but Carrington’s experience in qualifiers will stand him in good stead and I can’t see Xu living with him in a multi-session match.
The rating I have for Xu isn’t a robust one and Carrington cannot really be rated as highly as he once was given his amateur status but I would expect the CARRINGTON -2.5 FRAMES handicap to be covered around 60% of the time in this first to 10, so the 5/6 available makes plenty of appeal.
A player well down the rankings this season is Liam Graham, who finds himself out of the top 100 on the one-year-list having failed to get beyond the last 64 of an event this season.
Given his level and opponents faced, seven wins from 19 regulation matches has been about a par return and while he doesn’t have to worry about his tour status this time with a two-year-card in his possession, I’m not convinced he should be favourite to beat amateur OLIVER SYKES.
At aged 20 and 21 respectively, both are at a similar juncture in their career but Sykes should be entering this match in a very positive frame of mind.
Following an excellent fourth-place finish on the Q Tour, Sykes was unable to get the job done in the Play Offs but a run to the final of the European Championship last month was enough to get Sykes a shot at the big time next season as winning opponent Kazakov had already secured qualification.
It’s never easy marrying up performances in the 'second division' against the top flight but overall, I think Sykes has done enough over a prolonged period to think that he should be slight favourite for this match as opposed to the slight underdog he finds himself.
Posted at 20:50 BST on 06/04/26
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