As well as this, the event has a very short format with best-of-7 frames matches being played right up until a best-of-9 frames final which is quite frankly pathetic for a full ranking event with a top prize of £50,000 prize for what is effectively a glorified PTC event, the likes of which are only worth a £20,000 top prize in Europe. For those of us in the UK and Europe there is no coverage on the TV through the usual channel of Eurosport who cover all of the other major ranking events in Asia, so we will have to rely on streams via the World Snooker website and the known betting sites in order to watch the event. I'm not particularly impressed with the set-up for the tournament, and I will be surprised if this one remains on the calendar for much longer with top players not entering, and this has already been relocated from the originally scheduled dates in October to this new March setting because of elections in the capital.
Meanwhile, for those that have entered the event, it is a one of key importance as the first of three remaining ranking events ahead of the seedings cut off for the World Championship, so I'm sure the players at all points in the rankings will be jostling for position, and especially those hovering around the 64 mark in the rankings and looking to keep their tour places for next year.
Here is how the draw for this week looks then:
Quarter 1
Last 64 Draw: (Picks in Bold)Ding Junhui Vs Thepchaiya Un-Nooh or Neeraj Kumar
Fergal O'Brien Vs Luca Brecel
Matthew Stevens Vs Gerard Greene
Liang Wenbo Vs Jamie Jones
Mark Davis Vs Anthony Hamilton
Anthony McGill Vs Tom Ford
Jamie Cope Vs Fraser Patrick
John Higgins Vs Jamie Burnett
There are plenty of players up in this quarter who can do some damage and will be eyeing a big run ahead of what lies ahead in the season. Luca Brecel is one of the men in form, along with John Higgins. Tom Ford and Jamie Cope are a couple of guys to watch in terms of keeping their tour places. While both are currently above the 64 line, they're not completely out of sight yet and could do with some more wins between now and the end of the season.
Liang Wenbo is a man in reasonable form at the moment, after a semi-final run at the German Masters where it took a brilliant Shaun Murphy to stop him, he's since been beaten in the Last 32 of the Welsh Open by eventual champion John Higgins and it took a superb David Gilbert to beat him in the same stage of the Gdynia Open, so it's been taking good performances to finish him off. Liang is very dangerous on his day but also pretty inconsistent, so he could as easily be beaten in the first round by Jamie Jones as he could go on a run to the quarter-finals. It'll be interesting to see what this week has in store for him.
Ding Junhui has been in pretty poor form this season, with no really notable runs in 2015 so far at all, and only one semi-final all season in September's Shanghai Masters for full ranking events that is. I think Ding's mistake has been missing the European Tour events. While other players have been hot on match practice he has come into a lot of events cold on that front, and another example of that is here with his first match being over 3 weeks since his first round exit to Lee Walker at the Welsh Open. This could be the week where Ding turns his season around as he looks towards the Crucible now, but with a potentially tough draw in the early stages it could just as easily be another very disappointing week.
John Higgins is one of the men in form at present having won the Welsh Open a couple of weeks ago, and that will make him full of confidence for the rest of the season after a lean couple of years for the Scot. A lot of inconsistencies were starting to creep into his game, and at points in matches he was missing more "easy" balls than ever in his career and as the standard is so high these days he's going to get punished more harshly if he does go missing in the middle of matches. Equally he could play one brilliant match one day and turn up the next day struggling for form and big breaks, which still showed a little in the Welsh Open, and isn't going to go away you wouldn't think at his age.
Mark Davis meanwhile, is flourishing in his older years, reaching the latter stages of tournaments on a number of occasions. This season has been a little more quiet for Davis but he is still a dangerous man, and performs very well in this PTC style best-of-7 style events, and he can certainly beat any of the other players in this quarter on his day. Not only can Mark score heavily, but he is a very gritty player and it usually takes someone on pretty good form to stop him, and the same will be the case this week.
Quarter Winner: Mark Davis
Quarter 2
Last 64 Draw: (Picks in Bold)Joe Perry Vs Marcus Campbell
Rod Lawler Vs Sam Baird or Brijesh Damani
Ben Woollaston Vs Yu De Lu
Alan McManus Vs Kyren Wilson
Mark Joyce W/O Ali Carter
Tian Pengfei Vs Lu Haotian or Dharminer Lilly
Mark King Vs Aditya Mehta
Ricky Walden Vs Rory McLeod
Again we have plenty more players here capable of winning the quarter, along with one of the main home favourites. Although there are 6 Indian wildcards in this event, Aditya Mehta is now the only Indian player on the tour, and he will be looking to impress his home fans. Meanwhile, Ricky Walden, Joe Perry and recent Welsh Open runner-up Ben Woollaston will be the main guys in contention to make the semi's from this group you'd think.
Ricky Walden had a good run to the quarter-finals of the Welsh Open, but his continued issues with a shoulder injury are going to make life very difficult for him as he goes through events that are very quick fire in nature like this one, and from personal experience I know that any back, neck or shoulder injuries like this are very difficult to shift and can take a lot of work to get over, which of course heavily affects the snooker not only because of the pain on shots, but because of the effects this has on the practice routine. However, for someone like Ricky, he can still do very well if he finds his range and rhythm very early on in the match because he is a very nice rhythm player and relies on this rhythm to score and play well, as we saw when he took the International Championship title.
Joe Perry is someone who has been in impressive form over the last couple of years, winning a couple of Asian Tour events (which to be honest aren't too dissimilar from this event this week), as well as a run to the Wuxi Classic final at the beginning of the season where he just couldn't get over the line and win his first ever full ranking event title. I think the Asian Tour wins are standing Perry in good stead now and he's really impressing me with his form, which has included a run to the Gdynia Open quarter-finals last weekend, and even his second Asian Tour title only came at the end of January, so he's playing well at the moment. I think someone could come along and win his first ever ranking title this week, and the top candidate for that in my mind is Joe.
Quarter Winner: Joe Perry
Quarter 3
Last 64 Draw: (Picks in Bold)Judd Trump Vs Peter Lines
Gary Wilson Vs Adam Duffy or Sumit Talwar
Peter Ebdon Vs Zhou Yuelong
Mark Williams Vs Eden Sharav
Graeme Dott Vs Robin Hull
David Gilbert Vs David Morris
Ken Doherty Vs Joe Swail
Robert Milkins Vs Mike Dunn
First up, we have a couple of amateurs in the section who were able to qualify in the shape of Adam Duffy and Eden Sharav, so well done to those two. Out of the rest, Joe Swail and Robin Hull are two guys who are looking to get into the top 64 and save their tour places. Swail would qualify via the European top 8 not already qualified list, but Hull has a small mountain to climb knowing he has around £10,000 to make up on 64th place, or it'll be back to Q School or possibly the European Amateur Championships if he wants to continue his pro career. Judd Trump, Robert Milkins, Mark Williams and Peter Ebdon will be a few of the favourites to win the quarter outright.
Mark Williams has to be one of the favourites for this title this week, cueing as well as he is right now. He breezed to last weeks World Seniors title (probably because he's only 39!) and only a few days before that he reached the final of the Gdynia Open, which didn't come long after a run to the semi-finals of his home event in Cardiff. Mark has also had a little success in Asia this season, getting to the semi-finals of the International Championship. Williams has been working a lot on his health and fitness, which would appear to be standing him in good stead and there's nothing like a lot of good results in quick succession to boost your confidence, and secretly he'll be as determined as ever to continue doing well.
Judd Trump always does a fine job in these short format events, as he showed in cruising to the Gdynia Open quarter-finals before losing to eventual champion Neil Robertson. He looks to be back to his best this season after a quiet year or two and after final appearances in the Champion of Champions and UK Championships he hasn't quite gotten going in 2015. A first round exit at the Masters was not in his script, and he was unlucky to lose out in the German Masters quarter-finals, before a poor show in the Welsh Open last 16. Judd is probably the favourite with the bookies to win this event, and that would simply be because of the ease that he could breeze through this draw if he is on top form, but something tells me he won't be having it all his own way this week.
Robert Milkins comes into this event 17th in the Provisional seedings for the World Championships with a small mountain to climb if he's going to break into the top 16 and qualify automatically for the Crucible. However, he knows that if he could win this quarter and make the semi's or final of this event that would be a huge boost to his hopes and that could make him very determined to go far this week. Again, Milkins is a man that you expect to do well in the short format, and his runs on the European Tour have been impressive with one final and another quarter-final in there from just last weekend. In fact, if you go back to late October, with the cut off for the Masters getting close, Robert Milkins made the semi-finals of the International Championships to squeeze into the top 16 for the Masters. He even said that there was still time to get in, using that example as his reason for thinking that. He is very similar to Ricky Walden in that they are both very nice rhythm players, and when everything clicks they can be unstoppable, but when things start to go wrong, they really do go wrong. As he is in decent form and in need of a big week, I'm going to say that this could be another week where things click for Robert.
Quarter Winner: Robert Milkins
Quarter 4
Last 64 Draw: (Picks in Bold)Stuart Carrington W/O Marco Fu
Li Hang Vs Allan Taylor
Matt Selt Vs Joel Walker
Michael White Vs Cao Yupeng
Ryan Day Vs Nigel Bond or Faisal Khan
Dechawat Poomjaeng Vs Thanawat Thirapongpaiboon
Chris Wakelin Vs Rhys Clark or Pankaj Advani
Andrew Pagett Vs Zach Richardson
There are a couple of amateur qualifiers again in this section as Zach Richardson got a bye over Barry Hawkins in qualifying and Rhys Clark overcame Kurt Maflin. Rhys though has not only been unlucky to draw a wildcard, but even more unlucky that that wildcard is former tour pro Pankaj Advani who was still on the tour last season, before giving up his tour card to concentrate on his Billiards career. Nigel Bond is the main man here who is looking at his tour place, needing victories to put himself further clear of dropping out of the top 64, presently sitting right on the cut off line. Who are the main contenders for this quarter? Well, Michael White, Ryan Day and Matt Selt are a few that jump off of the page at me here.
Ryan Day is having a mixed time of things at the moment. It seemed as though he was in good touch at the German Masters where he lost out in a quarter-final deciding frame, but that didn't last long with Last 64 defeats in the Welsh Open and Gdynia Open. However, looking at his section in the draw he is clearly the strongest player in his section of 8 players (and two wildcards) looking for a quarter-final place. So, if he can knuckle down and get going this week there is a chance to potentially play himself into some form.
Michael White will be full of confidence coming out to India this week as the Snooker Shoot-Out champion. I don't care what you say about it being a meaningless tournament for snooker fans and a format that doesn't work or isn't popular, getting your first professional title is always special, and there's nothing like winning a title and £32,000, especially when you're a young player like Michael is. It could work for White as it did for Hawkins when he went on to win his first ranking title little over 6 months afterwards, and a lot of people were already saying before this that Michael White is the next most likely first time ranking event winner, and to be honest with the draw as it is with a lot of top players missing, this is an opportunity for someone this week, and you wonder if Michael could be the man to take that chance.
Matt Selt has been one of the most improved tour players over the last year and he's really been knuckling down and working very hard on his game to get to the levels he is currently showing. Top performances in the Asian Tour and European Tour events this season have seen him finish high up on the order of merit on both of those to qualify for the Players Championship finals. I expect Selt to go on a big run at a major ranking event very soon, and the way the draw looks with no recognised top sixteen players in this quarter, and with the best-of-7 frames format he's been going very well under in the last year, particularly to reach the Lisbon Open final and 2014 Gdynia Open semi's, you could certainly see him being the man to take the bull by the horns and charge through the draw if he senses the same opportunity.
Quarter Winner: Matt Selt
Tournament Runner-Up: Robert Milkins
Tournament Winner: Joe Perry
Whatever the outcomes of this week, I'm sure good snooker will be played even if it is over a short format and with many of the top players missing, although from my personal opinion the time difference between the UK and India along with the lack of TV coverage makes it a very unappealing event to me, but at the end of the week, someone will have another full ranking event title and that will be important as the run up to the Crucible next month really gets going.
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