Once again I will be having a statistical look at this event with a few head to heads and possible head to heads for the rounds beyond the Last 128 stage, with the usual help of sites such as snooker.org and cuetracker.net. Then will come the "Player Performance: Key Indicators" which will see my brand of statistics that include close frame win percentages, average frames per 50+ break and all of these numbers come into play to suggest who the form men of the season so far have been. All of these statistics that you will see later on will be up to date at the time of writing, ahead of the European Masters quarter-finals, and they will all exclude the 6 Reds World Championship as usual, as well as the International Championship qualifiers as that event is yet to conclude.
However, as this is a new event (like the ongoing European Masters) there is no way to use any "event specific" statistics from any previous stagings.
HEAD TO HEAD
- The first head to head points out what is essentially an unseeded draw for this week with only the top 16 placed into it. That sees games like Mark Selby against 39th seed Gary Wilson in the Last 128, and their last meeting came in the China Open final of 2015, which was a resounding victory for Selby.
- Mark Davis faces Tian Pengfei in the Last 128 which should be an interesting game given that three of the four matches they have played have gone down to a deciding frame, Davis winning two of those three deciders while the overall head to head is level at 2-2.
- Tom Ford and Rory McLeod will face off in round one just a couple of weeks after Ford saw off McLeod in the Last 64 round of the European Masters, in the qualifiers played in Preston.
- The unseeded draw also sees two quality players in Liang Wenbo and Graeme Dott playing in the Last 128 round. Liang won their most recent meeting at the World Grand Prix, but Dott has beaten Liang on every other occasion they have met in ranking competition, giving Dott five victories.
- Cao Yupeng comes into his first round game with Ben Woollaston with a 3-1 winning record which is quite surprising given that Woollaston is the much higher ranked player of the two, although the pair have not met for three years since the 2013 Shanghai Masters qualifiers.
- Thepchaiya Un-Nooh will be looking to keep up his 100% winning record against Alan McManus when they meet on Monday. The Thai has won three out of three against McManus in ranking competition, the most recent of which was a 5-0 whitewash win in this years World Open.
- Mark King could meet John Higgins in the Last 64 on Wednesday if both win in round one, and if that were to happen it would be their third meeting inside of a year with each getting a victory. However, if you go back to 1999 and 2001 you find two meetings between the pair in the old "British Open" which saw two whitewash wins for Higgins, with the 2001 victory being in the semi-finals.
- If Shaun Murphy comes through his opening round match with Chen Zhe he will play the winner of the aforementioned Dott Vs Wenbo game. The most recent matches between Dott and Murphy have all been close one's with Dott winning 5-3 at the 2014 Shanghai Masters, before two 5-4 wins for Murphy sandwiched between his 13-11 victory from the 2013 World Championships. Meanwhile, Murphy and Liang would be meeting for the third time in 2016 after two victories for Murphy back to back in March in the Grand Prix (which he went on to win) and in the Players Championship (which was held at the same venue as this weeks event). Prior to these matches, Liang had a 4-2 winning record against Murphy in ranking competition.
PLAYER PERFORMANCE: KEY INDICATORS
- The first indicator to look at this week is to see how the players have been going when it has gone down to the wire, which can so often happen in best-of-7 frame contests which this tournament is until the quarter-final stages. Once again, all of these statistics are correct at the time of writing (ahead of the European Masters quarter-finals on Friday).
Scott Donaldson is a player to watch for a possible close match, having already been involved in ten deciding frames this year, winning half of them. John Higgins 4-3 victory against Tom Ford in the Last 16 in Bucharest sees him retain his 100% record in deciders this season with five wins from five. David Gilbert and Mark Selby are still at 100% from three deciders that each have played, while Michael Holt and Kurt Maflin have very strong records with four wins from five deciders at the start of the 2016/2017 campaign. Watch out for guys like Mark Joyce if matches run close, Joyce has not yet won a decider this season, despite four of his matches already going the distance, while Sam Craigie, Peter Ebdon and Ricky Walden are all winless from three deciders played in the early season.
- Neil Robertson leads the tour in average frames per 50+ contribution at the time of writing, averaging a break of 50 or above every 1.83 frames played, which is the only average on tour to be less than 2. Ronnie O'Sullivan follows that with an average of exactly 2, while Mark Allen makes one every 2.16 frames, Ding Junhui every 2.38 frames, before Anthony McGill completes the top five with a break of 50 or above in every 2.44. Falling just outside of the top five are two players to possibly keep an eye on from slightly further down the rankings in Tom Ford and Jack Lisowksi, who are sixth and seventh when it comes to this statistic on "scoring frequency". Neil Robertson and Mark Allen also lead the tour in frames per century break at this stage of the season with one century every nine frames on average.
- Now that we have dealt with scoring frequency, the next thing to look at is scoring weight, which brings me to the average break when a player has a contribution of 50 or above. Marco Fu leads the tour from the players who have made a reasonable number of 50+ breaks, with his average of 85.71 every time he has made a 50 break or above, from the 24 he has made (excluding any 6 Reds or International Championship qualifiers action). John Higgins comes in with an average of 83.31 per 50+, while Thepchaiya Un-Nooh and Robin Hull both have an average of 82.07 as their average break when making 50+ contributions. David Gilbert is next with an average of 81.07, while Stuart Carrington and Ryan Day also sit well in this regard.
- Scoring though is only one aspect of the game, and winning close frames is also important, so the next piece of analysis is on the players who lead the tour in close frame win percentage (close frames being judged to be when there is 20 points or less in the end of frame scores). Stephen Maguire is the leader here with a brilliant percentage of 84.62, and at the time of writing Alfie Burden is second with a percentage of 83.33. A close frame win percentage of 81.82 puts Kyren Wilson in third position, while lower ranked players in Michael Georgiou and Mark Joyce follow closely in fourth and fifth positions. Sixth to ninth in the table is then made up of four Chinese players with Li Hang, Liang Wenbo, Yan Bingtao and Xiao Guodong all having high close frames win percentages.
- Then there is the average frame aggregate which takes into account every point scored and conceded in the necessary competitions (6 Reds World Championship and International Championship qualifiers aside), calculating an average points scored per frame and an average points conceded per frame which is then subtracted from the former to leave an average frame aggregate. Anthony McGill leads the tour in this respect with an average aggregate of 24.45, while Neil Robertson is a very close second with 24.25, Mark Allen again finishes highly with 20.27, while Shaun Murphy is in fourth with an average frame aggregate of 20.08, before Judd Trump makes up the top five. Mark Selby, Ding Junhui and John Higgins come further down in the top ten but not before David Gilbert and Jimmy Robertson feature on the list.
The five lowest on the average frames aggregate list (having played at least 20 frames) are Darryl Hill, Jak Jones, Sydney Wilson, Kurt Dunham and Paul Davison showing their poor starts to the 2016/2017 season. Also low down on the list are names such as, Alex Borg, Christopher Keogan, Fraser Patrick, Jason Weston and Josh Boileau.
- Finally, it is also worth taking a look at who has been making it into the latter stages of events, which my quarter-finals or better (in full ranking events) since the start of the 2014/2015 season displays. Judd Trump leads the tour with 11 quarter-finals in full ranking events over this period. while Mark Selby, Stuart Bingham and Neil Robertson all sit on 10 ranking quarter-finals in the time frame. In joint fifth with 9 ranking quarter-finals from the start of the 2014/2015 season is Ding Junhui, John Higgins and Stephen Maguire and this statistic does include the European Masters which is at the quarter-finals stage at the time of writing.
That concludes the first part of statistical analysis ahead of the English Open, but do not forget to look out for my "Tournament Top Ten" which offers a second part on the statistical analysis, before everything is bought together for the full preview ahead of the start of the event on Monday.
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