After yesterday's "Tournament Top Ten" blog, it is time to keep the build-up for the European Masters with a full statistical preview on certain elements that could point to who the winner next weekend will be or simply picking out some interesting points or head to heads for the early rounds.
Some statistics will come from the CueTracker.net and Snooker.org sites, while in the "Player Performances: Key Aspects section" you will find some statistics that I have been bringing together and working on. These numbers should help pick out who the men in form have been so far this season, even if some have not necessarily been winning tournaments and what we can expect from certain players moving forwards. As this is essentially a brand new event to the calendar in an arena never seen before for a professional event, there will obviously not be any event specific stats like most money earned in a tournament, or others of this nature.
HEAD TO HEAD
- The last three times Mark Davis has played Shaun Murphy in full or minor ranking competition he has come out on top. Those wins came in the 2015 Shanghai Masters, the 2014 Australian Open and on the European Tour in 2013. Davis will be looking to keep that up in the Last 32 in Romania.
- John Higgins will take on Michael Holt in round one knowing that he has beaten him in their last two meetings despite having come from behind to do so. Higgins won the last two frames in the World Open, and in the International Championship in 2015 he came from 3-1 down to win 6-3.
- When Andrew Higginson meets Marco Fu in round one at the venue he will be hoping to keep up a run of six wins out of six against Fu in ranking events or PTC events, or the last of these came in 2012.
- Ben Woollaston will meet Judd Trump for the second ranking event in succession having lost 5-0 to Trump in the Last 32 in Shanghai.
- David Grace and Rhys Clark have an even more recent meeting having played last week in the International Championship qualifiers, with Grace running out a 6-1 winner.
- The only time Luca Brecel has previously played Scott Donaldson was in the early qualifying rounds for the 2012 UK Championships. Brecel won in a decider, and ended up going on to the quarter-finals which at the time was his best ranking performance.
PLAYER PERFORMANCE: KEY ASPECTS
- The first of my calculated statistics that should give a good indication of who the players to watch for this week are, is the average frames per 50+ break, the closest thing there is to a "scoring frequency" stat. All of these numbers were calculated prior to the European Masters and International Championship qualifiers of the last week. The numbers also do not take into account the 6 Reds World Championship because of it's non-ranking format and change in format.
Top of the list for average frames per 50+ is Neil Robertson. The Australian averages 2.02 which is a far lower number than anyone else. Anthony McGill is the next best from this 32 man field (plus 2 holdovers) with 2.42 frames per 50 break or above, while Tom Ford follows in third for this weeks field with 2.47 frames per 50 and it is interesting to see someone ranked outside of the top 32 so high up this list. Shaun Murphy is in fourth for this weeks field with exactly 2.5 frames per 50 break, while Mark Allen is closely behind with 2.57.
- The next category is one that compliments the previous one nicely. Now that we know who is at the top for 50+ breaks frequency, the next obvious place to look at is 50+ breaks weight with average break when a player makes a 50 break or above. Liang Wenbo leads the field for this statistic this week averaging 85.67 whenever he makes a 50 break. Directly after Wenbo is David Gilbert with 84.16, while John Higgins comes closely after in the list with 83.05 while Fu is in fourth with 82 before Robin Hull lands in fifth place for this weeks field with 79.18. Remember that was calculated after the Shanghai Masters and prior to the European Masters qualifiers so the Last 128 and Last 64 stages of this event were not included in the stats.
- Now that we know who is scoring heavily and winning frames with the big breaks, it's time to see who is winning the close frames. The close frames win percentage classes frames as anything with 20 points difference or less at the end of the frame, because I felt that a conservative approach was needed for this one. Alfie Burden leads the field in this one with a percentage of 77.78, Liang Wenbo is next with 75%, with Robin Hull and Yan Bingtao also on 75%. Mark Selby is then in fifth place with 72.22%, while Anthony McGill and Dominic Dale also have close frame win percentages of 70 or above. The lowest percentages out of the 32 (plus holdovers) heading to Romania see Mark Davis with a one in four 25% hit rate in close frames, and Michael Wild only has a one in three 33.33 percentage.
- On my statistics for average frame aggregate (which is average points scored per frame - average points conceded per frame) there are a number of the top ranked players in the field this week are at the top of the list in this statistic. Anthony McGill leads with an average aggregate of 25.36, with Neil Robertson at 22.25 in second. Shaun Murphy follows in third at 18.96 for average frame aggregate, while Judd Trump is fourth and David Gilbert is fifth from the 32 man field for the European Masters. Michael Wild's poor start to the season left him at a frame aggregate of -26.16 prior to the qualifiers for this event and the International Championship qualifiers that followed.
- John Higgins comes into the European Masters with four wins out of four in deciding frames, while Mark Selby and David Gilbert are both 100% from three matches. Ali Carter and Michael Holt have also shown good pressure play with four wins out of five in final frame shoot-outs.
This should provide a great insight into who the key players and aspects to keep an eye on, are throughout the tournament and, with the heads to heads particularly, pick out who the early casualties could be as well as the trends for who will go far.
Tomorrow will see my full tournament preview, rounding up the build up from both this blog and the tournament top ten blog and give you my personal choice to take the title next week.
It is also not too late to read my "Tournament Top Ten" blog which can be found here: http://cueactionsnookerblog.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/european-masters-tournament-top-ten.html
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