World Open 2017

[DeanH]

Heh, Mike Hallett did his "the rule was changed a couple of seasons ago" nonsense again. I had not heard that in a while, so I was hoping someone had educated him, but I guess not... :wink:

Anyway, nice match. :smile:

Which rule was he discussing?

[Odrl]

Which rule was he discussing?

One of the players was about to get a warning after missing the reds twice when he could see one full ball. Nothing special, but Hallett routinely lets the audience know that this rule has recently been changed, so that it refers to full ball contact now, rather than being able to see both sides of a ball on. Of course there has not been any such change, recently or otherwise, but he's been saying it for at least 12 years now. It's ridiculous to the point of being amusing. :wink:

[DeanH]

Which rule was he discussing?

One of the players was about to get a warning after missing the reds twice when he could see one full ball. Nothing special, but Hallett routinely lets the audience know that this rule has recently been changed, so that it refers to full ball contact now, rather than being able to see both sides of a ball on. Of course there has not been any such change, recently or otherwise, but he's been saying it for at least 12 years now. It's ridiculous to the point of being amusing. :wink:

Holy moly that old chestnut!

[Odrl]

Predictions for the quarterfinals:

I'm going with McGill, 5-3.
5-3 to Ding.
5-4 to Williams.
5-2 to Allen.

I think that's quite sensible again. Brecel got through with a help of a tremendous fluke today, and he generally appeared to be fairly impatient when things were going against him. McGill is a very steady player who is clearly playing well in recent weeks, and I think Brecel might struggle against him. Two fairly evenly matched opponents, so it should be a close game.

I'm not sure what Eurosport's choice will be tomorrow afternoon, but I won't be home to watch my preferred match on the Eurosport Player, so I will only see the one they show on TV. I think I would slightly prefer to watch the two Chinese players. I was impressed with Li in the China Championship, and I think he could give Ding a good match here. Ding hasn't really been tested yet in this tournament, so it will be interesting to see how he deals with playing a solid, methodical player who is clearly in great form at the moment. It will be their first-ever meeting in the proper format as well...

Williams has breezed through the early rounds of this tournament, but the break stats are not as impressive as his results would suggest. I guess that's not always particularly relevant with Williams though... Kyren Wilson is a tough opponent to beat these days. In fact, his ranking and his recent achievements suggest he should even be a slight favourite here, but I too have the feeling Williams will prevail.

As for the bottom pairing, Allen is the bigger name, but there isn't really much between them if you only consider the more recent history. Gilbert won 4-1 when they played in India last week, so he perhaps has a slight psychological edge. Also, Robertson had plenty of chances to take Allen out today, and I think Gilbert will be taking that kind of chances tomorrow.

For the record, I will go for McGill, Ding and Williams to win 5-4, and Gilbert to win 5-3. Should be a good day of snooker. :smile:

[Odrl]

Pretty quick stuff on both tables so far this morning, I got up a bit late and missed more frames than I would have liked. :smile: Personally, I would have chosen Williams-Wilson as the main match over Allen-Gilbert, so that's another weird one from Eurosport...

[j6uk]

williams v wilson
121 121 1 0
. 0 2 102 102
. 0 3 127 127
. 0 4 71 71
. 0 5 135 135
. 0 6 68

funny old game.

[cpserrao]

5 frames on the trot wihtout opponent scoring a single point. Way to go Kyren!

[Neil Taperell]

That is unreal .......century break then doesn't score another point !!!

[Odrl]

Since both matches finished so quickly, I've had the time to watch Williams-Wilson in full from the beginning, and I have to say it was a superb performance from Wilson. He had a big break scored against him in the opening frame, then completely took control of the match and hardly missed a ball after that. And even the one time he did miss, in the 4th frame, he ended up fluking the red and winning the frame in one visit. My favourite break was the 135 in in the 5th frame, made in extremely quick time, very similar to the way O'Sullivan plays when on form. :smile: He will be tough to stop if he continues like this.

I still have lots of time before I have to go, so I will now watch the Allen-Gilbert match in full as well. :smile:

[JimMalone]

As I said I couldn't watch anything from the matches today. Outstanding is certainly the 5-1 victory by Kyren Wilson. While pure breaks stats don't always tell the story of a match, making three centuries within four frames is a great achievement. Break-building usually isn't among Wilsons greatest strengths, so when he makes high breaks as well, he is even much harder to beat.

Impressive is also the fact that Luca Brecel won his third match in a row in a decider.

As for the semifinals:
Brecel - Ding
So after winning the first big tournament of the season, Brecel is also in the semifinal of the second one. So far the Belgian surely is the player of this season and will already be world number #12 (unless Wilson wins the tournament, then he will be #13) after the World Open. From what I've seen from both players this week Ding has looked better to me and as the Chinese is also the better player overall I have to make him the favorite in this semifinal. True is also though that Ding, who won their only meeting of note at the 2016 Welsh Open, surely has the higher pressure in this match. 6-4 to Ding

Wilson - Allen
A highly interesting duel in my eyes. Both are players who are not among the very top of elite players, but just in the tier below them. Of course Allen has been in this department for longer, being a firm member of the top 16 for 10 years. But Kyren Wilson, who is also a bit younger, is on his way up and maybe will soon overtake Allen. At least in my subjective rankings, but maybe also soon in the official rankings. Therefore a win over Allen in this semifinal would be valuable. I think his chances are not bad. Wilson was playing well during this tournament and over the course of the last one year he was the slightly better player than the Northern Irishman as well. I expect this to be a very close duel though. 6-5 to Wilson.

[JimMalone]

A quick view on what a tournament win would mean for each player for the rankings, cause this would shake them up quite a bit:
- Ding would be #2
- Allen would be #5 (which seems a bit high to me to be honest)
- Brecel would be #6 (which would be incredible, when you look where he started the season)
- Wilson would be #9

With a semifinal win Brecel would already enter the top 10.

[Odrl]

Looking forward to both semi-finals tomorrow. I'm expecting Ding and Wilson to come through. :smile:

I'm just watching Ding's match against Li Hang now. I know it's 2am and there is live snooker in six hours, but it's a match that would be a shame to miss. Ding found some nice scoring form after the interval, and he needed to, because Li Hang was very solid in getting the early lead. I was less impressed with Brecel earlier, once again he struggled to get over the line after getting a nice lead. I thought he was lucky to survive the decider against Cao Yupeng, and he was lucky again today, conceding a golden scoring chance to McGill in the decider and seeing his opponent miss an absolute sitter. I just can't see him getting away with something like that against Ding tomorrow.

Similar story with Allen. He is actually playing quite well, but he came up against an out-of-sorts Gilbert today, so it wasn't much of a test. Also, he was quite lucky to survive the match against Robertson, because he too conceded scoring chances when he was a frame away from losing, and he didn't get punished. We saw what Wilson did today, punishing almost every one of Williams's mistakes, and getting in with plants and doubles even when there was no mistake! It was a superb performance, and I think he would win quite easily tomorrow if he could reproduce it. Of course that's easier said than done... These two have played each other several times in recent seasons. It's 2-2 in major matches, but Wilson did win the two most important ones, a very convincing 6-1 in the semi-finals of the 2015 Shanghai Masters, as well as a win over three sessions at the Crucible later in the season.

I'm going for my two favourites to win 6-3. :smile:

[Ramon]

Hard to say !!

But I put my bet on Wilson with this one !!

[Erwan_BZH]

You don't want to mess with this Chinese ref......She yells so much at the noise makers in the audience that it evens puts the players off!

That being said, Kyren Wilson has been very impressive in this tourney so far. His game is rock solid, scoring heavily, sound defensively. Complete package. I hope he goes all the way.

[JimMalone]

Anybody knows a stream by any chance?