Snooker Betting – Ding To Ring In New Year With Another Win

Last year’s Masters at Wembley Arena produced one of the best finishes of recent times on snooker’s Grand Prix circuit, with Ronnie O’Sullivan recovering from a 7-5 deficit in the final to edge out Mark Selby (a general 10-1 this time) 10-8. No surprise, then, that ‘The Rocket‘ is a general 11-4 market leader to triumph again this time around. This is undoubtedly O’Sullivan‘s favourite tournament and he’ll be bringing added colour to events this week with a new purple cue supplied by sponsors Premier Inn. But though he’ll bidding for a fifth success at Wembley, it’s probably fair to say the Essex cueman isn’t exactly in the form of his life at present. He went out of the Championship League last week and lost out in the UK Championship semi-finals before Christmas, though admittedly that was only by one frame to world champion John Higgins. He also faces a tricky first-round encounter with the ever-improving Neil Robertson (14-1 with totesport). Higgins, a general 11-2 chance, is the top seed in the bottom half of the draw in the Pokerstars.com Masters but that is arguably the toughest section and a potential quarter-final with Ding Junhui may well prove to be the tournament’s pivotal clash. Ding surpassed Thailand’s James Wattana in becoming the most successful Asian player in snooker history when he landed a second UK Championship at Telford recently, capping a renaissance that seemed most unlikely 18 months earlier when he was on the brink of dropping out of the world’s top 16. However, time spent back home in China and a new fitness regime has clearly benefited Ding, who has also reached the quarter-finals of the Shanghai Masters this season as well as the final of the Grand Prix in Glasgow. Extrabet‘s 11-1 will look very big if he manages to topple Higgins in the last eight. This week’s Masters is also significant in that it sees the return to top-flight snooker of veteran Jimmy White. ‘The Whirlwind‘ is only a peripheral figure on the circuit nowadays but has been handed a wild-card entry at Wembley and will take on Mark King (a general 125-1) in a preliminary round play-off for the right to meet Stephen Maguire (10-1 with Coral) in the last 16. The fact that extrabet are offering odds of 250-1 against one of the sport’s iconic figures shows just how far White‘s stock has fallen since his heyday and my money will be on Ding Junhui.