Snooker Players Championship 2016 Betting Preview & Winner Odds

Trump leads Players Championship 2016 field

Snooker Betting

The 2015/16 snooker season is drawing to a close. There is just the China Open and the then World Snooker Championship to follow for the season after the Snooker Players Championship has had its run over the next week. This is a ranking snooker event (the eighth of the season) as well and it runs from March 22nd through to the 27th up in Manchester.

The event this year has an unfamiliar scenario where the reigning champion isn’t back to defend his title. That is because last year’s winner Joe Perry failed to qualify back for the Finals. There is a whole of qualifying to be done to get to the finals because the Players Tour Championship is a series of snooker events, held across two continents Europe and Asia.

Prize money earned from appearances in the European Tour Events on the Players Tour Championship calendar all go towards an Order Of Merit and the top 24 from that get to make it to the finals from the European side of things and they are joint from the top two coming from the Asian Tour of Merit. Yes, that’s only 26 players and so there is a mix of another six players coming in from both Orders Of Merit as qualifiers too, rounding out to 32 players.

That having all been settled, it is Judd Trump who is running as 4/1 outright favourite for the Finals. There is no Ronnie O’Sullivan because he doesn’t bother competing in the PTC events, or at least hasn’t done this season. Because it is just a European and Asian event as well, there are other notable absentees like Australia’s Neil Robertson.

So it’s not the most talented of line ups, not like one you will see at the World Championships later in the year, but it’s still some good competitive action on the cards. Following Judd Trump in the outright betting market is Shaun Murphy at 5/1 and then Mark Allen and Ding Junhui coming in at 9/1, the only other two players under double figures.

Snooker Players Championship 2016 Betting Odds

Judd Trump 4/1, Shaun Murphy 5/1, Mark Allen 9/1, Ding Junhui 10/1, Marco Fu 16/1, Barry Hawkins 16/1, Mark Williams 18/1, Martin Gould 25/1, Kyren Wilson 28/1, 33/1 bar

Snooker Players Championship 2016 Free Bet

You can grab yourself free bet when you register an account with online betting site Coral. After going through the quick registration process, place a £5 sports bet and get your £20 free bet instantly back from them! It’s a great way to get started and your first bet just have to a £5 Win or £5 Each-way and you will get your 4 x £5 free bets instantly!

Snooker Players Championship 2016 Draw

So there is a long process to get to the Snooker Players Championship 2016 that the players have to go through, having to roll through seven minor-ranking events in order to pick up the points to make it high enough into the Order of Merit.

In this season’s Snooker Players Championship 2016 draw it does get interesting because outright favourite to win the title Judd Trump is actually only seeded 24th in the draw and leading the way is second seed Barry Hawkins, who is the highest ranked player in the draw because Mark Selby, the overall top seed in the Order Of Merit, withdrew.

The event is a straight knockout tournament with the first round going over just the best of seven games. It stays that way through the last sixteen and the quarter finals as well, so it is quite a rapid-fire type of tournament. Things get extended out to the best of 11 frames in the semifinals and then the Final itself is a full on affair of the best of 19 frames.

Snooker Players Championship History and Stats

There’s not a lot of history to go by on this one as it is a fairly never event. The first Snooker Players Championship held in 2010 when Shaun Murphy went to the final and beat Martin Gould 4-0. The previous finals have only been over the best of seven frames until things got tweaked this season. Actually three of the four previous Snooker Players Championship finals have been won by a 4-0 scoreline.

Stephen Lee won it in 2012 with a victory over Neil Robertson and again Neil Robertson was thwarted at the final hurdle a year later when he was beaten by Ding Junhui in the final. Barry Hawkins claimed the 2014 title before Joe Perry took down Mark Williams in last season’s final which was held in Bangkok.

Because it is a fairly new event there has been significant changes in its format down the few years that it has been running, with changes to the Order Of Merit and who it accommodates in the tournament. It is an event which looks as if it is still finding its feet.