World Snooker Championship 2024 Thursday Round 2 Tips: Trump to get sent home?

The World Championships are well underway and into the second round of matches. Ace snooker tipster Dean Strand has two bets for us for Thursday's action. Here are Dean's World Snooker Championship Thursday Round 2 Tips. 

1 pt - David Gilbert v Robert Milkins No Century @ 14/1

The second round gets underway on Thursday, as David Gilbert looks to build on his win over World Champion Luca Brecel, taking on Robert Milkins who overcame Pang Junxu on Monday evening.

Both players came through in deciding frames and neither of these two matches were particularly high quality - Brecel had good chances to beat Gilbert but was struggling with illness throughout and Milkins against Pang was a very scrappy match with only six half century breaks in the 19 frames.

Milkins has averaged a century every 35 frames this season and one every 36 frames last season so he’s certainly not prolific at making big breaks.

Gilbert does tend to hit them more regularly but he only made one against Brecel in the first round and had a highest break of 70 in his final qualifying win 10-6 against Xiao Guodong.

In Milkins last five matches at the Crucible there have only been a total of three centuries, all made by his opponents, with three of the matches having no centuries.

If players are struggling it’s not uncommon to see them drag each other down a little bit as we saw in the Milkins vs Pang match last night and odds of 14/1 for no centuries in this one look worth a punt to me.

2 pts Tom Ford to beat Judd Trump @ 9/2

In contrast to the previous match these two came through their respective first round matches with relative ease and this has the potential to be a very good match between two players at the top of their game at the moment.

This will be the third Crucible meeting between Ford and Trump and the previous two have both been good close matches with Trump edging out Ford 10-8 on both occasions. Ford’s form has never been this good though, coming into this one at a career high ranking of 14th.

He’s always had plenty of quality but has been working on the mental side of his game recently and the improvements can be seen in his results. There’s no doubting Trump's quality after winning five ranking events this season but he still has a tendency to struggle sometimes in these bigger events.

In the Players Championship, Masters and Shanghai Masters this season, he was beaten in the quarter finals of all three by Ali Carter and Mark Selby (6-1) and in his first Tour Championship match was demolished by Mark Williams 10-4, a player Ford took to a decider in the previous round.

Last year his World Championship ended early with a first round defeat to Anthony McGill 10-6. If Ford can continue his good form here he can give Trump a tough match and odds of 9/2 look a little big for him to get the win here.

You can follow all Dean's latest Snooker Betting Tips on our dedicated Betfred Insights page.