UK Championship Snooker Day 3 Betting Tips: Another three from Dean on Monday

Day Three at the VPUK Championship will see the last two world champions open up their campaign as Kyren Wilson takes on the experienced Stephen Maguire and Luca Brecel faces this year's Crucible runner-up Jak Jones.

Table 2 will see the in-form Chris Wakelin up against Matthew Selt in the afternoon before Gary Wilson and Michael Holt meet in the evening. As always we have our snooker expert Dean Strand (@DSSnookerTips) on hand to give his take on proceedings, and following on from Sunday's predictions, his UK Championship Snooker Day 3 Betting Tips can be found down below.

Snooker UK Championship Odds

2pts - Chris Wakelin vs Matthew Selt - No Century @ 11/5

A tough one to call between Chris Wakelin and Matthew Selt. The latter does lead the head-to-head but they haven’t played outside of the Championship League for a few years now and Wakelin has shown huge improvements in the last couple of years to get himself up to 15th in the rankings and enter this event as a seed for the first time, so it’s hard to argue against him being favourite for this one.

My preferred bet for this one is for neither player to make a century at 11/5. Neither player is particularly prolific at making centuries - Selt averages one every 18 frames and has failed to make any in his last eight matches whilst Wakelin has been averaging one every 19 frames this season.

They’ve played a total of 28 frames between them in previous head-to-heads and neither player has made a century in any of these matches.

2pts - Stephen Maguire to beat Kyren Wilson @ 12/5

On current form, it’s easy to see why Kyren Wilson is clear favourite for this one but there’s something about the UK Championship that Maguire seems to love and I think he looks worth backing at odds of 12/5 here.

He failed to qualify for this tournament the last two years but when he is in the main draw he causes problems for anybody. He’s reached at least the semi-final stage seven times here in his career, with three finals, lifting the trophy once.

It’s been 25 years since he lost in the first round of this event, albeit the format has changed a couple of times since then.

Wilson doesn’t have a great record here, reaching just one semi-final, and in the last two years as a seed, he's only managed one win, with a second-round defeat to Mark Allen two years ago and a first-round exit to Jamie Clarke last year.

Most of the head-to-heads between these have come in small events but there hasn’t been a lot between them; in the previous six meetings over the last 10 years, they’ve won three apiece.

2pts - Jak Jones vs Luca Brecel - No Century @ 12/5

Luca Brecel has been struggling ever since winning the World Championship last year and with four defeats in his last five, he’s not showing any signs of turning it around yet.

No centuries at 12/5 in this match looks very generous considering Brecel hasn’t made a century all season with a high break of 99.

Jak Jones has been scoring better this season with a century every 11 frames, but that’s above average for him and he does sometimes struggle to replicate that on the bigger stage. He failed to make a century in three of his five matches, and those are considerably longer than these. In his semi-final win over Stuart Bingham, his highest break was 72 in 29 frames.

There has only been one century in the previous three meetings between these two.

Snooker Odds

You can follow all Dean's Snooker Betting Tips over at Betfred Insights.