UK Championship Snooker Day 1 Betting Tips: Dean’s 19/2 Treble attracts

Our snooker tipster Dean Strand has already given us his UK Championship outright preview and is back once again with his daily predictions and betting tips for Saturday's opening day action. 

UK Championship Odds

Day one of the UK Championship sees both of last years finalist in action.

In the afternoon Ronnie O’Sullivan will take on Barry Hawkins whilst Shaun Murphy faces Zhao Xintong, recently returning from his ban.

The evening sessions sees recent International Championship winner Ding Junhui face Robert Milkins and the in form Xiao Guodong against David Gilbert.

Barry Hawkins Highest Break Scorer vs Ronnie O’Sullivan @ 6/4

Ronnie O’Sullivan might have lifted this trophy last season but his form this season has been considerably below his usual standard and the odds for him this year don’t appeal.

Hawkins has been in better form than Ronnie recently but his head-to-head record does put me off backing him to win the match outright.

He does seem to have a bit of a mental block facing the Rocket and has only managed two wins in their 19 head-to-head matches, losing the most recent eight.

One market that does appeal though is the Highest Break scorer, despite losing their last eight encounters Hawkins has still won this market in four of those.

This season in 24 matches he’s made the highest break in 16 of them, whilst Ronnie has made the highest break in 11 of his 20 matches.

These two have similar break building stats for the season, making 11 centuries each and this market looks to be a bit of a 50/50, making odds of 6/4 value.

Shaun Murphy to beat Zhao Xintong @ 1/1

This will be Xintong's first professional tournament since December 2022 following his ban from the tour.

His return has been impressive so far, winning back-to-back Q Tour events with a 147 in each to earn a spot as a wildcard in this weeks qualifiers and he had good wins over Noppon and Walden to reach this stage.

Despite his current form, I still struggle to see him as a favourite for this one, his break building has been superb lately but his safety game has never been his strong point and he hasn’t faced a player of Murphy’s quality yet since his return.

It’s generally been taking very good players to beat Murphy this season, he’s only been beaten twice by players outside of the current top 16 and one of them was against Neil Robertson.

These two have met five times previously and Murphy has won four of them.

Xiao Guodong -1.5 Handicap vs David Gilbert @ 11/10

Guodong has easily been the most improved player this season, into the top 16 for the first time in his long career after winning his first ranking event in Wuhan in October.

Since then he followed that up with another very good run to the International Championship semi final before beating Ronnie O’Sullivan, Mark Selby and Mark Allen on his way to the Champion of Champions final last week, eventually losing out to Mark Williams.

Gilbert had a good run to the World Championship semi final this year but aside from that he’s struggled for form a little with only three other quarter finals in the last couple of years.

Last year he failed to qualify for this event with a defeat to Jamie Clarke in qualifying. He’s lost his last four matches against top 16 players, three of them by three clear frames, with 5-2 defeats to Judd Trump and Gary Wilson and a 4-1 defeat to Kyren Wilson.

Guodong has played nine best of 11s this season and won all of them, with only Scott Donaldson and Selby taking him to deciders, whilst he beat Mark Allen 6-3 and 6-2 and Jack Lisowski 6-3.

You can back the treble, which pays 19/2 at the time of writing, by clicking the banner below to load it directly to your betslip.

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