World Snooker Championship 2024 Friday Round 2 Tips: 14/1 shot attracts on Friday

The World Championships are well underway and into the second round of matches. Ace snooker tipster Dean Strand has two bets for us for Friday's action, including a 14/1 shot. Here are Dean's World Snooker Championship Friday Round 2 Tips. 

1 pt  Si Jiahui vs Jak Jones No Century @ 14/1

Table conditions in this year's World Championship seem to be tougher than they have been in the last couple and the first round century count looks set to finish significantly lower than last year's tally.

Both of these players were involved in scrappy first round matches, with Si Jiahui coming through in a decider against Mark Williams and Jak Jones beating Zhang Anda 10-4, in a match with just five 50+ breaks.

Neither of these two made a century this week and neither really came close - Jiahui with a high break of 77 against Williams and Jones with a high break of 75.

With both players eliminating seeds in the first round, they’ll see this a huge opportunity of reaching at least the quarter final stage for the second year running and it wouldn’t be surprising to see both players a little nervous in this one.

14/1 is a big price for no centuries to be made here.

2 pts Stephen Maguire to beat Shaun Murphy @ 6/4

This one looks a bit of a coin flip to me.

Murphy and Maguire are of a similar age and will know all about each other's game having played each other 23 times since their first meeting 23 years ago.

Murphy does lead the overall head to head by one but he did win more of the earlier games and in recent years Maguire has had the edge, winning four of the last five meetings, including the last three.

Their latest meeting came two years ago here at the Crucible in the first round and Maguire picked up the victory, winning the last three frames to progress 10-8.

The two have been playing at a similar level this season too. After a great season last year, Murphy picked up the Championship League trophy at the start of the season but has struggled to build on it, failing to make it past the last 16 of any ranking event since then.

The first round this week saw similar performance levels from the two as well, although Murphy was playing with less pressure against Lyu Haotian, who didn’t really perform, whilst Maguire had to stay on top of his game to beat the in-form Ali Carter.

This one could be a good close match between two experienced players and Maguire looks the value pick to me at 6/4.

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