BetVictor Welsh Open Qualifiers !!

Tuesday 15th ~ Sunday 20th of February at The Aldersley Leisure Village, Wolverhampton

This Event has been ever present on the circuit since 1992 first won by Stephen Hendry.

There are 7 players who played in 1992 playing this year :-

Nigel Bond (Semi Final lost 6-1 to Stephen Hendry)
Ken Doherty (Last 32 lost 5-2 to Cliff Wilson)
Peter Lines (Last 64 lost 5-4 to Willie Thorne)
Anthony Hamilton (Last 64 lost 5-4 to Neal Foulds)
Barry Pinches (Last 96 lost 5-3 to Eugene Hughes)
Andy Hicks (Last 96 lost 5-1 to Jon Birch)
Fergal O'Brien (Last 128 lost 5-3 to Gary Natale)

Jimmy White was obviously on Tour back then but did not play in the Inaugral Welsh Open.

Who will join the top 16 seeds this year in Newport?

DRAW

Selected Qualifying Matches
Joe O'Connor v Matthew Stevens
Mark Joyce v Jackson Page
Luca Brecel v Rory McLeod
Robbie Williams v Sanderson Lam
Hossein Vafaei v Andrew Higginson
Jak Jones v Sunny Akani
Ryan Day v Chang Bingyu
Graeme Dott v Steven Hallworth
Jamie Clarke v Farakh Ajaib
Martin Gould v Ben Woollaston
Liang Wenbo v Zhang Jiankang
Jimmy Robertson v Peter Devlin
Zhou Yuelong v Jamie Jones
Thepchaiya Un-Nooh v Robert Milkins
Nigel Bond v Si Jiahui
Gary Wilson v Peter Lines
Ding Junhui v Gao Yang
Michael Holt v Martin O'Donnell
David Grace v Zhao Jianbo
Ricky Walden v Gerard Greene
Cao Yupeng v Fan Zhengyi
David Gilbert v Joe Perry
Alfie Burden v Mark Davis
Matthew Selt v Xu Si
Reanne Evans v Soheil Vahedi
Ali Carter v Lei Peifan
Wu Yize v Ng On Yee
Jamie Wilson v Kurt Maflin
Tom Ford v Scott Donaldson
Jack Lisowski v Stuart Carrington
Xiao Guodong v Michael White

ORDER OF PLAY

Come on Dreamboat!

I don't think Stephen Hendry is playing :( he's not played at all yet in 2022.

Juddernaut88 wrote:I don't think Stephen Hendry is playing :( he's not played at all yet in 2022.

He's regressed to the early days of his comeback.

SnookerFan wrote:

Juddernaut88 wrote:I don't think Stephen Hendry is playing :( he's not played at all yet in 2022.

He's regressed to the early days of his comeback.

If he is offered another 2 year wildcard tour card, do you think he should accept it?

Juddernaut88 wrote:

SnookerFan wrote:

Juddernaut88 wrote:I don't think Stephen Hendry is playing :( he's not played at all yet in 2022.

He's regressed to the early days of his comeback.

If he is offered another 2 year wildcard tour card, do you think he should accept it?

It's a no from me.

I don't even really see the point of his comeback. He was never going relive past glories. It's not even like pratting around in qualifiers is paying him anything. What was the point to it?

I can't see how playing on for longer will improve his game.

It's been good to see him again, but if he keeps getting spanked in dull matches, how long will the appeal last for him or for fans?

Yep, I'm already bored of the Hendry comeback. It would still be special if he qualified for the crucible though.

Juddernaut88 wrote:

SnookerFan wrote:

Juddernaut88 wrote:I don't think Stephen Hendry is playing :( he's not played at all yet in 2022.

He's regressed to the early days of his comeback.

If he is offered another 2 year wildcard tour card, do you think he should accept it?

No.

McManusFan wrote:Yep, I'm already bored of the Hendry comeback. It would still be special if he qualified for the crucible though.

Yes, it would.

Seems unlikely, but imagine having a top-16er having to play Hendry in the first round.

Even then though, I can only see him losing heavily to whoever he drew.

For those of you hoping to see a female player win a professional match against a bloke, this event finally allows both the women to play a more suitably ranked player in the qualifying round rather than the more commonly occurring highly ranked player.

Reanne Evans will play Soheil Vahedi in her qualifying match and Ng On-yee will play Wu Yize, neither of whom have ever been higher than rank no.80

Ng has the slightly tougher match, on paper, as Yize has had slightly more success than Vahedi this season.

No pressure ladies!

LDS wrote:For those of you hoping to see a female player win a professional match against a bloke, this event finally allows both the women to play a more suitably ranked player in the qualifying round rather than the more commonly occurring highly ranked player.

Reanne Evans will play Soheil Vahedi in her qualifying match and Ng On-yee will play Wu Yize, neither of whom have ever been higher than rank no.80

Ng has the slightly tougher match, on paper, as Yize has had slightly more success than Vahedi this season.

No pressure ladies!

Good post.

I still think they're the underdogs in both matches, but you never know.
Wu Yize is probably too strong for either of them, while they are both capable of beating Vahedi, depending on which version of him shows up on the day.

LDS wrote:For those of you hoping to see a female player win a professional match against a bloke, this event finally allows both the women to play a more suitably ranked player in the qualifying round rather than the more commonly occurring highly ranked player.

Reanne Evans will play Soheil Vahedi in her qualifying match and Ng On-yee will play Wu Yize, neither of whom have ever been higher than rank no.80

Ng has the slightly tougher match, on paper, as Yize has had slightly more success than Vahedi this season.

No pressure ladies!

When are they both playing?

I like by the order of play, they've put an F by Reanne's name.

In case we didn't notice she was female.

SnookerFan wrote:When are they both playing?

Reanne - Thursday 17 @ 7pm
Ng - Sunday 20th Feb @ 1pm

LDS wrote:

SnookerFan wrote:When are they both playing?

Reanne - Thursday 17 @ 7pm
Ng - Sunday 20th Feb @ 1pm

Buay for Reanne.

Might whack Ng on.

LDS wrote:For those of you hoping to see a female player win a professional match against a bloke, this event finally allows both the women to play a more suitably ranked player in the qualifying round rather than the more commonly occurring highly ranked player.

Reanne Evans will play Soheil Vahedi in her qualifying match and Ng On-yee will play Wu Yize, neither of whom have ever been higher than rank no.80

Ng has the slightly tougher match, on paper, as Yize has had slightly more success than Vahedi this season.

No pressure ladies!

Evans has beaten professionals in pro tournaments...just when she was a wildcard or invitee herself. (Un-Nooh and Hull). Has run Murphy and Allen to deciders and lost to Doherty 10-8.

So whilst her record as a pro isn't anything to write home about yet, the scenario isn't quite as bleak as you are depicting.

SteveJJ wrote:the scenario isn't quite as bleak as you are depicting.

I had no idea my scenario was written with a bleak aesthetic!

But yes, earlier this year Reanne drew two matches with current tour pros, Tom Ford and Simon Lichtenberg in the round robins of the Championship League.

But highlighting her 5-4 win over Thepchaiya Un-Nooh from the 2013 Wuxi Classic qualifiers and her 10-8 win over Robin Hull at the last 144 stage of the WSC in 2017 seems like an odd way to reply (with mild hostility (?) ) to my 2022 innocuous post?

This year, both Reanne and Ng have been lumbered with an awful lot of top tier draws, this time they aren't, so you might enjoy watching them with a sense of potentiality, sorry if that comes across as 'bleak'?

Is anyone watching anything this afternoon?

I've got BJJ this evening, but I will probably watch one of these afternoon matches.

Jamie Clarke v Farakh Ajaib
Jimmy Robertson v Peter Devlin

Peter Devlin steals the opening frame.

Jamie Clarke 2-0 up.

Devlin now 2-0 up.

LDS wrote:

SteveJJ wrote:the scenario isn't quite as bleak as you are depicting.

I had no idea my scenario was written with a bleak aesthetic!

But yes, earlier this year Reanne drew two matches with current tour pros, Tom Ford and Simon Lichtenberg in the round robins of the Championship League.

But highlighting her 5-4 win over Thepchaiya Un-Nooh from the 2013 Wuxi Classic qualifiers and her 10-8 win over Robin Hull at the last 144 stage of the WSC in 2017 seems like an odd way to reply (with mild hostility (?) ) to my 2022 innocuous post?

This year, both Reanne and Ng have been lumbered with an awful lot of top tier draws, this time they aren't, so you might enjoy watching them with a sense of potentiality, sorry if that comes across as 'bleak'?

Well Ng On Yee had much worse first-round draws than Reanne Evans. The UK Championship is of course seeded, not random. And I agree again that Ng has a tougher draw - Wu Yize is a heck of a talent, but is still young and inexperienced.

Farakh Ajaib gets a frame back.

Didn't Ng On Yee come close to beating someone in a qualifier this season? I think she was 4-2 up but lost 5-4. I can't remember who the opponent was though.

Juddernaut88 wrote:Didn't Ng On Yee come close to beating someone in a qualifier this season? I think she was 4-2 up but lost 5-4. I can't remember who the opponent was though.

That's Craig Steadman you're thinking of.


She also only lost 4-3 to Shaun Murphy in 2021.

Yanfan wrote:

Juddernaut88 wrote:Didn't Ng On Yee come close to beating someone in a qualifier this season? I think she was 4-2 up but lost 5-4. I can't remember who the opponent was though.

That's Craig Steadman you're thinking of.


She also only lost 4-3 to Shaun Murphy in 2021.

That's the one yep

Jimmy Robertson gets a frame back.

Farakh Ajaib is level at 2-2

2-2 down between Jimmy Robertson and Peter Devlin.
Jamie Clarke is leading Farakh Ajaib 3-2

Juddernaut88 wrote:

Yanfan wrote:

Juddernaut88 wrote:Didn't Ng On Yee come close to beating someone in a qualifier this season? I think she was 4-2 up but lost 5-4. I can't remember who the opponent was though.

That's Craig Steadman you're thinking of.


She also only lost 4-3 to Shaun Murphy in 2021.

That's the one yep

Yes, and after that Steadman started playing like a genius. He was terrific in Germany, and then was hammering Martin Gould in the Turkey qualifier, before he seemed to hit the wall.