This year’s World Snooker Championship seemed to be especially important for the long-term future of the sport. In the previous weeks, snooker has been engulfed with bad news: from betting scandals (the Maguire vs Burnett affair from December’s UK championship is still under police investigation) to outspoken criticism over the direction the sport was taking from the man who is arguably its only real star, Ronnie O’Sullivan. Furthermore there was speculation that the tournament was prepared to abandon its legendary home of the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield for some glitzy new venue in China or Dubai. All in all, the World Snooker Authority was in desperate need of the positive publicity that a successful tournament could garner.
From a bettor’s perspective, this was significant. A good tournament would surely feature close matches and, more importantly for us, high scoring. Crucially, the latter is something that can be influenced by the organisers. A little softening of the pockets here, a change of cloth there and the world’s most gifted snooker players would have the best possible opportunity to showcase their break-building talents. In the current climate, it was in nobody’s interest to have matches dominated by balls rattling in the jaws of unforgiving pockets, and dour safety play encouraged by the player’s reluctance to chance their arms with long pots.
In light of this, two quotes in particular caught my eye. Total tournament centuries were available to buy at 67 and tournament ton-ups (i.e. the total number of points scored over 100 in each century break) at 1080. Historically speaking, these quotes look on the high side – only twice in the last ten years had centuries made up higher than 67 and ton-ups had never done so. However, sometimes it can pay to not get bogged down in past results. The overall standard of snooker has been significantly improving for years now; the young players coming through all seem to be talented break-builders and the number of centuries scored was increasing: at the Masters in January, the world’s top 16 players – who would all be present in Sheffield – combined for 32 centuries in just 15 matches. Over the longer format of the World Championship, I anticipated a similarly strong performance and so BOUGHT TOTAL CENTURIES AND TOTAL TOURNAMENT TON-UPS.
On the outright market, I had a strong liking for Ali ‘The Captain’ Carter. Frequently acclaimed as one of the brightest young talents in the game, he had consistently reached the latter stages of tournaments during the 2008-9 season and had recently claimed his first ranking title. Having already reached the World Championship final the previous year, I fancied him to go deep again this year and so chose to BUY CARTER ON THE 4-PAY INDEX AT 18. This would make up 100 if he won the tournament, 50 if he reached the final and 25 for a semi-final, so I needed at least a last-four appearance from Carter to turn a profit in the match.
DURING THE TOURNAMENT
Well, I was certainly right on one count. The tournament was indeed a festival of scoring. In the very first session, Ronnie hit a 140 break and was 13 reds and blacks into a potential 147. The scoring barely let up from then on and it soon became clear that the previous record of 68 tournament centuries was going to be obliterated. Despite a slight let-up in the scoring as the tournament reached the tense semi-final stage, both of my tournament bets ended up as very decent winners: centuries made up 83 and ton-ups 1277. Unfortunately, my faith in Carter was somewhat misplaced as he crashed out of the tournament to the Aussie Neil Robertson in the 2nd round stage. Indeed, Carter was a let down all-round, as he contrived to exit the tournament early on without contributing a single century. Still, even his early exit couldn’t spoil what was an excellent tournament, both for my punting and, probably more significantly, for the ailing sport of snooker itself. It was announced halfway through that the World Championships will be returning to Sheffield for the next five years; I, for one, cannot wait.
JW
Comments