English Open predictions, snooker betting tips & winner odds: Captain could fly

Free snooker tips, best bets and analysis for the English Open, which starts in Milton Keynes on Monday.

Where to watch

Eurosport, from 10am, Monday

Best bets

Ali Carter to win title
0.5pt each-way 66-1 Hills

Cao Yupeng to win title
0.5pt each-way 66-1 Hills

Match preview

Talk of lower-ranked players not being good enough to compete with the top brass keeps on rearing its head, mostly due to Ronnie O'Sullivan's comments in the last year or two.

But while O'Sullivan is wrong to disrespect players who are operating at a lower level than himself, it may be time for World Snooker to inquire into why so few outsiders are making the grade these days.

For whatever reason, the current system clearly suits the top players and there are a host of top-20 performers who have claims to winning the English Open, the second of four Home Nations tournaments, which starts in Milton Keynes on Monday.

The Marshall Arena at Milton Keynes did a splendid job of catering for the sport's requirement last season with the vast majority of events being staged in a baize bubble there.

But while the virus is still with us, it's open house at the Buckinghamshire venue this season and most players are likely to appreciate that.

Even though the top dogs have been farming titles in recent seasons and pretty much any of the seeded players could triumph this week, it may pay to try a slightly different punting approach and support a couple of players who are in decent nick and more than capable of troubling the big names.

Ali Carter, who has suffered with ill health in the last decade, looks to be producing his most positive snooker for many years and the Captain, a dual World Championship finalist and former top-16 player himself, could ruffle the feathers of a number of seeds in the bottom half of the draw.

O'Sullivan doesn't look that focused right now, although John Higgins played supremely well to finish runner-up to Mark Allen in the Northern Ireland Open last month and could prove a major danger.

In the top half of the draw, where last year's English Open finalists Judd Trump and Neil Robertson look the players to beat, it could be worth taking a chance on Cao Yupeng to come good.

The Chinese ace, who served a ban for match-fixing from May 2018 until November last year, is a hugely talented performer and made the final of the Scottish Open, another Home Nations event, in 2017 when he was pipped 9-8 by Robertson.

Cao is back to somewhere near his best and even though bookmakers are well aware that it may not be long before he reaches another final, the chance to support him can still be taken.

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