World Snooker Championship Betting Tips
After a terrific season of high-quality snooker, there’s one tournament to go in the calendar and it’s the flagship event: the World Championship at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre.
Tournament favourite Judd Trump was the player to beat in the first half of the season but this year’s second seed has gone off the boil a little in recent months.
He still sets the standard in the fourth quarter of the draw and should reach the final – but there may be one to stop him in the title match of the 17-day marathon.
Ronnie O’Sullivan elected to take a sabbatical from snooker after struggling with his game in the first half of the season. The Rocket has returned from a lay-off at the Crucible in the past and won it but, given his early campaign travails, it will take a minor miracle for him to stage the Lazarus act one more time.
Defending champion Kyren Wilson has enjoyed a fine campaign in the wake of claiming his first major title in Sheffield last year.
He has collected four main-tour titles this season and is playing well enough to retain his crown but there may be one or two capable of denying ‘the Warrior’ in Yorkshire this season.
TIP 1 – MARK SELBY TO WIN WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP @ 5/1
Mark Selby, a four-time world champion, has been performing with promise for much of the season but ‘the Jester from Leicester’ produced probably his best snooker of the campaign when reaching the final of the recent Tour Championship.
Selby, who has collected titles this season in the British Open in September and Championship League and Welsh Open in February, arguably stepped up on those displays when finding only in-form John Higgins too good in the Manchester title match in early April.
Higgins found more to thwart Selby’s Tour Championship title hopes in Manchester but the Jester may have been keeping a little back for the Crucible.
Selby is the second-favourite behind Trump and, even allowing for the fine form Wilson has been showing throughout the campaign, it’s difficult to disagree with that assessment.
TIP 2 – JOHN HIGGINS TO WIN QUARTER 3 @ 9/4
Higgins, World Open champion in China in early March, performed even better on the way to taking that Tour Championship title in Manchester and the four-time Crucible hero should have the beating of anyone in his quarter.
Improving Joe O’Connor, who dismissed Jackson Page in the final round of qualifying for the Crucible, could prove troublesome to ‘the Wizard of Wishaw’ in his opener but Higgins has the beating of Xiao Guodong and Barry Hawkins after recent victories over that pair.
Apart from O’Connor, the biggest threat to Higgins reaching the last four this year could come from his fellow class of 92 legend Mark Williams, although the Welshman may have a job on his hands keeping Wu Yize quiet in his curtain-raiser.
TIP 3 – ZHAO XINTONG TO WIN QUARTER 1 @ 4/1
Backing Trump to win Quarter 4 is an option but instead it may pay to have an interest in the field’s only amateur winning his section of the draw.
Zhao Xintong was a deserving winner of the UK Championship in 2021 but the 28-year-old is back in the amateur ranks after serving a 20-month ban for his part in a match-fixing storm that involved 10 Chinese players.
Zhao has won a raft of Q-Tour events this season and has the ability to make life tough for Wilson, Mark Allen, Neil Robertson and Jak Jones, the seeded players in the first quarter of the draw.
Looking forward to the event? You can also read through a trip down memory lane with our best matches in snooker world championship history blog.
View all our Snooker betting markets here
Odds correct at time of publication but subject to fluctuation