Tuesday January 14th 2025
Judd Trump V Barry Hawkins - 13:00
This afternoon sees a rematch of the 2024 UK Championship final as Judd Trump takes on Barry Hawkins. The pair have met in two of the last three Masters with both matches going to a deciding frame with a different winner on each occasion. (2023 Trump, 2022 Hawkins).
Without picking up any silverware, Hawkins has had a solid year making a final and 2 quarter-finals along the way. He more often than not produces his best against the top players in the world and we expect today will be no different.
Similar to last season, Judd Trump has threatened to dominate the World Snooker Tour as he has already claimed 3 titles so far this term. He will no doubt want to rack up as many Triple Crown's as possible and he will fancy his chances of adding to his 2019 & 2023 wins at Ally Pally this week.
The casual snooker fan will look at the match-up and think it will be a stroll in the park for Trump this afternoon but Hawkins is more than capable of competing with the world number 1.
It leaves the job of picking a winner of this one very tough but a close, lengthy encounter looks guaranteed with the winner set to take on Ding Junhui.
I think it will be a similar result to 2023 & 2022 with Trump just edging it.
Prediction: 6-5 Trump
Mark Allen V Si Jiahui - 19:00
The high-quality pairings continue with Mark Allen and Si Jiahui set to do battle this evening. In his debut appearance at Ally Pally, Jiahui has been rewarded with a match with world number 4 and 2018 winner Allen.
Considering other first-round ties, this is a relatively new rivalry with the pair having only met 5 times before this encounter (4-1 Allen). However they are evenly matched going off this season’s results to date, with both players flirting with their best form over the past few months.
Allen impressively won the recent Riyadh season championship defeating Selby, O'Sullivan and Luca Brecel on the way to claiming the title and £250,000.
It's been his only victory this season despite making 4 semi-finals so far and will be hoping to at least replicate his run to the final four here last year. In the pairs first meeting back in 2021, Allen made a maximum break on the way to a 4-1 victory in Belfast. Let's hope for similar scoring tonight.
It's been a relatively quiet season so far for his Chinese opponent with a run to the final in Wuhan his best result. However, qualifying for this competition as the world number 13 is a testament of how well he is playing and how dangerous he can be when on form.
He stormed to victory in group 2 of the Championship League a week ago where he looked in fine form seeing off Jak Jones in the final.
All things considered, tonight's match will be very close and is likely to go down to the wire. I've been very impressed with Si Jiahui over the last 18 months and even though Allen is a tough opponent to face on his debut, I think he might shade it.
Prediction: 6-5 Si Jiahui
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