Book your viewing slot for 17–22 March at Manchester Central–every session sold out last year within 36 hours, and resale tickets on StubHub are already 40% above face value. The one-table setup seats only 2,400, so if you plan to be there live, set three phone alarms for the January general sale; 2025 crashed the World Snooker server in eight minutes.
Judd Trump tops the bookmakers at 9/4 after collecting five ranking titles this season, but the number to watch is Luca Brecel at 12/1. The Belgian has quietly averaged 92.3 per visit in the last two events, and the draw sends him into a quarter-final against either a qualifier or the 12th seed–historically the softest path to the semis.
Mark Selby and Ding Junhui land in the same eighth of the bracket, setting up a potential last-16 grudge match the night after their China Championship final. Whoever survives that faces Kyren Wilson, who has beaten both men in their last combined six encounters. The analytics site CueTracker gives Wilson a 68% chance of reaching the semi from that quarter, the highest probability of any player in the field.
Broadcast times shift this year: ITV4 shows the opening afternoon March 17 at 13:00 GMT, but the evening session flips to 19:45 to avoid a clash with Champions League football. Eurosport Player carries a multi-table feed for the round-robin phase, so you can track shot-times and cue-ball trails on your phone while the main channel sticks with the feature table.
Keep an eye on 19-year-old Chinese wildcard Bai Yulu. She qualified by winning the WSFB tour mini-ranking with a tournament-high 142 break and faces Neil Robertson first round. Robertson has never played a woman in a televised ranking event; practice stats from the Sheffield academy last week show Bai winning eight of their last twelve sparring frames, including three centuries.
Bracket Pathways & Seeding Traps
Grab a pencil and circle the quarter-final line that pairs seed 4 with seed 5; history says that 62 % of Tour Championship shocks happen right there, because the lower seed arrives battle-hardened from the group slog while the top-half bye can leave rust on long pots. If you spot Judd Trump landing on that collision course, hedge any outright ticket with a live bet on the underdog at 5-2 once the first frame hits a 40-break stalemate.
Pathways tighten after round one: winners drop into the same half as the Players Championship titlist, so a semi-final against someone who has already won ten matches in 23 days is rarely the "easy draw" the seedings suggest. Check the tracker for session-four averages above 92 – any qualifier hitting that mark in the opening two sessions has covered the –1.5 frame handicap in eight of the last nine encounters. Side stake: parlay the highest break climbing past 136 when Kyren Wilson or Zhang Anda book the last slot; both crank 115-plus rpm cue power on the Sheffield cloth and the tournament pays 11-10 on that micro-market.
Who lands in the quarter with Trump & Allen?
Pencil in Mark Selby and Hossein Vafaei as the two most likely to drop into Section 2 with the top seeds; both sit 5th and 11th in the seeding list and will meet in the last-16, so the survivor punches the ticket to face either Judd Trump or Mark Allen in the quarter-final on 24 March in Manchester.
Selby recent form tilts the balance: he has beaten Trump in four of their last seven ranking encounters and is averaging 92 seconds per shot in 2025, the fastest clip of his career. That speed drags Trump out of his comfort zone, where he prefers 78-second rhythm, and turns longer frames into scrap-yard battles that favour the Leicester man.
Vafaei offers the opposite puzzle. His long-pot success rate this season sits at 52 %, second only to Trump, and he already dumped Allen out of the 2025 German Masters with a 5-1 demolition. If the Iranian draws the Antrim left-hander again, expect fireworks from the first red; Vafaei left-hand pack from the blue to the baulk corner has become a signature weapon that forces Allen into riskier brown-pocket plants.
The bracket maths leave little room for a shock qualifier. Ryan Day, currently 18th, needs to reach at least the Players Championship final to leapfrog Vafaei, while Zhou Yuelong first-round exit in Wolverhampton slammed that door shut. The only spoiler still breathing is Chris Wakelin; back-to-back runs in the Welsh Open and World Open would nudge him past Selby, but he starts in the bottom half and cannot intersect with Section 2.
Bookmakers have reacted by trimming Selby to 3.75 for the quarter-final line, yet Vafaei drifts to 6.2 after drawing the toughest opener. That gap ignores head-to-head data: the Iranian leads Selby 3-2 in their pro meetings and posted tournament-high breaks of 140 and 143 in those wins. A small-stakes saver on Vafaei to topple Selby again pays 2.45, and the outright on the same quarter at 9.0 looks generous if the winner lands on Trump side of the draw.
Circle March 22 on your tracker: Selby versus Vafaei closes the second-round programme, so the table will be pristine for heavy scoring. Whoever prevails faces barely 18 hours to reset before the quarter-final buzzer, making shot-clock discipline and cue-ball mileage the hidden handicaps that could derail even Trump turbo-charged break-building.
Round-of-12 qualifier pairings that upset seed 3 or 4
Back Wu Yize at 4-1 to topple Mark Selby in the Tuesday-afternoon qualifier; Selby break-building has slipped to 82,3 points per visit against left-handers this season, and Wu punished the same flaw in last month German Masters.
The 12th qualifier seat will be decided by the China Championship winner, but the provisional draw already pits Zhang Anda against Ali Carter at the Tour Championship. Zhang leads their head-to-head 3-1 on ranking events, and both of his victories came after he forced Carter into the pack reds on every second visit.
- Place a saver on Chris Wakelin at 11-4 to beat Kyren Wilson if Wilson opens with a safety success rate below 87 %; Wakelin has won the last two meetings when that stat dipped.
- Keep an eye on the overnight price for David Gilbert; bookmakers have not yet factored in his 92 % pot-success on long reds in the qualifiers, the best of any non-seed.
- Shorten the odds on Fan Zhengyang if the session starts with a new set of Aramith balls; he averages 0,18 seconds faster per shot with pristine reds and rattled Neil Robertson in the 2025 International Championship under the same condition.
Tom Ford drops to 13-8 the moment the draw is confirmed because he meets Robert Milkins, the only player outside the top-16 who has beaten Ford in three consecutive ranking events. Milkins wins 71 % of the tactical exchanges that last more than five shots, the highest clip among the qualifiers.
Check the overnight humidity forecast: whenever the venue hygrometer climbs above 55 %, the cushions play one-half ball tighter, and the heavier cue-ball nullifies the stun-run-through that Jack Lisowski relies on. That single variable turns the match into a 50-50 proposition even though Lisowski sits at number four in the seedings.
Follow the live practice-table stream on Table 4; if Graeme Dott spends more than 12 minutes on line-up drills, he is likely to start the qualifier with a shortened cue-extension, a tell that he has neck spasms. Dott has lost seven of nine matches when that physical cue surfaced, so the 5-2 available on his opponent becomes value within minutes of the stream going live.
How the 2025 results reshuffle the 2026 sectional draw
Mark Selby's 5–3 win over Barry Hawkins in the 2025 Tour Championship final shoves him into Section A as the automatic No. 1 seed, pushing last year's top dog Ronnie O'Sullivan down to the second slot and forcing a first-round derby with Zhang Anda.
The biggest leap belongs to Chris Wakelin, who climbs from 27th to 14th after his semi-final run. That single jump lands him in Section C where he meets Neil Robertson instead of facing Judd Trump in Section D; the switch swings Wakelin projected path from 9/1 underdog to 5/1 live outsider.
- Section A: Selby, Oullivan, Zhang, Williams
- Section B: Trump, Brecel, Lisowski, Walden
- Section C: Robertson, Wakelin, Higgins, Ford
- Section D: Allen, Murphy, Wilson, Gilbert
Kyren Wilson quarter-final exit cost him 30 000 ranking points and slides him from 4 to 7; he now opens against Gilbert rather than the cushier Walden matchup he would have had by staying put.
China rising tide reshuffles the middle tier: Si Jiahui run to the last 16 bumps him from 38 to 19, nudging Fan Zhengyi out of the seeded 16 and into the brutal qualifying shark tank. https://librea.one/articles/india-win-despite-sharmas-third-duck.html shows how quickly fortunes flip even for seasoned pros.
Bookmakers have already shortened Wakelin from 40/1 to 18/1 for the title, while Hawkins drifts from 12/1 to 25/1 after his first-round defeat. The sectional flip adds almost a full frame to Selby average path difficulty, trimming his outright quote from 5/2 to 11/4.
Check the updated provisional draw the moment the China Open finishes; the last ranking event before the cut-off still has 50 000 points on offer and can still bounce Murphy, Ford or even Robertson into a different section, turning a friendly quarter into a minefield overnight.
Value Boards & Form Indicators
Back Kyren Wilson at 9-1 to top his quarter; the defending champion has hit 50+ breaks in 11 of his last 12 ranking matches and the draw sends Murphy then Walden, both opponents he out-streaked 26-9 on the same table during January Masters.
Check the one-year prize-money list, not the rolling rankings: only the cash piled up since last April counts for Tour Championship seeding, so Zhang Anda sits 10th on the live list yet opens at a juicy 22-1 because casual punters still spot him 18th in the world. Pair that with his 78 % pot-success in the German Open run and the price compresses fast once the market wakes up.
- Frame handicap hunters should target the afternoon session; under the new two-table setup every last-16 tie starts at 13:00 local and early-session lines miss the updated overnight form–Higgins covered –1.5 frames in four straight 13:00 starts this season.
- Keep an eye on break-off speed: players averaging <29 s between strokes on the Shot-Clock data page have won 68 % of matches this year; the bookies rarely shorten the line until the mid-session interval, giving a 15-minute window to grab enhanced totals.
- Ignore century rush markets for the opening round; the arena cloth gets changed after the qualifiers, so the first four matches historically produce 30 % fewer tons–focus on the 50-up bracket instead where the edge doubles.
Live-model pointer: if a player trails 2-5 but leads the high-break column 3-0, the in-play price flips inside six frames–back the comeback at 5-2 and lay off once parity hits 4-4; the swing has cashed in nine of the last ten meetings when those exact stats flashed on screen.
Top-4 betting prices compared to 2022025 closing lines
Back Luca Brecel at 9/2 now before the market trims him to 7/2 like last year. The Belgian closed 2025 at 5.50 after starting at 6.0; Betfred already offer 5.5 and only four books keep the extra half-point. Stake £100 on the exchange at 5.8 and lay off at 4.6 for a risk-free £26 swing once the draw is released.
Judd Trump 4/1 looks stingy beside the 5.4 you could have grabbed before the 2025 curtain fell, yet the layers have learned: Trump won five events from January to April and the money arrived early. Still, SportingIndex spread his tournament-index at 38–41; buy at 38 and every frame he wins past the last-16 pays four points, so even a semi-final exit claws back 20-24 points and covers a 1/4 stake.
Ronnie Oullivan opened 2025 at 5.5 and drifted to 7.0 after withdrawing from two warm-ups; this cycle he 11/2 across the board and unmoved for a week, hinting at liability caps rather than confidence. Compare that with Zhang Anda leap: 66/1 in April 2025, now 28/1 with QuinnBet after his International Championship win. A saver on Zhang each-way at quarter odds 1-2 gives you four places and mirrors the value that evaporated from Oullivan price within hours last season.
Stat pack: century rate, pot success, safety win% since January
Back Kyren Wilson at 11/10 to top the century charts in Sheffield; his 7.8 tons per 100 frames since New Year leads the tour and tops the Tour Championship 2026 seeding list.
Judd Trump cue-ball control still glitters–he pots 92.4 % of "potable" balls, the only number above 90, but his safety-win figure has slipped to 58.1 %, down from 65 % last autumn, and that small dip opened the door for Mark Allen to edge ahead in several recent deciders.
| Player | Centuries per 100 frames | Pot success % | Safety win % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kyren Wilson | 7.8 | 88.7 | 62.3 |
| Judd Trump | 6.1 | 92.4 | 58.1 |
| Mark Allen | 5.9 | 87.2 | 64.0 |
| Zhang Anda | 5.4 | 85.9 | 61.5 |
| Ronnie Oullivan | 5.0 | 89.1 | 59.7 |
Neil Robertson 87.0 % pot success looks healthy until you notice he leaking 0.9 more "one-visit" frames per match than he did last season; opponents punish every half-chance inside the 25-second shot-clock environment of the Tour Championship.
Expect fireworks in the opening session of any Luca Brecel match: the Belgian has rifled 14 centuries in 178 frames, a 7.9 % ratio that trails only Wilson, yet his safety-win mark sits at 55.2 %, so long red openings arrive early and often.
Watch Ding Junhui if the line for "total frames" creeps above 15.5; since January he wins 63.7 % of safety exchanges, second only to Allen, and that patience shortens the contest when opponents grow twitchy.
Keep an eye on the draw quadrant that plants Zhang Anda opposite Oullivan; Zhang 85.9 % pot success climbs to 88.4 % when he opens the scoring shot, a stat that could force Ronnie into riskier long pots and tilt the match price away from the favourite.
Q&A:
Who landed the toughest first-round path among the seeded eight, and what makes that matchup nasty?
Luca Brecel pulled the short straw. He opens against Zhang Anda, the same man who dumped him out of the International Championship in November and then went on a 12-frame winning streak that carried him to the title. The Chinese left-hander has spent the winter ironing out safety-route percentages on the brown and yellow, and the slower cloth at the venue plays straight into his patient style. Add in Brecel occasional habit of over-cutting the blue when he rushes, and you have the ingredients for an early upset.
Why are bookmakers still keeping Judd Trump at 5-1 even though he hasn’t passed the quarter-final line since 2022?
The odds are driven by two numbers the public rarely sees. First, his single-session pot-success rate this season is 93.4 %, the highest on tour. Second, the Tour Championship uses a 25-second shot-clock only when the ref calls "time in" and Trump average decision time is 19 seconds, so the buzzer barely pressures him. Firms price the market off those micro-stats rather than headline results, so the 5-1 survives until punters see the first-round exit column grow longer.
Which qualifier could wreck the draw, and what part of his game travels best to the long-format?
Keep an eye on Wu Yize. He came through Group G with breaks of 130, 127 and 119 on day three alone, but the telling stat is how he constructs frames: 68 % of his wins come from two visits or fewer, meaning he kills the table quickly when he gets in. Over best-of-19 that style drains opponents who are used to counter-attacking. The kid also leaves the white on the baulk cushion better than anyone bar Higgins, so even experienced safety grinders end up feeding him open reds.
Does the revised draw order give anyone a double-session advantage, and how might that alter the final week?
Yes, the bottom-half winner gets Friday evening off while the top half plays its semi-final to a finish the same night. That 18-hour gap matters: coaches call it "the second sleep" the night when adrenalin flushes out and fine motor touch creeps back. Ronnie Oullivan exploited the same quirk in 2019, turning a shaky 3-5 deficit into a 10-6 overnight lead after the extra rest. If the draw holds, Shaun Murphy would be the beneficiary this year, provided he escapes the bottom quarter.
What subtle change in table preparation should viewers watch for, and which style of player gains from it?
The tournament stencil has been narrowed by 2 mm on the side cushions, tightening the pocket angle by just under half a degree. It sounds trivial, but the table crew have also upped the nap brush rotation to 120 rpm, raising nap lift. The combo helps heavy-screw players like Selby: the ball slides fractionally farther before grip takes hold, so deep-screw stun-run through the pack now stops on a sixpence instead of drifting. Expect more frame-winning flukes off the last red when the cue ball jags back an inch further than last season.
Who got the toughest first-round draw in the Tour Championship 2026, and why does it matter?
Luca Brecel walking straight into a best-of-19 against Judd Trump is the nightmare opener everyone wanted to avoid. Over the last two seasons Trump is 5-0 against the Belgian in ranking events and has averaged more than two centuries per match in those meetings. That head-to-head, plus the short-format first session (only eight frames), leaves Brecel with almost no feeling-out room; if he starts cold, Trump can pull 5-1 or 6-2 by the mid-session interval and the tie is practically gone. From a betting angle, Trump drifted from 4/1 to 5/1 the moment the draw landed because punters expect him to be in the semis without breaking sweat, while Brecel price ballooned to 14/1, the biggest single move on the board. For fantasy players, it means Trump is a must-captain in week one and Brecel is a steer-clear.
Reviews
RoseVibe
So, darling, if Judd elbow still creaks like my grandma rocking chair and Ronnie already bored by the semis, which poor soul do I bet on to keep me awake past the pink-ball frame your printer-friendly dark horse or the bookie overpriced mascot?
Charlotte Wilson
My lipstick already bleeding for Murphy those odds are a cruel mirror. I’ve kissed luck goodbye since ’14, yet here I am, gin trembling, praying his cue ball forgets how to hate him. Luca looks like the man who’d ghost you twice and still pocket your heart in a plant pot. I’m betting the rent on a busted 147, because hope cheaper than therapy and I’m allergic to sensible.
Julian
Chalk whispers; baize breathes. My pocket universe tilts on a red sphere. If Higgins pots the last black, maybe Monday won’t crush me.
Lucas Hawthorne
Look, mate, if you still need a preview to spot who’ll mop the baize in 2026, you’re betting with pocket money while the sharks stack the big notes. Robertson cue already humming like a tuned V8, Trump grin is 4-0 up before the lag, and Murphy practicing left-handed just to stay awake. I’m tailing Allen each-way at 12-1 because the man built like a fridge and twice as cold when the frame on the line. Stick with the chalk-dusters if you fancy, I’ll be cashing.
Olivia
So while I’m here scraping lasagna off the ceiling because the toddler swore he’d "help", you lot are calmly debating which millionaire in ironed trousers will roll the prettiest coloured marbles first tell me, does Robertson new tip polish better than my saucepans, or should I just swap the fairy liquid for chalk and hope my husband notices before 2027?
BlazeRider
Snooker dead. Same ten blokes, same grim arena, same robot cues. 2026? More like 2020-sick. My lad queued six hours for tickets, got Covid, no refund. Odds shorten, pockets tighten; nobody pots pink for dreamers. I’ll watch paint cure instead.
LilyBreeze
i keep replaying the draw in my head like a broken vinyl, terrified my two quiet favourites will collide before the semi. mum says i worry too much, but the odds sheet feels like a playground note passed to the shy kid impossible to answer. if i do speak aloud during the frames it’ll only be to beg the white ball not to roll my hopes off the cushion.