Masters / Paul Krishnamurty / 08 January 2009 /

Ignore the blip in Telford, says snooker betting guru Paul Krishnamurty, O'Sullivan is ready to take back his Saga Insurance Masters crown.

Anyone serious about gambling has to be prepared to re-assess their opinions over time. Over the last year or so, I've been forced to rethink a strategy that had served me so well for over a decade - opposing the persistently under-priced and unreliable Ronnie O'Sullivan. In a sport that is a lot closer and competitive than the betting usually suggests, just Ronnie's presence was enough to ensure plenty of top value on other, less erratic, characters in different sections of the draw.

Both of those weaknesses remain evident. Anyone who saw his collapse to Joe Perry in the last big event, the UK Championship, will confirm that he remains wildly inconsistent, and not one to rely on when the chips are down. It's hard to imagine any other player's standards fluctuating so wildly between two sessions of the same match. And the very worst of O'Sullivan was on show in the frame that he conceded despite only trailing slightly with several reds left.

However, while that particular session may have been indefensibly bad, it would be churlish not to acknowledge the improvement in his results over the last year or so. Between February 2005 and December 2007, O'Sullivan failed to win a single ranking event. Since then he's won the game's two biggest prizes, a fourth UK Championship title and a third World Championship, along with this season's Northern Ireland Trophy and a fifth consecutive Premier League title. On that basis, this week's odds of [4.2] look perfectly reasonable.

Before that defeat to Perry in Telford, Ronnie had given the impression that he was, at long last, maturing as a person and a sportsman. In a wide-ranging, frank interview with the BBC before that event, Ronnie seemed more relaxed than usual and happier in his own skin. He spoke again about his love for running, which has given him an outlet away from snooker, and of his disinterest in rebranding his public image to pursue further commercial opportunities. He was happy to acknowledge that he would never be consistent, or determined enough to dominate the sport in the way Stephen Hendry or Steve Davis used to. The message was clear: he's happy with the way he is and what you see is what you get.

Perhaps we should remember that before condemning Ronnie for that one performance against Perry, who after all did play some quite outstanding snooker in the second session. And whereas in the past O'Sullivan has come across as a bad loser after some defeats - labelling Mark Selby 'boring', or Stephen Hendry 'lucky', for instance - his comments after the Telford defeat were magnanimous, saying "It might have looked like I lost my head or whatever, but I'm sure I'll bounce back somewhere along the line.... He played great - I wasn't going to win today. His safety was great, he scored when he got in and didn't miss much. Sometimes you've just got to hold your hands up."

Interestingly, the last time he embarrassed himself at the UK Championship, when walking out of his quarter-final in 2006, Ronnie returned more determined than ever to redeem his reputation by winning the Masters. So now might be the perfect time to get on board at [4.2]. After all, this is a tournament where, unlike so many, the formbook regularly stands up. While the motivation of the top players can often be brought into question in some of the lesser events, the Masters is one they all take very seriously.

Perhaps its the fact that only one table is in play for each session, giving it a championship feel. Or perhaps its just because the early matches are played over best of 11 frames, rather than the usual best of nine, but either way results here tend to be more predictable than most snooker tournaments. We have to go back to 2002 for the last time the Masters wasn't won by one of the first four in the betting, and even then the late Paul Hunter hardly created a massive shock when winning the first of his three titles.

Nobody loves this event more than Ronnie, who has won it three times. He's said before that he feels particularly happy playing in London, not just because of the massive home support, but because he can go home in between matches and relax. This shows in his results. Prior to last year, when hardly disgracing himself by losing a classic first-round encounter in the deciding frame to the second best player around, Stephen Maguire, he had won two of the previous four Masters, and finished runner-up in the other two having lost the deciding frame in the final and traded at extremely short odds in-running. Anyone loyally backing him every year at around [4.2] would have been 'quids-in'.

Once again, the toughest hurdle could come in the first round, where he plays Perry for the fourth time already this season. Ronnie won the first two by the odd frame before the defeat in Telford, so 'Gentleman Joe' certainly has the pedigree to cause him trouble. Clearly Ronnie is not entirely comfortable playing against Perry, who has become extremely efficient and a very reliable punisher of mistakes.

So the Rocket will have to be on-song early, but if he can exact revenge for last month's loss, there's every reason to suggest his legion of adoring fans will be singing at Wembley come Sunday night.

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