Masters / Paul Krishnamurty / 12 January 2009 /

Tuesday afternoon's second round match between John Higgins and Marco Fu looks too close to call, which must make Fu the value bet at [2.44], says Paul Krishamurty.

This appears to be a classic case of name recognition and reputation trumping recent form; a dangerous assumption to make in a sport like snooker where recent form is all-important in settling games where the margin of difference between top players is minimal. They can all make century breaks for fun at their best.

On the evidence of the UK Championship, played just before Christmas,Marco Fu is far closer to his best than two-time world champion John Higgins. Time after time in that event, Fu proved layers wrong, defying the odds against Matthew Stevens, Joe Perry and Ali Carter, before losing the final in a deciding frame to Shaun Murphy. Fu showed once again that week that he has become an extremely efficient player, one who rarely misses an easy ball or lets himself down in the temperament stakes when the pressure is on.

Of course it is no surprise to see Higgins trading as favourite, such is his thoroughly deserved reputation as one of the best players of all-time. However, Higgins looked well below his best in two of his three matches at Telford. He only scraped through 9-7 in a dire match against struggling Joe Swail, and the quarter-final defeat to Stephen Maguire was a pale shadow of previously memorable encounters between the pair.

It would be madness to write off a class act like Higgins who, after all, has already won the Grand Prix this year despite probably playing below his best, but under these circumstances, he's worth taking on at today's skinny [1.66] odds.

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