Baize Betting / Paul Krishnamurty / 21 December 2008 / Leave a comment

It promises to be a tight affair but, having narrowly got the better of his selections in the last two rounds, Paul Krishnamurty has taken the hint about Marco Fu and is backing him to win his final UK Snooker Championship final against Shaun Murphy.

Marco Fu is seriously under-estimated. Once again, he starts as clear outsider at around [2.5] to beat Shaun Murphy in today's final, a price that affords little respect to his performances so far.

Reflecting on each player's route to the final, though Murphy's wins were more comfortable, Fu's opponents arrived in the match in better form. His quarter-final victim Joe Perry rather unsportingly complained afterwards that Fu was hard to play against because he was 'emotionless'. Maybe he is, but who cares? Surely the Davis/Hendry years taught us that focus and lack of emotion were positive traits for a snooker player.

True, Marco is not the most charismatic or crowd-pleasing player, but he is extremely efficient when in amongst the balls. Against both Perry and Ali Carter, he relentlessly capitalised when earning frame-winning chances. It was hard not to be impressed with the way he wore down Carter from a big deficit in the semi-final, and he seems to have matured into the consumate match player.

There's no doubt Murphy is a class act, and even if his opponents have been below their best, he couldn't have done much more than register comfortable 9-4 victories in the last two rounds over Stephen Lee and Stephen Maguire. But even in those games, Murphy gave his opponents plenty of chances. So long as Fu retains that efficiency of previous rounds, Murphy will need to bring his A-game. For me it's too close to call, which makes the outsider of two decent value.