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Crucible Semi-Final Preview: Ronnie's the betting banker

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O'Sullivan can down his old rival once again says snooker punter Paul Krishnamurty

The two greatest players of the last 20 years meet in this afternoon's first semi-final. Ronnie O'Sullivan starts a red-hot [1.4] favourite against his old rival Stephen Hendry in what will be the third time they've met here in a semi-final in the past 10 years. Hendry won the first two 17-13 when still at his peak, but on the last occasion in 2004 Ronnie trounced the Scot 17-4.

Though there's never been any love lost between the pair, both have always retained the utmost respect for one another, and Hendry was the first to acknowledge this afternoon that he would have to raise his game to beat a man he described as a 'phenomenon'. In reality, any serious rivalry between the pair is very much yesterday's news. While O'Sullivan, for all his tantrums and inconsistency, has remained the player they all have to beat, Hendry is a shadow of his former self nowadays. Whenever they've played one another in recent years, Ronnie has usually looked in a different class.

The only time the script has differed recently was when O'Sullivan walked out of their quarter-final match at the 2006 UK Championships. Such erratic behaviour could be the last hope for Ronnie layers after one by one his potential conquerers have bitten the dust this week. But to be fair, there's been little sign of misbehaviour from Ronnie so far. He hasn't been consistently at his best, but seemed happy enough in his post-match interview last night.

I would also be very surprised if he wasn't focussed against Hendry. With Ronnie, his level of focus does seem to differ with each opponent. There are certain obviously inferior players that he seems to regularly struggle against - Marco Fu, Fergal O'Brien and Graeme Dott for instance. But against the players that he has expressed great respect for, such as Hendry or Maguire, he always seems switched on. That theory has been borne out in the last couple of weeks too. When a red-hot favourite against Chuang and to a lesser extent Liang Wenbo, O'Sullivan only showed patches of his brilliance. But faced with an in-form dangerous opponent, Ronnie produced an outstanding performance to beat Mark Williams 13-7 culminating with that magical 147.

That was arguably the highest quality match so far, and in my view a repeat performance would see O'Sullivan trounce Hendry. For all his improved form, Hendry has given all of his opponents plenty of chances amongst the balls. Against a struggling Ryan Day, no harm was done but against the Rocket such mistakes will be penalised. Ronnie rarely needs more than two decent chances to win a frame.

Their one-sided match in 2004 is paramount in my mind. Hendry is in no better form and is generally a lesser player than he was back then. Ronnie isn't in quite the same dominant form of 2004, when he seemed at his most relaxed and confident. But as the Williams match, and the trouncing of Maguire in last December's UK final showed, O'Sullivan is still well capable of producing those magical sessions. I doubt he'll win by quite the same margin, but equally doubt Hendry's total frames will reach double figures.

As for betting strategy, the 1.4 about O'Sullivan is very tempting. However, he's not the kind of player I'd ever feel comfortable betting the mortgage on at short-odds, so perhaps a better combination may be to back him giving up 4.5 frames on the handicap, and a batch of correct scores on 17-7, 17-8, 17-9 and 17-10. The combined odds on all four equates to around 5.0.

SELECTIONS

RONNIE O'SULLIVAN TO WIN HANDICAP (-4.5pts) @ 2.1

O'SULLIVAN TO WIN 17 -7 @ 24
O'SULLIVAN TO WIN 17 -8 @ 20
O'SULLIVAN TO WIN 17 -9 @ 18
O'SULLIVAN TO WIN 17 -10 @ 16