World Snooker Championship Betting / Paul Krishnamurty / 18 April 2009 /

Paul Krishnamurty is conifdent that the 'Jester from Leicester' can scrape through a tough opener on day two at the Crucible.

Day two sees the player that many consider to be Ronnie O'Sullivan's main challenger open his campaign. Twice a losing finalist and perfectly suited to long matches, Mark Selby is widely tipped to win this event at some stage in his career and despite a very tough draw, starts the betting in third place.

That tough draw is evident from the start, with Ricky Walden likely to present a very stiff examination. Walden will have to overcome any nerves on his Crucible debut, but he's perfectly capable of going on a long run over the next fortnight himself, as he proved when defeating both Selby and O'Sullivan to win the Shanghai Masters earlier in the season.

Selby's greater experience of the venue and big matches should be enough to see him through, but I expect it will be close. Very much an old-school grinder in the Griffiths/Thorburn/Ebdon mould, Selby's matches always seem to go to the wire. When he lost a close Masters final to O'Sullivan in January, he'd scraped through deciding frames in the two preceding rounds, and it was a similar story here in 2007. In my view, that makes the best value betting option a trio of correct scores on Selby to win 10-9, 10-8 and 10-7, at odds that combine to around 3.2.

Selections:

Mark Selby 10 - 7 Ricky Walden @ 8.8
Mark Selby 10 - 8 Ricky Walden @ 9.6
Mark Selby 10 - 9 Ricky Walden @ 10.5

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