World Snooker Championship Betting / Paul Krishnamurty / 16 April 2009 /

It's highly likely that the Crucible winner will come from England, Scotland or Wales, so why not back a nationality to win rather than a player?

This market represents a good way of backing a group of players across different sections of the draw, with the ultimate hope that more than one progresses to the latter stages; therefore enabling a straightforward saver at worst.

With four of the first six in the outright market, English is a very worthy odds-on favourite. Even if the odds are a prohibitive [1.6], nobody would be surprised if the last four turned out to be O'Sullivan, Selby, Murphy and Carter, or at least included three of them.

If you don't want to back the favourite though, Scottish and Welsh represent plausible alternatives.

Four Scots could be given a decent chance. Stephen Maguire is favourite amongst those in the bottom half of the draw, while twice former champion John Higgins is no forlorn hope in the top half. And while they're both outsiders this time, Stephen Hendry and Graeme Dott both have plenty of Crucible credentials if they can find a bit of form.

And at a speculative [17.0], there are worse value bets than Welsh. They only have two representatives, but both Ryan Day and Mark Williams are potential winners. Should either go on a run, it should be possible to lay back at much shorter than [17.0] and in a dream scenario, they could both reach the final.

'.$sign_up['title'].'

'; } } ?>

:

:

:

?

: