It seems that every time of the year will a certain outside sport gets the lime light for once. Tennis has Wimbledon, American Football the Super Bowl and snooker has the Crucible. The World Championships are upon us people and its time to see who is worth a bet to win it all.

Trump's first round performance may have been hindered by food poisoning but he did enough to win.

Trump overcame food poisoning in his first round and is 7/2 to win in Sheffield

The Joy of Writing this after a few Upsets

It seems that some of the main contenders have lost already in this year’s event. Mark Selby, Ding Junhui and Shaun Murphy are the most noteable losses so far. This does however, help slim out potential winners but also places stingier odds on the main contenders… every cloud I guess.

Judd Trump sits atop as the Favourite to win in Sheffield this year. He showed good mental strength to win with food poisoning in the first round and if he can shake that off then there seems no reason why he cannot win. His price currently sits at 7/2.

The second Favourite is a relieved Ronnie O’Sullivan. He is relieved because he came through unscathed against Peter Ebdon in the first round. The Rocket looks very relaxed and seemed almost uninterested by the challenge of Ebdon. I like the look of Ronnie’s first round performance, a little better than Trump’s. He sits invitingly at 9/2 by Sportingbet.

Masters champion, Neil Robertson, has slowly made his way through the first round. The talented left-hander always has the ability to beat anyone on his day, it seems he will need that quality if he does meet O’Sullivan in the quarter-finals. Robertson is chalked just behind O’Sullivan at 5/1 by Bet365 and Ladbrokes.

Other big names priced are: John Higgins at 7/1 (general), Stephen Maguire at 9/1 (Sportingbet) and Mark Williams at 16/1 (general).

Is this year’s winner going to be a big outsider?

With so many big names falling, I have a small feeling that a new name might be upon us in the snooker world. With so many ranking events nowadays it seems that there are so many players out there with a belief to win. Whether they can win the World Championships is another story.

A few players to keep an eye on would someone like Andrew Higginson, Ryan Day or even the more famous Joe Perry. Higginson has been banging on the door of stardom for some time and had some nice results recently. Day really held it together with his 10-9 win against Ding Junhui while Perry’s destruction of Graeme Dott is worth noting.

All three guys have very large odds which means that the bet will pay off big time. Higginson can be found at 40/1, Day is priced up by most at 28/1 while Perry’s odds are even greater at 66/1 (Sportingbet and BetVictor).

Here is Ryan Day after his thrilling 10-9 upset win.

I got my journalism degree from Mississippi State University and have been offering advice on many sports for a fair few years now. I started off offering tips on tennis during the big tournaments (I played a lot as a junior) and really enjoyed helping out my Dad with tips.

After doing this for a few years, I realised that looking for value could be found in other sports that I enjoyed such as darts, snooker and football. This led to many accumulators no matter what the sport and then offering on advice on anybody that asked.

I am looking forward to putting my ideas down on paper and always appreciate comments from the reader.

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