Back the Hawk to fly high in Tour Champs. The best snooker bets.
- Mar 27, 2025
- 2 min read
The last ranking event before the World Championship, The Tour Championship, takes place in Manchester from Monday 31st March and Craig Edwards @EdwardsTips_ brings Betting Radio his best value outright bet.
Why pick Barry Hawkins with such a hard draw?
To win his quarter Barry Hawkins must beat Shaun Murphy and then Judd Trump so on paper the forty-five-year-old has the hardest of draws. Nevertheless, Barry Hawkins has been counted out on numerous occasions throughout his glittering career and has always been comfortable crossing swords with the top players in longer format tournaments.
In fact, his record versus Judd Trump is one of the best in the sport, and there is a strong argument that the longer format of the game that the Tour Championship utilises, dilutes Trump’s edge.
One World Championship win is a meagre return for Trump and the only other longer-format event on the schedule nowadays is the Tour Championship, of which he is yet to make the final, and must be opposed.
Bookmakers price longer frame matches generically but all the modern-day events apart from the Tour Champs and World Champs are shorter formats and that skews Trump’s rating badly on my model.
Yes, we are taking the higher variance route of Barry Hawkins rather than Murphy because Trump has beaten the Masters champion on the last seven occasions.
At a generally priced 8/1 (9/1 in places) to win the quarter we are getting great value on Barry Hawkins because factoring in their records in longer formats and a previous win to sharpen his game Hawkins should be a much shorter price in a longer match versus Trump than a shorter one.
Betting Radio Pick: Barry Hawkins to win Quarter 1 @ 8/1 William Hill
Enjoy the snooker, good luck with your bets and please gamble responsibly.
This is a brilliant shout on "The Hawk" because backing the underdog in the longer formats makes watching the Tour Championship ten times more exciting, especially since everyone expects Trump to just steamroll through. My mates and I always get together to watch these ranking events, and since snooker is such a slow, tension-building game, we always need a little side action to keep the energy up during those long safety battles. Last tournament, we actually started playing the casual board-game format at https://indian.1xbet.com/en/slots/game/101392/ludo-quick on our phones right on the couch, which kept us thoroughly entertained between Hawkins' brilliant century breaks. It’s funny how a simple roll of the dice can give you the same adrenaline rush as watching a crucial…