After his epic first round success over Mark King, Steve Davis faces the formidable task of John Higgins in round two and is 10-1 with sportingbet to gain an improbable win.
Now, Davis pulled out all the stops against his fellow Romford player, but beating the bald-headed King is one thing, repeating the trick against Higgins is another. Not surprisingly the bookies make the defending world champion a solid odds-on shot – around 1-20 – to progress, but if he plays like he did in the first session in his victory over Barry Hawkins, then Davis could well keep tabs on him in the early stages.
He will struggle, through, to match Higgins in a best-of-25 frames match and the effort required to defeat King may have left the 'Legend' drained, although it would be fantastic to see him pull off a shock win. He is 9-10 with a 6.5 frame headstart and that may be a price to get interested in rather than the 10-1 on level pegging.
Mark Allen tackles Ryan Day's conqueror Mark Davis and the Ulsterman is a best price of 1-5 to come through. But Davis is no mug and he has just knocked out the world number eight and at 5-1 with Betfred he may be worth a couple of quid to produce another upset.
Stephen Maguire will resume his match against Stephen Lee with a 6-3 lead and is 1-16 to wrap up proceedings and he should canter to victory against Trowbridge's number one son, who makes even Bill Werbeniuk look slim nowadays.
