UK Championship Betting Guide

UK Championship UK Championship

Whenever there’s talk about prominent snooker tournaments, thoughts always turn to the so-called ‘Triple Crown’ of World Championship, Masters, and the UK Championship. Interestingly, the UK Championship is the youngest of these tournaments, having first been held as a non-ranking event in 1977 at the Tower Circus in Blackpool. It became a ranking event in 1984, while having since evolved to carry a lucrative prize fund in excess of £1,009,000 and emerge as the first major tournament to be contested each new season.

In this extensive guide, we’ll explore this tournament in greater detail, while considering its core snooker betting markets and the men most likely to prevail in the 2022 edition.

The Best UK Championship Betting Sites

Each of our listed sportsbooks offer a wide range of UK Championship snooker betting markets, although some provide slightly more extensive coverage than others. Below, we’ve outlined the best four UK Championship betting sites, based on criteria such as free bets, in-play wagering, and the available odds.

🥇 Best Betting Site

BoyleSports

🎁 Best Free Bet Offer

Bet365

📡 Best In-Play Betting Site

Betway

💯 Best Odds Betting Site

Ladbrokes

Best UK Championship Betting Site – BoyleSports

Uk championship Uk championship

First up is BoyleSports, which is arguably Ireland’s best-known sportsbooks and one that provides exceptional coverage of more than 40 different sports and a raft of major events. This large and fast-growing number includes the UK Snooker Championship, with BoyleSports offering multiple ante-post and in-play betting markets for punters who want to wager on this truly prestigious event.

The operator’s prices are also broadly competitive and easily accessible, while BoyleSports operates 24/7 customer support in the unlikely event that you encounter any issues. When you register for a new account at BoyleSports, you can qualify for a €20 free bet if you make a minimum first deposit of €10 or higher. This wager must be placed on a selection with minimum odds of 1.50, but other than this restriction, it’s free to use on the UK Snooker Championship.

Best UK Championship Free Bet Offer – Bet365

Uk championship Uk championship

Next on our list is Bet365, which is currently running the most generous welcome offer and free bet bonus. This takes the form of a 100% deposit match up to the value of €50, which can be deployed as one or several free bets that can be deployed on the UK Snooker Championship across both ante-post and in-play markets. This represents excellent value, especially given that Bet365 offers excellent coverage of the UK Snooker Championship and each individual match.

Best UK Championship Live Betting Site – Betway

Uk championship Uk championship

A vast majority of snooker fans now wager as they watch live broadcasts, either on terrestrial television or through sportsbook livestreams online. If this describes you and you intend to wager on the UK Championship as it unfolds, we’d recommend Betway as the best live betting site. Here, you can wager on everything from the winner of the next frame to the next coloured ball to be potted in real-time, with prices updated seamlessly and in real-time.

At Betway, new players can qualify for a free bet offer up to the value of €30, depending on the size of their initial deposit (between €5 and €30). This free wager can then be used to bet on UK Championship action, so long as the outcomes in question have odds of 1.75 or greater.

Best UK Championship Snooker Betting Site for Odds – Ladbrokes

Uk championship Uk championship

Ladbrokes is another popular operator among Irish and UK punters, with the brand particularly well-known for offering genuinely competitive and enhanced odds. This translates into a higher-than-average sportsbook payout for Ladbrokes, meaning that you can get more bang for your buck as a punter and access the very best prices as early as possible in relation to the UK Snooker Championship.

When you do register for a Ladbrokes account and make an initial minimum deposit of €5, you’ll qualify for a welcome bonus worth €20. This comprises four free €5 wagers, which can be deployed on the UK Snooker Championship and outcomes with minimum odds of 1.50.

UK Championship Betting Odds for 2022

The UK Championship is usually played towards the end of the calendar year (towards the end of November and the beginning of December), and we know that the tournament for the 2022 season will be played between the 8th and 20th of November. This means that there’s still some time to go before the main draw, but what we do know is that 128 competitors will enter the first round proper in their bid to win the 45 edition of this coveted prize.

As a result, sportsbooks have yet to publish their odds for the 2022 UK Snooker Championship, but just as soon as they do, we’ll ensure that the table below is updated in full.

Player Ladbrokes Bet365 Betway BoyleSports
Judd Trump TBC TBC TBC TBC
Mark Selby TBC TBC TBC TBC
Ronnie O’Sullivan TBC TBC TBC TBC
Neil Robertson TBC TBC TBC TBC
John Higgins TBC TBC 9/1 TBC
Kyren Wilson TBC TBC TBC TBC
Yan Bingtao TBC TBC TBC TBC
Shaun Murphy TBC TBC TBC TBC

UK Championship Betting Markets

Uk championship Uk championship

Once our chosen sportsbooks have published their competitive odds, your betting entertainment can begin. It is good to note, perhaps for punters who are newer to betting, that the UK Snooker Championship also offers access to a far broader selection of betting markets than the ones you might already be familiar with.

We’ve earmarked three of the most popular below, so you can begin to think about how to deploy your hard-earned bankroll.

 

Match Betting

We’ll start with match betting, which is the single most straightforward type of UK Snooker Championship wager and simply requires you to back the winner of a single game.

A common staple of all sports betting markets, this is particularly popular in snooker and knockout tournaments such as the UK Championship, where the draw is eliminated, and you’re presented with an even-money wager.

This is also highly effective during the early stages of the tournament, where the seeded and large nature of the field creates significant mismatches during the opening rounds.

Accumulator and Combination Betting

During the 2021 iteration of the championship, top-16 player Shaun Murphy was the first of two professionals to be knockout out by an amateur competitor. Murphy reacted angrily to his defeat to China’s Si Jiahui, but it highlights the potential for professional and amateur players to do battle in the formative rounds of the UK Championship.

In most cases, such matches create short-priced favourites and comfortable victories for the professionals, enabling you to combine four or more selections in acca or combination wagers. The respective odds are then multiplied together to create an extended price, with a view to optimising potential returns without overly compromising your chances of winning. Obviously, all selections will need to come off for the combination bet to win, which is why you’ll need to be particularly careful when choosing and adding matches.

Handicap Betting

We close with handicap betting, which always has merit in instances where tournaments feature perceived mismatches that pit a world-ranked player against a rank outsider or an amateur. With handicap betting, you’ll apply a virtual disadvantage to the match favourite, usually around –3.5 frames (depending on the length of the game). This means that the ranked player will have to win by four clear frames for the wager to come off, with this accounting for the difference in quality between two players and creating more favourable odds in the process.

When used wisely, handicap betting can help to create more balanced UK Snooker Championships bets that increase returns without necessarily heightening the risk of loss.

UK Snooker Championship Betting Tips

Regardless of which betting markets or wager types you choose to target, it’s crucial that you understand snooker betting and have a strategy that can enable you to succeed. To help you on your way, we have some handy UK Snooker Championship betting tips and expert advice.

Follow the Form and the Competitors

Unlike some major snooker tournaments, the main draw of the UK Championship features 128 competitors, including both professional and amateur players from across Europe. This means that the usual field of top 16 professionals swells considerably, so it’s important to consider the influx of new and unfamiliar players, their form and potential to put together a run at the UK Championship.

As an example, Si Jiahui (who beat Shaun Murphy as an amateur in the first round of the 2021 tournament) was a former pro who had years of tour experience, before falling off the circuit a couple of years previously. In this case, such players often have the pedigree to spring a surprise at major tournaments, particularly if they arrive at the Barbican Centre in good form.

Such knowledge may encourage you to avoid placing a handicap match on a specific contest, for example, or encourage you place a small match wager on the underdog to win.

Consider the Length of Matches

Like the Masters, each round of UK Championship matches is played over a maximum of 11 frames, up until the final which is a best-of-19 frame encounter. The length of the match that you’re betting on should definitely influence your choice of wagers, especially when considering over/under markets. For example, while betting that a match will conclude at 8.5 frames in viable in a best-of-11 first round match, this is completely ineffective during a final where players must win 10 frames to prevail. This may sound obvious, but it’s important to keep such considerations and finer details in mind if you’re to increase your chances of winning.

Keep Your Live Betting Efforts Simple

We’ve spoken about the plethora of in-play snooker UK Championship markets available at sites such as Betway, but we’d recommend keeping your live betting efforts as simple as possible. For example, try to focus on markets such as the winner of the next frame, which represents an even-money wager that’s incredibly straightforward and enables you to make informed choices based on the action as it unfolds.

You should also restrict your live betting efforts to matches that you’re watching, either via a sportsbook livestream or BBC coverage. This gives you a clear insight into the course of the match and which players are benefitting from momentum or good form.

The UK Championship Format

Uk championship Uk championship

The UK Snooker Championship boasts a familiar format, with 128 competitors (including both professionals, amateurs, and qualifiers) lining up in a seeded first-round draw. The draw will be split into eight different sections, each of which contains one of the top eight seeds in the tournament. Typically, the first and the fourth seeds will be drawn in section one and section four of the draw, with the second and third seeds competing in the fifth and eight sections respectively. If the subsequent matches went according to their seeding, this means that the top two seeds would be kept apart until the final, so the draw is designed to afford an advantage to the top-ranked players. Additionally, the only change in frame format occurs in the final round, where the best-of frames increases to 19 from 11.

The draw continues to knockout rounds of 64, 32 and 16, with the winners of the fourth round progressing to the quarter-finals. The tournament then proceeds as normal, with the successful players advancing through to the semis and the last two men standing competing in the final for the £200,000 first prize. This is more than double the prize money for the runner-up which stands at £80,000. The losing semi-finalists earn £40,000 each, while those eliminated in the quarters take home £24,500. Interestingly, the only competitors not to earn anything are those eliminated in the first round. A bonus £15,000 is given to the player who achieves the highest break within the competition.

The 2022 Tournament Schedule

While the 2022 UK Championship is loosely scheduled to start as usual at the end of November, no formal dates or draw information have been announced. When this information is made available, however, we’ll be sure to add this to the page along with updated price information and the latest, real-time odds.

DateFixturesResult(s)
8th - 20th November 2022 TBC TBC

The UK Championship Top Players

With no odds or confirmed list of participants, it’s hard to make any informed predications about the outcome of the 2022 UK Snooker Championship.

However, we know that the sports best and top-ranked players are likely to appear at the iconic Barbican Centre in York, so we’ve listed the three contenders that we expect to be the early favourites for the next edition of the UK Championship.

Ronnie O’Sullivan

Where else to start with ‘Rocket’ Ronnie O’Sullivan, who is still ranked in the world’s top three despite boasting a professional career that now spans nearly 30 years. The Londoner is also the most successful UK Snooker Championship player in history, with seven titles to his name in just eight finals appearances. O’Sullivan also has a record 38 ranking titles to his name and is the only player to post more than 1,000 century breaks as a pro, while he recently ended a 16-month trophy drought with a superb win over world number four Neil Robertson at the World Grand Prix in December.

Mark Selby

Mark Selby has three UK Championship final appearances to his name, with two wins and a single defeat sandwiched between 2012 and 2016. Although he hasn’t returned to the final at the Barbican Centre since, he has won three World Championship titles during this time and his incredibly consistency means that he remains the number one ranked player in the world. This makes him a real contender, although we should note that Selby was shocked by world number 42 Hossein Vafaei in the last 64 of the 2021 championship (losing 6-2 in a surprisingly one-sided match).

Judd Trump

No list of this type would be complete without Judd Trump, who is arguably the tour’s most consistent player and one who has claimed 22 ranking titles overall. However, he has only won one UK Snooker Championship title (back in 2011), with his subsequent two final appearances in 2014 and 2020 ending in agonising, 10-9 defeats to Ronnie O’Sullivan and Neil Robertson respectively. However, the Juddernaut has the ability to perform on any stage, as he recently proved when winning his first ever ’Champion of Champions’ title in November 2021.

Alternative UK Championship Betting Sites
1.
Lunu​bet Sports
Bonus:

18+ | New players only | Min. deposit 20EUR | Max number of winnings using bonus funds is 10,000 EUR | Bonus validity 14 days from receipt | Free spins given within 5 days from bonus activation, Wagering req. : 6x bonus + deposit | Wagering, banking, terms & conditions apply | Play Responsibly

2.
Betovo Sport
Bonus:
€1000

18+ | New players only | Min. deposit 10EUR | Wagering, banking, terms & conditions apply | Play Responsibly | >www.begambleaware.org

3.
50crowns Sport
Bonus:
Get a 100 EUR free bet!

18+ | New players only | Min. deposit 10EUR | Max number of winnings using bonus funds is 10,000 EUR | Bonus validity 14 days from receipt | Free spins given within 5 days from bonus activation, 20 free spins a day | Wagering req. : 40x bonus and deposit | Wagering, banking, terms & conditions apply | Play Responsibly

4.
Betonred Sports
Bonus:

18+ | New players only | Min. deposit 15EUR | Odds for qualifying must be 1.4 or higher | Bonus validity 14 days from receipt | Wagering req. x6 bonus and deposit | Wagering, banking, terms & conditions apply | Play Responsibly

5.
Betinia Sports
Bonus:

18+ | New players only | Min. deposit 20EUR | Wagering req. : 40x bonus | Wagering, banking, terms & conditions apply | Play Responsibly | www.begambleaware.org

The Previous Winners

OK, we hear you ask, but just how many different winners have there been in the last decade of action at the UK Snooker Championship?

The short answer is five, and we’ve created a concise list of the last 10 winners dating back to 2012.

Year Winner (Nationality) Runner-up (Nationality) Score
2012 Mark Selby (Eng) Shaun Murphy (Eng)10-6
2013 Neil Robertson (Aus) Mark Selby (Eng) 10-7
2014 Ronnie O’Sullivan (Eng) Judd Trump (Eng)10-9
2015 Neil Robertson (Aus) Liang Wenbo (Chn)10-5
2016 Mark Selby (Eng) Ronnie O’Sullivan (Eng)10-7
2017 Ronnie O’Sullivan (Eng) Shaun Murphy (Eng)10-5
2018 Ronnie O’Sullivan (Eng) Mark Allen (Nir)10-6
2019 Ding Junhui (Chn) Stephen Maguire (Sco)10-6
2020 Neil Robertson (Aus) Judd Trump (Eng) 10-9
2021 Zhao Xintong (Chn) Luca Brecel (Bel)10-5

Your FAQs Answered

Our UK Championship snooker betting guide is now almost complete, as all that’s left is to answer some of your most frequently-asked questions. These include:

What is the Prize Money for the UK Snooker Championship?

The total prize fund at the UK Snooker Championship event regularly tops £1 million, with the winner earning a cool £200,000. The runner-up is paid £80,000 for their efforts, while the losing semi-finalists earn half of that at £40,000. For the player who makes the highest break, there’s a flat £15,000 on offer, although this doesn’t increase if a competitor makes a coveted 147.

When is the 2022 UK Snooker Championship?

A popular staple of the world snooker tour, the UK Snooker Championship typically takes place between November and December. There’s nothing to suggest that this will change in the near-term, while the tournament may well return to the iconic Barbican Centre in time for next year’s edition.

Who’s the Best Bet to Win the 2022 UK Snooker Championship?

We’ll be honest; without published ante-post or outright odds, it’s incredibly difficult to predict which player will offer the best value as the winner (even allowing for the appearance of star names like Trump, Selby and O’Sullivan). However, the Chinese pair of Yan Bingtao and defending UK champion Zhao Xintong are potential outside wagers for 2022, with these players boasting exceptional pedigree and that will likely be at odds with lengthy prices of around 20/1.

Do You Have Any Snooker UK Championship Other Betting Tips for Me?

Ultimately, you need to make the most of the early matches in the UK Championship, which often pit highly ranked players against amateurs and qualifiers. With the selective use of combination and handicap bets, you can leverage these mismatches to your advantage and achieve potentially higher returns during the event.