Yan Bingtao emerges as favourite

World number 21 Yan Bingtao is the favourite to win the Riga Masters after the big names continued to fall on Saturday.

Yan is the highest ranked player left in the competition and can be backed at 4.75 to go all the way in the Latvian capital following shock defeats for Mark Selby, Mark Williams, Jack Lisowski and Gary Wilson.

The 19-year-old has never won a ranking event but did make it to the final of the Northern Ireland Open in 2017. He lost to Wales’ Mark Williams in Belfast and hasn’t reached a final in the meantime so Sunday’s action could be career-defining.

It will be an all-Chinese affair at the first ranking event of 2019 as Yan goes up against Li Hang on Sunday morning. Indeed, it’s the first time he has even made it through to the quarter-finals of a ranking event since March 2018 when he went on to lose 5-1 to Barry Hawkins at the Welsh Open in Cardiff.

Yan has seen off Anthony McGill, Rod Lawler, Alan McManus and Chen Zifan en route to the last-eight. At 28 years old, Li is the more senior of the two but he has never reached a ranking final and Yan is rightly the favourite to advance.

Li, who can be backed at 7.00 to win the tournament outright, defeated countryman Mei Xiwen 4-2 in the third round after previously dispatching of Mike Dunn and Yuan Sijun.