An unusual volume of wagers on the first-round match between Stephen Maguire and Jamie Burnett at the Maplin UK Championship in Telford has prompted several bookmakers to allege possible match-fixing.
Most bookmakers suspended correct-score betting more than 24 hours before Maguire and Burnett - close friends, fellow Scots and sometime practice partners - played their first session on Sunday. An unusual volume of bets was placed on Maguire, the 2004 UK champion, to beat Burnett, a qualifier, 9-3, the final score.
Burnett compiled a 113 break in the tenth frame, shown live on BBC interactive, but in the next two frames committed numerous unforced errors, struggled with his safety and made unconventional shot selections. The Association of British Bookmakers issued a warning to its members regarding betting patterns, but numerous substantial wagers on a 9-3 win for Maguire had already been struck.
Cliff Wilds, head of sport for Victor Chandler, the bookmakers, revealed that online accounts were opened to bet on such an eventuality. “When you get accounts opened in Glasgow to bet frame scores, alarm bells go off,” Wilds said. Burnett is from Hamilton, Maguire hails from the Glasgow district of Milton.
“It's very strange to lay any frame scores so far in advance,” Wilds said. “We took half a dozen bets for fairly large sums of money and stand to lose £5,000. We took no money on 9-2 or 9-4 and that set off alarm bells as well. We suspended betting four days ago.”
Burnett, who squandered numerous opportunities in the closing two frames and whose attempt to pot a short-range, thin-cut final black for 8-4 did not even contact the jaws of a top corner pocket, categorically denied any wrongdoing. “My friend phoned me the other day and said they [the bookmakers] had taken the betting off,” Burnett, who in 16 years as a professional has an unblemished disciplinary record, said. “I don't know what the script is, in the last few years with snooker there's been talk about matches going to be this score or that score, but I don't particularly care, it's got nothing to do with me.
“In the last frame I thought to myself, ‘I need to try my life off here' just in case something stupid was said. I was down on shots and saying to myself, ‘I really need to get this in case people start talking.' It's probably the most pressure I've ever been under in my life.”
Maguire also protested his innocence. “I heard a little bit of word there was a lot of money bet on the match, but I'm there to play snooker, I'm not there to listen to people who bet money,” he said.
It is not known whether the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA), the game's governing body, will investigate. However, a WPBSA statement read: “We have agreements in place with both Betfair and the Association of British Bookmakers, who contact World Snooker confidentially if irregular betting patterns are reported.
“In such cases the match in question is carefully monitored by World Snooker and a thorough assessment of the players' performance will be made. In past incidents, which are extremely rare, we have taken a particularly stringent line where players have been judged guilty of match-fixing or intention to match-fix.”
Disciplinary matters
- Peter Francisco, of South Africa, was banned for five years, effectively ending his career, in 1995 after losing 10-2 to Jimmy White in the first round of the World Championship at the Crucible. The WPBSA disciplinary hearing deemed that Francisco had not given of his best. Many bets on White to win 10-2 were struck.
- In 2006, Quinten Hann was suspended for eight years, having been found guilty of intention to fix a match. A newspaper provided the WPBSA with evidence of the Australian offering to arrange a defeat in the China Open.
- The Gambling Commission has issued no word of any conclusion to its investigation into a 5-0 whitewash of Peter Ebdon by Liang Wenbo, a qualifier, in the Northern Ireland Trophy in August.
(Source: Timesonline.co.uk)
