Judd Trump vs Hossein Vafaei Prediction: World number 2 to have a solid start

Judd Trump and Hossein Vafaei will meet in the day one action of the World Championship snooker tournament at the Crucible Theatre. In this encounter, Judd Trump comes in as the favorite, while Hossein Vafaei is the underdog.

Judd Trump's last match was in early April, losing to Mark Williams in the quarter-finals of the World Tour Championship. However, prior to that defeat, Judd Trump won seven consecutive games. The English professional pick wins over Thor Chuan Leong, Sanderson Lam, Zhengyi Fan, David Lilley, Kyren Wilson, Jackson Page, and Junhui Ding in that span. While he now comes in as the favorite to win here, the world number two will look to step up his game as he will look to keep his status in the world rankings.

Hossein Vafaei performed well in this tournament's qualification round, and the Iranian snooker player hopes to show his level here. In the qualification matches, Hossein Vafaei easily dispatched Marco Fu and Jian Jun, winning 10-4 and 10-5, respectively. In the meantime, a look at his recent games shows that he has lost just one game in his last six, coming against Junhui Ding in the World Open quarterfinals last month. Hossein Vafaei picked wins over Graham Dott, Robert Milkins, and Ronnie O'Sullivan in other games.

The two snooker players come into this game in fine form and will have high hopes for how far they will go into this tournament. In the meantime, Judd Trump is the better player in reality, and he has consistently lived up to the hype. It is tough to write Hossein Vafaei off here after defeating world number one Sullivan last month, but I do not see him stopping Trump here, regardless. Bet on a -2.5 handicap in favor of Judd Trump, with the total number of frames expected to be low.