Wesley Plaisier (#55 FRH, 90.25 (#40), 441-374 (54.11%, #30))
Ryusei Azemoto (#164 FRH, 84.18 (#90), 71-54 (56.80%, #10))
It's not been a good year for Peter. Much like last year was not a good year for Peter. Now out of the world's top 16 for the first time in over a decade, he is outside of the top 16 on merit, and with the way he has been playing, it is reasonable to make a case that he is ranked too highly, with his numbers being well outside of the top 32 on pretty much any sort of reasonable metric, and the suggestion that the best version of Snakebite is not only in the past, but versions close to that best are also in the past. It's been the first year since before he became a world champion that he has not won some sort of major title, and outside of a pretty comfortable draw at the UK Open where he was able to progress a couple of rounds, his TV performances have been a total loss in the ranked events, not to mention a horrorshow of a Premier League campaign, back to back last place finishes with only seven match victories across two years and 32 events. There is the occasional flash which makes you think there is still something there, and he did take a Euro Tour in Hildesheim with what was a very good tournament showing, but he didn't get a Pro Tour final all year (and hasn't even been to a quarter final since March), is on a run of eight events where he didn't even reach a board final, and was outside the top 64 in Pro Tour averages (in terms of just Scotland, he finished below both Darren Beveridge and Andy Boulton). He might not be the most out of form seed, but he's got to be pretty darned close to it.
One guy who is in form is Wesley Plaisier, who shocked a lot of people when he didn't win a tour card back in January, but has done more or less everything else apart from that. Wesley would have qualified through the Challenge Tour if needed (finishing second only behind Connor Scutt), but is here on right after three tour finals - two back to back where he narrowly lost out to Ross Smith then went down to Jonny Clayton the day after, before winning one late in the season after getting a narrow final victory over Josh Rock. Plaisier's won two Challenge Tours and reached two more finals this year, he won the World Masters and nearly won the Dutch Open, only losing in the final of that latter event to upcomer Jarno Bottenberg, and he was able to get some wins at Minehead, playing in the UK Open through the '23 Challenge Tour ranks, he ironically beat Connor Scuttand then Haupai Puha, before losing to Daniel Klose, and just recently he was able to sweep aside Mensur Suljovic before going out to eventual semi finalist Ross Smith. Wesley's on debut here but did make a quarter final run at Lakeside in 2023 so isn't a newcomer to a world championship stage, and has good chances of winning his card outright - a first round win would put him into the top 64, while a second round win would make him absolutely safe, and there's no reason why he can't do that.
Standing in his way however is Azemoto, who's qualified as the fourth ranked player on the Asian Tour. On that tour, he's been pretty consistent, with four victories and a further final as well, along with a handful of runs to the last four and eight which he'd ideally liked to have taken further, but his overall level of stats on that tour make a quarter final position somewhat par for the course. Ryusei is on debut here, and we have seen plenty of the Japanese players give strong showings, although this is a big step up in quality - he didn't play in the Asian Championship (although he was a semi finalist the year before), and his pairing with Goto in the World Cup this year ended up with a pair of group stage defeats. He'll probably be competent enough, but the raw stats don't look near convincing enough to make me think he can hang with someone of Plaisier's quality.
This first round match looks easy enough to call. Data on Azemoto is not as extensive as I would like, but what we do have indicates a bit of a gulf in class, and giving Ryusei a 10% chance of the win might be on the optimistic side. Can Plaisier beat Wright is the more pertinent question - I think it's pretty darned close and wouldn't like to install either player as a favourite. Wright projects better, although it's only 55/45, but Plaisier is scoring more down to greater consistency. Maybe Peter draws on the wealth of experience he has to push him over the line, but back to back opening game defeats remain a huge possibility.
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