Top seed Luca Brecel will be aiming for a positive start to his title defence when taking on Martin O’Donnell in round one of the China Championship on Tuesday.

Brecel, who turned professional back in 2011, broke his ranking-tournament duck 12 months ago when beating Shaun Murphy to land the title abLuca Brecelt the Guangzhou Tianhe Sports Centre.

The 23-year-old has been steadily improving ever since that China victory and he came close to winning the Six-red World Championship this year, eventually being knocked out at the semi-finals stage.

It will be a different kind of pressure on the Belgian this week, one he has not experienced before, although he will be confident of getting the better of 64th seed O’Donnell.

The Englishman is yet to win a tournament in his career and his results this season don’t make for good reading, with two first-round exits at the World Open and Paul Hunter Classic and a Riga Masters qualifying loss.

However, the 32-year-old did beat Brecel in their only previous meeting – a 4-1 win at the 2018 Gibraltar Open – and he will be hoping to draw on memories of that impressive victory.

Brecel has climbed to 12th in the world rankings as a result of his good performances over the past couple of seasons and it would be a shock to see the defending champion exit at the first hurdle.

Elsewhere, home favourite Yan Bingtao also kicks off his quest for glory on Tuesday against Chris Wakelin and the Chinese is 1.57 favourite to pick up the win whilst his English opponent is priced at 2.30 to cause an upset.