Judd Trump Northern Ireland Open: Why Short Matches Aren't the Problem
Judd Trump has a better record at the Northern Ireland Open than anyone else in the game. He won it in 2018, 2019 and 2020, beating Ronnie O'Sullivan 9–7 in all three finals, and again in 2023 against Chris Wakelin. He has played in six of the last eight finals.
The last two got away. Kyren Wilson beat him 9–3 in 2024. Last October Jack Lisowski, his friend since they were teenagers, beat him 9–8 in front of 1,435 people at the Waterfront Hall, a record crowd for a UK event outside the Masters. Trump levelled at 8–8 with two breaks of 38, then watched Lisowski win the decider with a 46.
He starts again on Monday at 19:00 against Martin O'Donnell. The usual worry about this event is its format. The first three rounds are best of 7, and short matches throw up more upsets than long ones. For Trump, the records say the danger lies elsewhere.
Almost unbeatable over seven frames
Since June 2025 Trump has played 20 best-of-7 matches in our records and won 17 of them, by 77 frames to 30. All three defeats went to a deciding frame: Elliot Slessor at the 2025 English Open, Shaun Murphy at the 2025 British Open, and Zhao Xintong in the semi-finals of the Riyadh Season Championship. Nobody in our records has beaten him by more than a frame over this distance since June 2025.
This season he is seven from seven over that distance, 28 frames to 8. At the British Open he beat Elliot Slessor and David Gilbert 4–0 on the same day. Last year in Belfast he lost only five frames across the three best-of-7 rounds, against Anthony McGill, Jackson Page and Gary Wilson.
It has not always been that way here. In 2022, as the third seed, he lost 4–1 to Aaron Hill in the last 64, and in 2021 Mark Allen knocked him out 5–3 in the quarter-finals. One bad night can still happen over seven frames. It just hasn't happened to him lately.
Where the titles slip
The trouble starts later. Since June 2025 Trump has reached 12 semi-finals in our records and won six of them. Of the six finals that followed, he won two: the German Masters in February, 10–4 against Murphy, and the Shanghai Masters in August, 11–6 against Kyren Wilson.
The four he lost were Lisowski in Belfast, Mark Selby twice, 10–5 at the Champion of Champions and 10–8 in the UK Championship final, and Zhao 10–3 at the Tour Championship.
This season shows the same split. He has won 18 of his 23 matches. All five defeats came in matches of best of 9 or longer: Noppon Saengkham in the China Open last 32, Chang Bingyu in the Wuhan Open quarter-finals, Jak Jones in the British Open semi-finals, Murphy 6–5 in the English Open quarter-finals, and Wu Yize 6–1 in the Shenzhen Open semi-finals a fortnight ago.
That Wu result was his heaviest defeat of the season. He had beaten Mark Selby 5–0 the day before.
What it means for this week
If he gets through O'Donnell, Trump meets Lei Peifan or Luca Brecel in the last 32. The section also holds Zhao and O'Sullivan, so a quarter-final against one of them is the likely first long match.
On the evidence of the last 16 months, the first three rounds are the part of this event Trump should worry about least. The test comes in the best-of-9 quarter-final and the best-of-11 semi-final. In matches that long he has lost to Jones, Chang, Murphy and Wu since August.
The Form Rating has Trump first going into the week, ahead of Zhao. It counts every match he wins, and he wins most of them. It can't tell us whether he closes out the last two, which is the question his last two Belfast finals left open.
He has won this title four times. A fifth would also be his first ranking title of the season, after six events in which Jak Jones, Mark Selby, Chang Bingyu, Ali Carter and Wu Yize shared the trophies.
Trump v O'Donnell, with the prediction and both players' recent form: match page. The full draw and schedule are on the Northern Ireland Open 2026 hub, last year's results are on the 2025 event page, and the Lisowski rivalry page has the final. Why short matches usually produce more upsets: best of 7 vs best of 19.