Defending champion John Higgins was the number 1 seed with World Champion Graeme Dott seeded 2. Places were allocated to the top 16 players in the world rankings. Players seeded 14, 15 and 16 played in the wild-card round against the winner of the qualifying event, Stuart Bingham (ranked 24), and two wild-card selections, Ding Junhui (ranked 27) and Jimmy White (ranked 34). This was the only time that there were three matches in the wild-card round. Barry Hawkins was making his debut in the Masters.