Come To Milton Keynes: Snooker 2020-21

[Sam]

Three Filipinos in the quarters - strong representation.

Four, in fact! Geronimo, Orcollo, Gonzales Chua and Biado.

As Karl Boyes has just said when the presenter said to him 'We don't know an awful lot about Rodrigo Geronimo, do we?', 'No, but he's Filipino. And in pool terms, that means he can play.'

[Sam]

Yapp into the semis with a very impressive win. Now Fedor Gorst takes on Naoyuki Oi. The commentators are talking about Gorst being a 'slight' favourite and saying Oi has looked great so far, and all I can think is that Oi needs to have been seriously impressive for them to making that assessment. Previously he's often been a good player to watch, and he seems like a lovely guy (albeit his personality doesn't appear to have an off switch), but whenever I've seen him getting towards the latter stages he's seemed lacking in bottle at some crucial point of the match.

One change that was made starting at the round of 16 is that the racks are no longer using a Magic Rack – a thin plastic frame that sits under the balls and keeps them racked really tightly together, and which the referee removes after the break – but are now being racked with a wooden triangle. This inevitably means the odd space and a degree of randomness in the break, which means it's a bit more of a challenge for the players to just constantly get very similar breaks. It's made for some less predictable stuff so far; I'm not sure why they haven't been using triangles all tournament given it's a referee racking for the players (I can see the value of a Magic Rack to avoid cheating the rack in tournaments where players rack for themselves or, especially, for their opponent).

[Sam]

And Oi's into the semis! The last four will have an all-Asian lineup, with the fourth quarter-final still underway between Chua and Biado.

I might give up predicting how things are going to go from now on.

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

Biado is through to play Oi in the semis - another 11-10 win for him.

[Sam]

And another tight match for Biado sees him 4–0 up, then 4–8 down and eventually nicking it 11–9 after a thrilling last couple of racks. Earlier on, Yapp beat Orcollo 11–6, so it's Singapore v Philippines in the final.

The Matchroom streaming site and Cuescore.com both have the final listed as starting in just over an hour, but the main commentator signing off after interviewing Biado says the final will be 'in a few hours', so ... watch this space. I've had a cold for the last few days and my girlfriend is insisting I take the laptop and go and watch the final in bed to get some rest. Sounds good to me!

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Are they doing alternate breaks at this stage? Or the thing I detest most of all, winner breaks again, which given 90% of racks at this level are run through by the person breaking just means whole matches go by with one player sat in their chair?

[Sam]

I thought the thing you detested most were the foot-wide pockets.

Winner breaks allows for comebacks, which are much harder with alternate breaking if one player manages to get a two- or three-rack lead by the time both have settled into how the table's playing for this match. Biado's semi-final win, or his win in the final just now when he came back from 8–3 down to win 13–9, could easily have turned into frustrating situations where both players just 'hold serve' on their own breaks in an alternate break format.

Don't get me wrong; I used to prefer alternate break between these top players, and I still do when they're playing on less tight tables. But the switch from the Magic Rack to the wooden triangle that I mentioned in my post further up this page did the necessary to make the games less predictable.

Anyway, as mentioned just there, Biado's won it, beating Yapp in the latter's first defeat of the tournament. Biado almost took it with a carom shot right after the break in the last rack, playing the cue ball off the 1 and onto the 9, but contact with the second ball wasn't at quite the right angle for it to come off and he ended up needing to take advantage of Yapp missing a tricky cut to the middle before he could run out. He becomes the tenth player to have won both the World and US Open 9-ball titles.

The calendar is a bit tricky to look at overall because so many events are taking place all the time (and because the US-based websites that have most of the events listed don't seem to be paying much attention to the Euro Tour) but it looks like the Mosconi Cup is the next (and last) 'big' event this year. That's in December at Alexandra Palace.

[Discordant Resonance]

Shaun Murphy has gone off on a rant because the amateur Si Jiahui had the audacity to beat him in the round of 128 in the UK Championship - surely that rather highlights the depth of talent in the game, or at the very least that he is one of the names at that level who can pose a challenge to anyone? As the article states however, once you go below the top 32, other professionals are living a more hand-to-mouth existence than Murphy.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Murphy's come across there like he wants snooker to go back to the old days where the top 16 was effectively a self-perpetuating closed shop, with vacancies only arising if someone died.

[longeared]

Si fell off the tour at the end of last season. He's still only 19 and had some decent results, he beat Bingham and Ding, then this season he's getting to play in all tournaments anyway as they don't have a full slate of 128 professionals, he beat Dott in something earlier in the autumn. He was runner up in an amateur event at the weekend, losing to David Lilley who is about 45 years old and won the World Seniors in the summer. I know which of that pair I'd rather see on the tour.

A feature of the UK is the structured draw and the very top players end up facing some of the off-tour amateur top ups which can be a bit of a lottery, in the main they tend to be better than the players right at the bottom of the tour. Selby, Robertson and Ding have all lost to these sort of players in the past so it's not a new feature for the event. Ronnie's got Michael White this evening which is a tricky sort of encounter, White is no mug - he's won ranking tournaments, been in the top 16 and reached the fourth round in York two years ago, beating Williams on the way. You'd expect Ronnie to win that but it's not an easy starter for him. Trump's playing the aforementioned Lilley who he also beat in the Champion of Champions last week.

[DCI Harry Batt]

What does "fell off the tour" mean?

[longeared]

Relegated, essentially. There's 128 players every season who have a professional tour card which gives them a world ranking and enables them to play in all ranking events. Same principle as you get in golf or darts.

[DCI Harry Batt]

Ah right, ta.

[Sam]

Is this the snooker thread for 2021–22 as well, then? Now I've got a Matchroom account I'll be watching more snooker this season. Well, half watching mostly, but it's an excellent sport to have on while working.

[longeared]

Defending champion Neil Robertson joined Murphy in criticising the presence of amateurs in the tournament and he's now gone and lost to one himself. John Astley did the business, he's a journeyman 30-something pro who bounces on and off the tour without making any great impact. Finished 6-2 as well, I don't care if Astley was playing without pressure, you wouldn't expect Robbo to lose to him by that scoreline.

[Discordant Resonance]

Very impressive performance currently by Robbie Williams against Ronnie - almost had two centuries, and O'Sullivan is off his game, but 2-2 at the interval.

[longeared]

Trump - Wakelin hasn't been the most riveting of entertainment for the Sunday afternoon audience, Judd has just gone 5-3 up and it feels unlikely Wakelin will manage to win three on the spin.

Ding Junhui lost on the other table, he's now facing a plunge down the rankings to at least 25th as his points for winning this two years ago will come off now. So he'll miss the Masters and will need to go deep in something in the second half of the season to qualify automatically for the Crucible. That doesn't look overly likely given his recent performances, the UK win looks like an aberration as otherwise he hasn't gone past the quarter final stage of anything since the Masters in January 2019.

[longeared]

This week's turning into a bonfire of the big names. There's only three of the top 13 left - O'Sullivan, Wilson and Maguire, and the latter is currently trailing to Luca Brecel who has gone off like a train. Judd lost this afternoon, yet again he didn't look at all comfortable at the Barbican and lost to Matthew Selt who needed multiple chances in most frames until he made a total clearance of 128 to close it out. Mark Allen pissed away a 5-2 lead over David Gilbert to lose in a decider. So O'Sullivan and Wilson are in the same quarter and whoever wins that will be massive tournament favourite, the bottom half of the draw will provide a finalist of Hawkins, Lisowski, Gilbert or somebody really unexpected.

[longeared]

Went yesterday. World Snooker's new policy of having reserved seats earlier in the tournament than previously meant we had our matches initially chosen for us, so that meant Hamilton - Brecel first up. Brecel racked off two frames in twenty minutes, so Hamilton slowed the game down in an attempt to get him to play a different type of snooker, the Sheriff of Pottingham had an average shot time of a ridiculous 36.87 seconds at the interval. Anyway that didn't really work as Brecel's safety game was on point and he generally scored heavily when he got in, Hamilton was not taking on half chances and missing easy balls off the spot "Ahhh, Jeez" he said after one bad miss. He also played an unusual shot when he held the cue upwards and inwards (like a light saber) for a particularly intricate safety. Brecel won 6-1 and I was on telly quite a lot with our seats, I saw myself clearly watching play on the other table and going "oooh" at one point. Lisowski - Vafaei on the other table finished at virtually the same time, concluding with an exciting cat and mouse on the pink.

Come the evening and after ticking the Market Cat (an exact copy of the Bankers Cat in Leeds should you be interested) we saw Gilbert - Hicks, the latter being better than I expected and he potted some good stuff. The trains were a mess again so I bailed midway through frame five to ensure I got home, and the game finished some two and an half hours later just as I pulled into Rotherham.

Nice to go to York again for the first time in two years. I've noted the crowds looked smaller than in previous years from the telly coverage, this looked the case when on site too. Covid was definitely a factor, there weren't as many old folks as sometimes though all the shock results won't have helped, I can't imagine they sold many tickets for yesterday on walk up. The Barbican seemed more concerned about preventing terrorism than checking Covid statuses, though there was some amusing Covid performance - Steve Davis had been absent from the BBC team earlier owing to the 'vid, so for his return they had the pundits in the arena observing distancing for the first time this week. This laudable move was rather undermined by the fact that before the cameras were rolling he and others were standing around chatting as normal.

Anyone visiting the York Barbican for this or any event may wish to note OTF is blocked on the venue wifi, they think it's "malware". Censorship!

[longeared]

Luca Brecel playing some fabulous stuff here against Kyren Wilson in the semi final, three centuries, a 97 and an 80 and he's one away from victory now. Wilson beat O'Sullivan yesterday in a match notable for some gamesmanship from Ronnie, sitting down every time spectators on the other table moved and demanding a photographer be removed - his tricks when getting beaten in a big match are increasingly frequent and tiresome. Wilson did well to remain calm through all that and won with a century in the decider. The other semi later on is Hawkins v Zhao, the latter potting absolutely everything against Lisowski who had a familiar experience in losing concentration when in a good position.

[longeared]

Another Brecel ton and he's in the final. Outstanding performance from a player Dennis Taylor described as "a young man". He's 26, Hendry had won five world titles by the same age.

[Discordant Resonance]

Brecel was always on the verge of making a breakthrough for the last 6-8 seasons, the major surprise being that it's taken him this long to achieve consistency in a major tournament.

[longeared]

Comprehensive 6-1 win for Zhao, he barely missed a pot outside of a bizarre refusal to take on a simple yellow in the fifth. That is most definitely a final that no-one expected, whoever wins goes up to number nine in the world, goes to the Masters, presumably the Crucible and becomes the first player born in the 1990s to win a Triple Crown event (Yan Bingtao who won the Masters in January was born in 2000). Something different at the top of the game, at long last.

[multipleman78]

I saw Zhao wobble versus Peter Lines but then he recovered and finished so strong that I was inspired to bet on the snooker, which I rarely do.

I put £10 on him to win the tournament at 10/1. Since then he has been spectacular. I am concerned that the final will be a step too far but I hope Brecel can't repeat his form in the semi-final today.

If Brecel is off his game slightly, I think I am in for a nice Chrismassy bonus.

[longeared]

Well there's a nice bonus for multipleman78 as Zhao wins comfortably, he got the run of the balls a bit but was still much the better player on the day for a 10-5 win, frequently taking long pots to get started and going on to make sizable contributions to win frames. A new star for the sport, and now this coming week we don't get to see him in the Scottish Open (being played in, erm, Llandudno) as he lost to Lei Peifan in qualifying a few weeks since.