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Come To Milton Keynes: Snooker 2020-21

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    Come To Milton Keynes: Snooker 2020-21

    The first major of the snooker season starts tomorrow with the UK Championship. It should have been held at the Barbican Centre in York but with it long being apparent there would be no spectators it's been shifted to the Franchise Arena in Milton Keynes. In fact the entire season so far has been held in MK, what with it having an on site hotel and presumably being a lot cheaper than hiring theatres and the like. Hopefully none of the money is finding its way through to the football club. The Masters in January is currently slated to be the first tournament elsewhere and you can still buy tickets for it but whether it actually gets played at Ally Pally presumably depends on whatever batshit decisions the government makes over the coming weeks. There's been nothing in China at all, there's a block of weeks in the calendar in March for some potential Chinese tournaments but that feels unlikely to happen at the moment. There's a "national team championship" or something that started in China yesterday which is the first meaningful snooker to take place there.

    Judd Trump has been the best player in the world over the last couple of years and has made a very strong start to the season - he's reached at least the semi finals of all five tournaments played and won the English Open beating Robertson in the final. Kyren Wilson won an interminable Championship League, Mark Selby took the European Masters. The Champion of Champions on ITV the other week was an excellent tournament which made headlines when Ronnie confronted Mark Allen and accused him of moving behind the shot. That didn't do Allen any harm as he went on to win both match and tournament.

    Judd's currently facing Ronnie in the Northern Ireland Open final - the third consecutive season this has happened. Ronnie's going through one of his weird days and isn't conceding frames despite needing umpteen snookers (not the first time this week he's done that) though Judd currently leads 3-1. They can't meet in the UK final unfortunately as they're in the same half of the draw there.

    #2
    And Judd sees off Ronnie's counter attack to win 9-7. Not always as free flowing a match as perhaps might be expected from the two, but the best player won in the end. World Snooker quietly scrapped the million quid bonus for winning all four Home Nations events this season, which they might be both simultaneously pleased and annoyed about given that Judd is halfway there now.

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      #3
      First round of the UK is drawing to an end this evening. Surprise results have been thin on the ground, Gary Wilson, Tom Ford and Ali Carter being the main casualties so far. That means Carter won't be back at the Masters (assuming no withdrawals) after he was runner up last season. Mark Selby was given a scare by Michael White and Lee Walker took Shaun Murphy to a decider but most of the big names have had pretty straightforward matches otherwise. There's been some big scoring - maximums for Kyren Wilson and Stuart Bingham, a rare 146 for Hossein Vafaei and several 140s. Wilson said that the lack of crowd helped him as there was no pressure or audience noise.

      The government's Covid Roulette today has drawn MK into tier 2, so that means that there could potentially be 1000 spectators at the tournament from Wednesday on. It's unknown how much work World Snooker have put into planning for spectators - the Champion of Champions was slated to be at Franchise Arena pre-Covid so presumably some work has been done to this end - but whether a Covid secure venue can be prepared at short notice is the question. They'd have to sell tickets as well, everyone who had tickets for York had them rolled over to 2021. Wouldn't be surprised if we see a small crowd for the semis and final next weekend. London also being in tier 2 means that there is the prospect of having a crowd for the Masters at Ally Pally in January (assuming the position at the time still allows it)

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        #4
        Deciding frame coming up in O'Sullivan - Ursenbacher. Been an error strewn afternoon - they've both had chances in every frame and missed a number of easy pots. Ursenbacher was 4-2 up earlier but didn't kick on through some straightforward misses and odd shot selection. Ronnie's doing his weird thing about playing to the end of every frame again, he's just carried on despite needing twelve snookers.

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          #5
          Ursenbacher takes the decider - needed two chances to do so but held himself together well at the crucial moments. Ronnie out. Blimey.

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            #6
            Had tickets for today but obviously that bit the dust a while ago. As it was I booked the day off anyway and attempted to reproduce the day I might have had - worked out what trains I might have caught, applauded the players into the arena, watched the whole thing and went for a piss during the interval. In the afternoon Trump beat Walden 6-3, Judd was comfortable up to the interval then Walden rallied a bit and it did look briefly as if it might be a case of Judd snatching defeat from the jaws of victory but Walden left too many chances in the end. Watching Wilson - Dott now, Dott seems incapable of winning frames at one visit though has finally got on the board to trail 4-1. Imagine the frame that has just started would have been my final one before bailing to catch the train home. Winners of these two matches play each other in the quarters tomorrow night, given the way the tournament has progressed you'd expect the winner of that to face the winner of Selby - Robertson in the final on Sunday.

            World Snooker has bowed to the inevitable and accepted there will be no tournaments in China this season. They've created something by the name of the "WST Pro Series" to replace the lost events which looks to be an even more interminable version of the Championship League. Fair dos to them for keeping the sport going and giving the players opportunities to earn money, but God these round robin tournaments are dull.

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              #7
              The Masters starts today. I bloody love this tournament normally - all the best players in midwinter in the big London tournament in front of the season's most raucous crowd (well, as raucous as you can get from a snooker crowd anyway) but this year is obviously going to be a bit different. Like everything else this season it's in MK behind closed doors, and there's a bubble environment in place. This meant that the first set of Covid results came back yesterday and saw Trump and Lisowski test positive, so that's them both out the tournament straight away. Judd was apparently partying in Dubai over the holidays, the great dolt. Anyway that means that the reserves Joe Perry and Gary Wilson have replaced them in the draw and the latter opens the tournament against Kyren Wilson this afternoon - not exactly the most stellar match to start proceedings that. Not clear what will happen if there's any more positive tests, whether the likes of McGill / Zhou / Carter / Hawkins will be added as reserves as a precaution or if we might see players being given byes.

              Anyway I've got no idea who will win it, though it'll almost certainly be better than last year's edition was. A low bar to clear, that.

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                #8
                Fine match between Ronnie and Ding this afternoon, Ding led 3-0 and 5-3 but tightened up when he got close to the winning line. It ended up going to a decider, Ding decided to try and pot the brown when he should have just rolled up behind it, missed and never came back to the table. Feels like this is Ronnie's tournament to lose now what with Robertson and Selby having been knocked out yesterday and his quarter final against Higgins or Allen might be tougher than a potential semi final (K Wilson / Gilbert) or final (Bingham / Murphy / Yan / Maguire).

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                  #9
                  Fucking wank fucking game stopping me watching something that I'd been looking forward to all week. Hope you both lose. I would say and die, but that's not funny these days.

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                    #10
                    So, Silas Grenback's won. Can we now drop this shit.

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                      #11
                      Absolute stone cold classic match tonight between Ronnie and Higgins which is being played to a outstanding standard. There were five consecutive centuries and that sequence has just ended when Higgins made only 88, just failing to pot a difficult yellow on the cushion. Higgins made three of the tons, leads 5-3 and needs just one more frame now. He hasn't played like this for years.

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                        #12
                        Probably over too short a length to be considered one of the greatest matches of all time. But it’s a good question whether any other match has been of the same sustained quality from both players from start to finish.

                        Bad split from Higgins means a reprieve for Ronnie. But a bad safety immediately. And that is probably that, based on how Higgins is playing.

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                          #13
                          Oh, he refused the pot?!? Weird. And could be costly as Ronnie didn’t...

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                            #14
                            It has got to Ronnie - his last visits have been rather twitchy. This time Higgins will wrap it up.

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                              #15
                              Higgins wins 6-3. Match of the season without a doubt. He'll play Gilbert in the semis tomorrow night after Bingham - Yan in the afternoon.

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                                #16
                                You have to admire Yan's mental fortitude - there were times in the first session when the final threatened to move beyond him, but he dug deep, and now leads 9-8 in the final. More remarkable is that Higgins is only 45, he looks about a decade older.

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                                  #17
                                  Doug Mountjoy has died aged 78. One of the main figures in the sport when it went mainstream in the late 70s, he won the Masters, the UK when it was still the domestic championship, Pot Black and was runner up when Steve Davis won his first World Championship in 1981. Then he rather disappeared for several years before he had a major career revival at the end of the decade, he won the UK again in 1988 and beat a young Hendry in the final before also winning the Mercantile Credit Classic shortly after. Dropped off the main tour in 1997 but was still playing seniors events up to a few years ago.

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                                    #18
                                    Sad news, RIP - Mountjoy was a favourite of mine as he looked like a hard bastard, which as a an ex-miner, he doubtless was. Reading his Wiki, it seems having his game remodelled by a new coach, Frank Callan, led to his late 80s renaissance, although he was hardly (as I had remembered it) an old man, he was only 46 when he beat Hendry.

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                                      #19
                                      Those bright red shirts and the black snooker attire. The 146. The just being a human when the showbiz appeared. A true legend and a great that's made the sport what it is today. RIP

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                                        #20
                                        https://www.theguardian.com/sport/20...droidApp_Other

                                        Here's his obituary.

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                                          #21
                                          Deciding frame coming up in the Welsh Open final between Jordan Brown and Ronnie. Brown was 8-7 up before Ronnie made a total clearance of 119 just now to take it to the decider. Brown winning the thing would be an absolutely enormous shock, he's ranked 81 in the world (slightly misleadingly low as he fell off the tour at the end of last season, he qualified for the Crucible last summer where he lost to Selby) and was 750-1 at the start of the week. This is a proper tournament as well, with prestige and historic big name winners, it's not like it's a pro-am or playing best of 3s or something.

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                                            #22
                                            Bloody hell, Brown's won it.

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                                              #23
                                              It was mentioned during the O'Sullivan vs Ding match this evening that Ding hasn't seen his wife and child since July 2020 - he's stayed on tour in the UK playing snooker. He's been holed up in a Milton Keynes hotel for most of the time too.

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                                                #24
                                                Reanne Evans and Ng On-Yee have been awarded professional tour cards for the next two seasons, in a move that suggests the two highest ranked women on the women's tour will be awarded tour cards in future.

                                                https://wst.tv/world-womens-snooker-...d-tour-places/

                                                It will be really interesting to see how Ng does. She's struggled on the rare occasions she's been invited to tournaments, but does have a win over Joe Swail at Q School from 2017, and her last appearance in the World Qualifiers saw her lose 10-6 to Alan McManus in 2019. When Evans had a wild card onto the tour a decade ago, she said the biggest step up she needed to make was the difference between the tables used in the women's game, and the pro tables, in terms of speed and bounce. She started that season struggling to pick up frames, and ended it losing a decider to Neil Robertson.

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                                                  #25
                                                  Is Neil Robertson really allowed to play in a clown wig? That just seems disrespectful.

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