No better way to start than with a 147 - Snooker 2022-23

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

https://youtu.be/HMWOhRdPsN4

Marco Fu closes out a 4-3 win against a clearly delighted John Higgins with a simply immaculate break.

[longeared]

Second consecutive week there's been a maximum - Mark Selby made one against Jack Lisowski in the British Open in MK last week. That was a tournament with a surprise result, they have a completely open draw for that and a lot of big names got knocked out early, it looked like Mark Allen's to lose and lose it he did with Ryan Day beating him in the final.

The season has been pretty slow going so far as the entire Chinese swing got binned again, this invititational in Hong Kong is the first time they've been to Asia since the pandemic began. Zhao Xintong got Covided out and Mark Williams replaced him at short notice. There was an interminable Championship League in the summer which Luca Brecel won, Kyren Wilson won the European Masters in Furth and then there was a new mixed doubles tournament which World Snooker promoted the absolute hell out of and some of which ended up on proper ITV. Neil Robertson and Ng On Yee won that.

There's a lot of snooker to be played over the next couple of months, the UK Championship has been brought forward to mid-November to avoid the wretched World Cup and has reverted to the old format with the top 16 getting through automatically to the last 32, presumably as a reaction to last year when we ended up with all sorts of wacky names well before the business end.

[Satchmo Distel]

https://twitter.com/ChrisHammer180/status/1579255897599025152

[longeared]

Really excellent potting contest of a match between John Higgins and Jackson Page just now in the Northern Ireland Open. Break of 50+ every frame and most of them won at one visit, average frame time was just eleven and an half minutes. Page should have won 4-2 but missed a red to middle and Higgins cleared up to take it to a decider. Page got in first there as well but missed a plant that never looked on then didn't get back to the table as Higgins made a 124 to clinch it.

[longeared]

Ronnie and Judd are about to start the concluding session of the Champion of Champions final at Bolton's ground. Ronnie has had one of those tournaments where the draw opened up for him, though he's looked pretty sharp all week anyway and was better for much of this afternoon, capitalising on Judd's errors to lead 6-1. Then Judd made a maximum and won the last frame as well so he's still in this match, first to ten wins.

The UK Championship quietly kicked into life yesterday. The revised format means that the flat draw has gone and there's qualifying rounds being played in Sheffield before the telly stages begin in York on Saturday, basically the same format as the Worlds except that the matches are shorter. This also means that if want to see an amateur knocking out Murphy again then said amateur will have to win four matches to reach that stage. Ng On Yee became the first woman to win a match in this tournament last night when she beat Jenson Kendrick, next up for her is Matthew Stevens tonight. Jimmy White has won two matches without dropping a frame, whitewashing Mitchell Mann was an impressive result. He's got Stephen Maguire tomorrow evening for his next match and he'll be doing very well indeed to win that by any score. Michael Judge v Dechawat Poomjaeng sounded quite a match given that they got taken off after taking the thick end of five hours to complete seven frames.

[longeared]

Kyren Wilson is showing RESPECT by still wearing his poppy for his match against Mark Allen tonight. It's clearly doing him some good as he's two frames up having been much the better player so far.

The change in format led to a load of big names going out in the first round, not unsurprisingly as the seeds were coming in cold against good players who were match sharp from having won a couple of rounds to get through qualifying - Robertson, Selby, Higgins, Williams and defending champion Zhao all lost, Trump only just scraped through against Xiao Guodong and Murphy needed a decider against David Gilbert. Most of the big names remaining are in the top half of the draw, in the bottom half it will likely be O'Sullivan there on Sunday unless Bingham or Ding can have one of their super days against him. Ronnie whitewashed Zhou Yuelong this afternoon in an almost embarassingly one sided match where Zhou looked as if he'd never played the game before, at the interval there was a graphic on screen saying Ronnie's highest break was 137 and Zhou's was, erm, 1. He did make a more substantial contribution in the fifth.

The arena looks a bit different this year and has been generally commended by the players, it feels that World Snooker are trying to turn this into the winter world championships. I'm not sure that restoring the screen between tables is necessarily an advance mind. Crowds were a bit thin Monday and yesterday though, but there's a lot more in today.

[longeared]

Judd Trump's been knocked out now, sort of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory again after losing to Murphy from 5-3 up. Bit of a mixed match, they absolutely shot through the first four frames to go into the interval level, then there were a load of long and scrappy frames where Judd slowly eased ahead, then Murphy made two centuries (including getting 13 reds into a maximum) and held his nerve in the decider. Murphy had neck and back problems and tweeted during the morning he might not be able to play at all. We normally go on Thursdays, we didn't this year for one reason and another, but we'd have had bang for our buck from that match.

Feels like Ronnie's tournament to lose now given that all of the real elite players are out, though you could have said the same thing at this point last year and he didn't win on that occasion.

[longeared]

Ronnie on the brink of elimination here - 5-0 and 55-0 down to Ding, and he probably won't get back to the table unless Ding makes an error. The first couple of frames were a bit scrappy then Ding hasn't made a meaningful mistake since. Ronnie's barely had a chance although his safety has been loose since the interval to let Ding in twice. Doesn't matter how good you are if you're sat in your seat.

[longeared]

In what is clearly the day's main global sporting event (and they didn't kill six and an half thousand people building the York Barbican either) Ding Junhui plays Mark Allen in the final of the UK Championship this afternoon. Didn't see much of Ding's semi final but by the sounds of it he played fairly well and was assisted by some tactical errors from Tom Ford. Jack Lisowski has played brilliantly all week and set off like a train against Allen, who gradually dragged the game back and it went to a decider where Lisowski tied up when he got close to the winning line and Allen stole through. Allen has tended to start slowly in matches this week so Ding needs to get some early frames on the board if that's the case again.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Ronnie's barely had a chance although his safety has been loose since the interval to let Ding in twice. Doesn't matter how good you are if you're sat in your seat.

Increasingly now at this level snooker seems to be about not leaving any sniff of a chance. Even off the break. All the top 50 players seem perfectly confident making at least half-century breaks given the first red.

[longeared]

Allen started slowly again, then continued slowly - Ding made three centuries to go 6-1 up before Allen won the last to at least keep the match alive tonight. Ding didn't actually need to play all that well, he just kept capitalising on Allen's mistakes and loose play.

They made the draw for the Masters during the interval, Robertson v Murphy the obvious highlight and that'll kick off the tournament in seven Sundays time.

[Discordant Resonance]

A Final of two halves, with Allen reeling off nine of the final ten frames to remarkably clinch the UK Championship, 10-7.

[Mumpo]

Genuinely thought I was about to lose the will to live when they started shunting those five reds along the top cushion.

[longeared]

It was a good example of why major finals are not always the easiest matches on the eye - neither player took a huge amount of risks, and they were a bit unlucky with the run of the balls. That last frame was painful though, you could see after a few shots it had potential to be an epic with the reds scattered, pink on the cushion, black tied up and it duly went on and on. Well before the end I was willing Allen to win it so I didn't have to sit through much more. Still, well done Mark, player of the season so far by some distance and he only needs the Worlds for a career triple crown. His record at the Crucible is terrible though so he'll have to go against history to achieve that leg. Bit like Ding really.

[longeared]

Big scandal breaking at present. On Friday the WPBSA suspended Lu Ning, Li Hang, Zhao Jianbo, Bai Langning and Chang Bingyu over an investigation into "manipulating the outcome of matches". Lu was the biggest name of these, ranked 32, the rest are lower down the rankings. Over the weekend Chang went on Weibo and in a now deleted post alleged that Liang Wenbo had threatened him into losing 4-1 to Jamie Jones in the British Open earlier in the season, which turned out to be precisely what happened in the match. Liang had himself been suspended in October over "misconduct" which is now believed to be related to the aforementioned investigation - there was some confusion as he had been suspended in the spring after being found guilty in the courts for assaulting his wife. Now this morning a much bigger fish has been caught as Yan Bingtao has been suspended with immediate effect, he's ranked 16 and won the Masters at the start of last year. Yan was due to play Ashley Hugill in the English Open today so he's out of that, and reasonable to assume we won't see him at the Masters either. Could run a while all this.

[longeared]

The match fixing scandal has caught another big fish - Zhao Xintong, who stormed to the UK Championship at the end of 2021. He was due to play Selby in the Masters this Sunday though I think it's reasonable to assume he'll be removed and replaced by the next highest ranked player - Hossein Vafaei I think. Yan has already been kicked out of this over Christmas and David Gilbert brought in as his replacement. Zhao beat Yan 9-0 in the German Masters final a year ago which looked a bit weird at the time and now looks, well, more weird. Liang Wenbo has claimed in Chinese media that he has retired and is going to tell all, how true all this is and where it leads remains to be seen.

[longeared]

It's been the Masters this week, Judd Trump and Mark Williams just got started in the final. It hasn't been a brilliant event unfortunately (although still miles better than the 2020 running), Williams coming from 3-0 down to beat Ronnie was unexpected and Lisowski - Vafaei the same evening was an entertaining potting contest of a match, but much of the rest has been scrappy, one-sided or both. Judd's win over Ryan Day in the opening round must be a candidate for one of the worst matches ever at the tournament where they both deserved to lose, he scrapped to a win over Hawkins and then beat Bingham 6-1 last night when he couldn't win frames at one visit, I kept periodically flicking over from the EFL highlights and thinking "this match hasn't moved on much in the last quarter hour". I haven't seen Williams outside of the Ronnie win, although his whitewash of Lisowski yesterday sounded more a case of Lisowski playing badly rather than anything else.

Anyway while I've been typing this I've found it's Marcel fucking Eckardt refereeing, now Williams has got in first in the opening frame. He's chasing a third win in this tournament, his last came in 2003!

[nmrfox]

All 10 now have a case to answer - Snooker match-fixing investigation - 10 Chinese players charged by WPBSA - BBC Sport

[Sporting]

Such a great channel:

[longeared]

The Seventeen Day Crucible Marathon bit of the World Championship starts tomorrow, the tournament began last week with the qualifiers. There were the usual smattering of stories, including 16 year old Stan Moody winning a match and Mark Davis falling off the tour after missing a pink in a decider against Joe Perry. They could do with a good Worlds because the sport is in a right fucking state at the moment. The match fixing scandal is still bumbling along, ten Chinese players are facing their hearings the week after next, and tour stalwart Mark King also got suspended relating to betting activity on his Welsh Open defeat to Perry.

The sport has just as big a problem with the calendar situation. They still haven't been able to get back to China so the tour has continued to narrow horizons and has barely been outside the UK all season. There were invitationals in Hong Kong and Thailand but other than that there were only two ranking events overseas and they were both in Germany. There's loads of shite snooker being played in crappy places like the Morningside Arena in Leicester and with barely any spectators, the recent Tour Championship in Hull had crowds of the size where your starting point for counting would be "fingers" rather than "investigating the capacity of the venue". Matt Selt correctly noted that tournaments are being spread over a longer period of time which gives a misleading impression of activity. Prize money is shit as well, you get well rewarded for winning things but going deep in a tournament doesn't earn all that much. World Snooker advanced all players 20k to cover costs in the current climate but that gets offset against prize money, there's plenty of players that have only just crept over that mark. There's an over-reliance on betting sponsorship (players struggling financially surrounded by bookies ads eh, that sounds like a recipe for trouble) although the Worlds has attracted the ubiquitous Cazoo, the first time ever this hasn't been sponsored by fags or a bookie and there's hardly any young players coming through, we keep talking about Kyren Wilson or Jack Lisowski having potential but they're both 31.

Ronnie's criticism's of the sport can be a bit scattergun and mysterious at times but he articulated his concerns well recently, which led to Steve Dawson unwisely biting back and basically telling Ronnie to shut up. Dawson took over running the sport from Barry Hearn a couple of years back and this was a rare public statement from him - he's been so discreet I still have no idea what he looks like - and it didn't make him look good. Ronnie did make it a bit personal by suggesting Dawson or Jason Ferguson wouldn't get an administrative role in any other sport, which is probably true, even so they should both resign or be sacked for allowing the sport to get into this state.

Turning to the Worlds, Ronnie is chasing a record eighth world title. He's not had a great season, he won the Champion of Champions but hasn't been past the quarters of any ranking event. He shouldn't have too much trouble with Pang Junxu tomorrow but then it gets harder - Ding or Vafaei, then probably Williams or Brecel, and possibly Judd waiting in the semis. Mark Selby knows his way round the Worlds and has shown some decent form of late. His schedule here isn't ideal, he doesn't start until Wednesday, but he's not got the worst draw and he's my tip. Mark Allen has been player of the season although has barely won a match this last couple of months and his Crucible record is terrible - only once in the semis (and that back in 2009) and he's only made the quarters once since 2011, he's openly admitted to not really liking the tournament in the past. Potentially he could play Robertson in the quarters and there's another player with a surprisingly indifferent Crucible record, his campaign usually involves breezing through the first couple of rounds then tamely losing his quarter final.

Shaun Murphy has been on good form of late but you never know what you might get with him, he might win the thing again, he might lose to Crucible debutant Si Jiahui, the longer he stays in the tournament the less we have to endure him on the telly. He's in the same quarter as Judd, who's got a horrible first round game against Anthony McGill who's beaten big players at the Crucible on several occasions. Judd won the Masters but has otherwise been a bit up and down. Beyond these we're down to familar questions with some names, can Mark Williams beat the top players in multi session matches, can John Higgins find his Crucible form rather than the terrible performances he's been churning out all season, can Kyren Wilson make a big breakthrough at last. You'll notice it's all the familar old names in consideration once again, neatly illustrating one of the sport's problems.

[nmrfox]

Got tickets for Wednesday morning and will be seeing two of the youngsters you mention there longeared, Jack Lisowski and Kyren Wilson. My snooker mad mate from Hong Kong moved to the UK last year and am taking him along for his first visit to the Crucible. To say he's excited is an understatement, but in a very good way. Meeting up with a couple of former work colleagues of ours for lunch and beers afterwards, so looking forward to it.

[longeared]

I've just got in and seen Hazel on the telly, so all is well in the sporting world.

World Snooker have released a provisional calendar for next season and proudly announced they are returning to China later this year. Including a ranking tournament in October in Wuhan.

[Discordant Resonance]

One of the most remarkable frame steals you'll ever see from Pang - appeared to have no chance with two reds nailed tightly to the middle of the bottom cushion (from our perspective), but managed to clear the table.

[longeared]

Excellent potting performance from Hossein Vafaei this morning - won six out of seven frames against Ding and barely missed a meaningful pot in doing so, he scored centuries in both the opening two frames before Ding had got his hand on the table and carried on in the same vein to win surprisingly quickly and comfortably. That's the sort of performance I've felt he's been capable of for years and he'll face Ronnie next.

Brecel - Walden provided some surprisingly good Sunday night entertainment, Walden clawed it all the way back from 9-6 but then didn't get a chance in the decider - like Vafaei, that was Brecel's first win at the Crucible.

[longeared]

Play interrupted because some of those posho student oil cunts have just spent Daddy's money on invading the arena, one of them tried to attach themselves to the table and got wrestled away by the ref, and unseen so far somebody else has chucked some orange powder on the Milkins - Perry table.