Day 2 At Riga

-
Well this tournament is not failing to disappoint.After the controversy of the Luton flight, Mark Selby managed to get two unprecedented walkovers in a day to reach the last 33 stage of this competition and matched up with Graeme Dott today. Dott looked fearless and looked like he was going to win the match but like a finder he is, fought back and won four frames on the spin to win 4-3. He now will face Joe Perry or Stuart Carrington in the last 16.

Jack Lisowski drew a tough cookie, the Welsh potter, Daniel Wells who is currently ranked 58 in the World rankings. Wells had a good run in the Scottish Open and was eventually beaten by Mark Allen. Lisowski is an infuriating player to watch because we know he is from the same mould as his great friend Judd Trump but his performance is often flaky on the television tables. Wells took the first frame with an impressive break and didn’t leave many options open for Jack. However before long, the tables turned and Lisowski produced a quality of snooker that we all know he is capable of. An exquisite 145 break, meant he now has the highest  break of the competition and glided through to the next round with a 4-2 victory.

One of the shocks of today’s play came with the match between Mark Williams and Luo Honghao. On paper, Mark Williams should have won this match comfortably but for some reason, known to Mark alone, gave the Chinese player the upper hand and Williams floundered. Before long, Mark had a deficit that was a mountain too high to climb in a best of seven match and Williams was over only able to put one frame on the scoreboard on the way to a 4-1 loss. Luo now plays Gary Wilson in his last 16 match. Honghao was just four months old when Mark Williams won his first World title! Williams says this will be probably be his last visit to Riga and said of Luo after the match “He could be one to watch out for”.

There were also great wins for Yan Bingtao who whitewashed Chen Zifan 4-0, Stuart Carrington dispatched the former jubilant Mark Selby 4-2, a great win by Kurt Maflin over Thepchaiya Un-Nooh  4-1 and Jack Lisowski is slowly becoming the favourite to win this tournament as so many of his top 16 colleagues fall by the wayside. Sunday will definitely be an interesting day and come the evening it would be so hard to predict who will be the two players who make the final.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Which way, left or right?

-
Image
One of the greatest spats that occurred in snooker history was between my friend Alain Robidoux and Ronnie O’Sullivan. It occurred in 1996 at the World Championship. Ronnie, a then young whipper snapper at 19, trounced Alain in the match, winning 10-3. However beyond the win, a spat occurred when Ronnie decided to take a number of shots left handed. Robidoux criticised O’Sullivan after the match for being “disrespectful”. Ronnie hit back at Alain saying “if he wants to act like a baby that’s up to him” adding “ the crowd enjoyed it, that’s the main thing”. This was probably the first time that a player had dared to take multiple shots left handed and led to players attempting the same feat. Perhaps this wouldn’t have been become a regular occurrence if this hadn’t of happened. This snooker bust up led to Alain refusing to shake Ronnie’s hand at the end of the match. Robidoux later explained his actions saying “Ronnie was being disrespectful to his fellow professionals and should sa
Read more

Place your bets

-
Image
Match fixing in snooker has unfortunately been in operation since the very early days of the game with reports of Joe Davis having "carried" weaker opponents in multi-session matches to maximise the gate revenue. This trait continued through the history of the sport with players such as Willie Thorne and Alex Higgins claiming they were offered large sums of money to lose matches. Players may not enter a match fixing agreement on their own free will, being subject to threats of violence if they fail to submit. The lucrative criminal act is largely based in the Far East where gangs devise money making scams in various sports, using their players to infiltrate the individual sport and extract multimillion currency earnings. Although this happens, World Snooker has been very vigilant to attempt to stamp out this criminal activity in recent years. The main punishment being heavy fines or bans from the game. Recognisable figures such as Quentin Hann, Stephen Lee and Joe Joggi
Read more

The Ooty Club, birthplace of snooker

-
Image
Snooker was first born millions of miles away from the UK in a small town in the Nilgiri hills of Southern India. Recently Dennis Taylor went to this club and played on the first ever table produced. The Ooty Colonial Club was set up amongst 65 hill stations for the British army. Built by Sir William Rumbold In 1836, the club was built in a colonial style  and houses a bar and billiard room. A relic of the Raj period, the mixed bar still has a strict dress code and is set in a building and surrounding area that could be produced by bursting a time bubble and even has the original ball room. Inside the Billiards Room, stands the first ever snooker table made. A rare antique that is still playable and reminds us how old the game and how far it has travelled
Read more