In beating Northern Ireland’s Mark Allen 10-7 in the final at the weekend, the world no.1 took his first title of the 2017/18 season and retains the title he won last year.
His pathway to the final, featured a few tight matches coming through 6-4 a few times, whilst Mark Allen came through final frame deciders against Mark King and Judd Trump.
The final see the Leicester cueman establish a mid-session interval lead of 6-3, even though Allen savaged a poor start with a superb 137 clearance.
But the world champion kept digging away and after the resumption carried on from where he left off to go 5 clear at 8-3. And even though, Allen kept scraping away with the odd frame, he couldn’t get close to Selby who closed out in the final few frames with knocks of 90 and 49 to close out the match in Daqing.
With the rankings now based on money rather than points, Selby has a huge lead and will stay number one in the sport for the next few seasons, as he took his 13th ranking title of his career.
The tour resumes this weeks in Coventry for the Champion of Champions event, which is invitational tournament for players who have won events over the past 12 months. Defending champion is John Higgins, who beat two-time winner, Ronnie O’Sullivan in last year’s final.
Based on the old defunct Premier League Snooker in which players played every week for points with the top 4 in the league contesting the knock-out semi-finals, this slimmed down version, has 4 groups of 4 players, one group will feature each day, with the winners of each match, playing a mini-final, with the winner going on to the semi-finals.
Group 1 features Ding Junhui v Anthony Hamilton/Barry Hawkins v Ryan Day
Group 2 Marco Fu v Michael White/Shaun Murphy v Mark King
Group 3 Mark Selby v Liang Wenbo/Judd Trump v Luca Brecel
Group 4 Ronnie O’Sullivan v Neil Robertson/John Higgins v Anthony McGill
For tickets to the event go to – www.championofchampionssnooker.co.uk/tickets
Live television coverage on ITV 4 of every match.
