It is Opening day at the China Championship 2017! It starts in earnest tomorrow, but today the players were made very welcome with a red carpet ceremony and a launch dinner. Here are some images shared on weibo and twitter by Worldsnooker and players:

There were a few interesting posts on weibo today as well: apparently the Shanghai Masters 2017 (or 2018) is well and truly alive, and Barry Hearn confirmed that talks are underway to stage the event later this season. Some posts suggest that it could be run from 13 to 18 November, which would leave the Champion of Champions squeezed between this one and the International Championship making it extremely difficult for the players involved in all three who would have to travel to China, back to UK, back to China and back to UK without any time to recover from jet lag, and very difficult for the Champion of Champions promoters to organise the schedule, which could impact how the tickets sell. Is this really sensible? Given that the Champion of Champions isn’t ranking, it could give this nice tournament a bad blow, with some top players declining the invitation and people waiting to know the line-up and schedule before buying tickets.