Graeme Dott has been the best player for most of the week and, yesterday, booked his place in the Winners group with a 3-1 win over Lu Ning in the Group 2 final.
Here is the report on WST website:
Dott Wins Group Two
Graeme Dott won Group Two of the 2022 BetVictor Championship League Snooker Invitational at the Morningside Arena in Leicester, beating Lu Ning in the Group Final.
Group Two Standings and Scores
Dott suffered heartache on Tuesday evening after winning all six group games only to miss out in the Group One semi-final but there was no such pain for the Scot, who racked up three wins in the group stage against Jack Lisowski, Gary Wilson, and Lu to set up a playoff tie with the heavy scoring Ryan Day.
The group was tight throughout, with nobody breaking away from the pack with Xiao Guodong threatening to take fourth place but just missing out as Dott, Lu, Day and Joe Perry took up the playoff spots. Xiao is set to return in Group Three. Lisowski and Wilson bowed out after finishing 6th and 7th respectively.
When it came to the semi-final, Dott defeated Day 3-2, clinching it in the decider with a break of 49 helping the 2006 World Champion across the line to face Lu in the final.
Dott took the opening two frames before Lu made the third to close the gap, but it was Dott who delivered the break of the match for 97 to win it 3-1 and take the Group Two title.
Dott said: “I would’ve taken fifth, to be honest the way it was. I struggled yesterday but played well today. It was great in Group One. It was the first time in a long time I felt like a snooker player. I felt good. I didn’t play great until the second day here but the snooker I played yesterday was really bad. I was just happy to win a match. It was a close match (against Day) – you must win some of those games though, it could go 3-2 either way. I played okay. He is very hard to play. He is a good player and he is very methodical and slow, and it can be quite off putting at times. I managed to get the frames open. I didn’t want it to get too scrappy. I dealt with it okay.”
The 2022 BetVictor Championship League Snooker Invitational returns on Monday 3, January with Group 3 seeing Mark Selby, Mark Williams and Stuart Bingham enter the field alongside Xiao, Perry, Day, and Lu.
Jack Lisowski who had made the final in Group 1, was poor in Group 2, especially yesterday. It’s hard to explain other than by mental tiredness. This competition is quite intense.
Ronnie O'Sullivan 
Yes, Dott was definitely the best player on Monday & Tuesday, so deserves something for that performance. He struggled a bit on Wednesday, but did enough. The Perry-Lu match was very bad tempered, with both players boiling over at some points, especially Lu. To his immense credit, Perry tweeted “no hard feelings, in the heat of the moment”. Many other players would have used twitter to criticise their opponent.
Anyway, thanks for your efforts this year Monique, have a Happy Christmas!
Happy Christmas to you and those dear to you Lewis. I wonder if Lu was aware of some suggestions made on twitter – people accusing him of match fixing – and if that contributed to his angry mood.
Probably not. It was only in the Perry match he lost his head. Most likely he was just exhausted. These CL groups are pretty tiring for anyone new to it. Perry was acting a bit frustrated with himself and bad luck etc., and that may have annoyed Lu. But he shouldn’t have retaliated. Then it all boiled over at the end of the 4th frame. Perhaps the referee could have helped to calm things down, but ultimately Lu felt victimised when he was warned.
But Perry’s response on twitter was commendable.
Lu Ning’s response:
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/QX79U9GB5Mx6hTakjyvG1g
Pretty much as I thought, except the video doesn’t show the earlier parts of the match, which was important.