Judd Trump has beaten John Higgins by 5-1 to win the 2023 CBSA Huangguoshu Event.
Congratulations Judd Trump!
Earlier today, the semi finals were played and here are the results, with frames scores:
Kyren will be gutted because he dominated the early stages of the match and he had a clear opportunity to win by 4-2. He was unlucky with a split of the pack in frame 6: he went in-off if I remember correctly, or maybe he knocked in a red accidentally, I’m not sure anymore. Anyway, he committed a foul, Judd came back at the table and the rest is history
Here are a couple of images of the Yuan v Higgins match
The final was a one-sided affair. It was played as a best of 9, without interval.
Here are some images of the ceremony, and Judd’s press conference, most of them shared on weibo, plus some shared by Victoria Shi on twitter
John Higgins had some consolation as he won the HB prize, for a 143.
The video below, shared by a fan and taken from their seat in the audience shows the final minutes of that 143 break. It was made during the first frame of his SF match in today’s first session.
Ronnie O'Sullivan 
Appearance fee/big difference for foreigners? (perhaps he consider himself a tour player, should be treated fairly.)
Personal thoughts: Due to seniority and past records, I think only Xiao and Cao deserve it.
(At least those two should be in the posters!)
Amazed Pang Junxu(reaching final last year), Fan Zhengyi(a ranking event winner, result tarnished last year though) still have to qualify for the event.
Xi’an event… isn’t it too close to British Open Qualifiers?
Hope this won’t hinder their performance.
P.S, another author in weibo,
https://weibo.com/u/6173408553?lpage=profileRecom
also has views about the event, agree chinese players(even tour players) are less taken care then british ones.
(i.e. Yuan did not get an interview after SF, they do not get the warm welcome as in twitter photos from other british players..
Yuan just felt they are not equally treated as in U.K. events.)
Thank for that Balvark. Re the team event, my understanding from what Lewis wrote on several occasions in the past, is that is an event they can’t really refuse if invited to enter, and, yes, it might well impact their chances in the next qualifiers negatively.
It’s not easy for organisers of events to strike the right balance. They do have a duty of care for all participants, and obviously the British players would need to be given special help in a foreign place. The danger is when it looks like organisers are ‘favouring’ one group of players over another, in a way that can affect performance on the table. But by the semi-final stage, there should have been enough support given to all remaining players. If Yuan Sijun had to arrange his own transport to the airport yesterday (he’s playing in Xi’an today), that does seem a bit poor – as if they were planning for 4 British players in the semi-finals?
There have to be qualification rules. Unfortunately, the Chinese local rankings were upset by the last 3 years, when there were so few tournaments. Pang Junxu and Fan Zhengyi would have probably needed to play in Haining and do well to improve their ranking.
As for Yuan Sijun’s comments, he was obviously a bit upset that the organisers of the tournament were so favourable to their invited star British players – they were nodoubt extremely proud to have such big names in their event. It’s not so much that the top stars get top billing – that’s quite normal for sport. But after several years of being trapped in the UK as a second-class citizen, Yuan probably hoped for something different when playing in China. The trouble is, he looks a bit ridiculous after losing the semi-final so badly, but that’s quite characteristic of Yuan Sijun!
I just saw another weibo post by Yuan. It wasn’t anything of the above apparently… he was upset because he couldn’t see why they needed a 24/24 hours car and chauffeur, why they had someone at their side with an umbrella at all times in case it rains, why they can’t tidy the table themselves after practising… regarding the first two points, It hasn’t apparently occurred to him that the organisers will take ZERO risk that their guests could come to any harm…
Yuan is right, hope he won’t get into trouble because of it. Maybe the organizers are worried what can come to their invited top players, but how about other pros who also play there? One can’t slam WST for maybe slighting non European/non British players, but accept it from the Chinese. It’s an invitational, OK, but then all guests deserve the same treatment, or then invite only foreigners. On another note, some of this red carpet treatment, people with umbrellas are truly over the top.
Another victory for Judd is always another victory for snooker.
What I don’t understand is why is this event is shrouded in mystery with results almost impossible to find.
I think you have more chance of finding out if there is life on Mars than what is happening in this event and a flamethrower wouldn’t be even capable of finding out.
Well obviously I found it … so it’s not as hard as you make it Cedric.
And there is another tournament starting tomorrow! But the top british players won’t be involved. It’s a teams event in Xi’an, consisting of ‘City’ franchises. About half of the Chinese professionals are involved, including the likes of Pang Junxu, Fan Zhengyi, Wu Yize who didn’t qualify for Huangguoshu. You can probably watch it on some of the same streams.
Yes, I have seen that Sinosports has started building a spreadsheet about that event as well. I’ll try to follow that too. On another topic,, do you know why Yuan Sijun was so upset about different treatment for International players and Chinese players in Huangguoshu? He complained on weibo but without being specific.