Yesterday was the first day at the 2023 NI Open Qualifiers and here is the report by WST:

Kazakov Is Belfast Bound

Ukraine’s Anton Kazakov scored his first win of the season, beating Long Zehuang 4-1 to qualify for the final stages of the BetVictor Northern Ireland Open.

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Kazakov, age 18, turned pro last year after winning the WSF Junior Championship and found the going tough in his debut season, winning just two matches. But he impressed today in a comfortable victory, his top break 63, and Kazakov is through to the last 64 of a ranking event for the first time. He can look forward to a trip to the Waterfront Hall in Belfast for the world ranking event which gets underway this Sunday.

Germany’s Lukas Kleckers came from 3-1 down to edge out Andrew Pagett 4-3, making breaks of 84 and 101. Jackson Page whitewashed Liam Graham 4-0 while Alfie Burden made a vital colours clearance in the deciding frame to beat Mostafa Dorgham 4-3.

Veteran Dominic Dale rolled back the years in a 4-1 win over Allan Taylor, firing breaks of 57, 55, 136 and 101. Former European Masters champion Fan Zhengyi beat Liu Hongyu 4-2 with a top run of 84. Dylan Emery came from 2-0 down to beat Martin Gould 4-3 in a high quality contest, knocking in breaks of 64, 56, 100 and 53.

I was very happy to see Anton Kazakov win yesterday. The young man clearly works hard and is improving. His situation can’t be easy, he’s from Ukraine. He hasn’t got much success in his first year as a professional, but yesterday he got a good win and I hope that he can build on that success.

Mostafa Dorgham is a very good player, a bit “old school”. He lost yesterday, to the vastly experienced Alfie Burfen, but he showed a lot of quality. Snooker in North Africa is improving and well supported, including women snooker which might surprise many given that Islam is the dominant faith in the area.

The Fan Zhengyi v Liu Hongyu match was a good one as well. No century, but five breaks over 50. Liu made a 63 in the lat frame and it wasn’t enough… Fan won on experience, aided by a superior safety game.

One surprising omission in the above report is the 4-2 win by Zak Surety over Joe O’Connor.

All the results are on snooker.org

Meanwhile, those five are in Shanghai:

This is a three days exhibition, two matches per day. It started yesterday.

The exhibition is not streamed nor televised – only people at the venue can watch it – and those involved don’t need to play, or chose not to play in the NI Open Qualifiers.

Other than the one above, I found no pictures on Weibo either, so, clearly, they are keeping a low media profile, likely at WST request. These are the results from yesterday: Williams 4-0 Trump, O’Sullivan 4-1 Ding Junhui.

Today Ronnie will play two matches: his opponents will be Jack Lisowski and Mark Williams.

Tomorrow Juss trump will play two matches, against Ding Junhui and Jack Lisowski.

In other news …

According to Weibo, the CBSA has nominated their 4 wildcards for the International Championship: Gong Chenzhi, Bai Yulu, Wang Xinzhong and Wang Xinbo. These are the players that were also chosen for the Wuhan Open.