Bai Yulu has won the 2024 Women Snooker World Championship
She beat Mink Nucharut by 6-5 in a tense high quality final. This means that she will be offered a main Tour card for the 2024/25 season. Mink will get one as well as she’s guaranteed to finish the season as Women’s Snooker number 1. In many ways this is the best possible outcome from allegedly the best ever Women Snooker World Championship.
Congratulations Bai Yulu!
Here is the report shared by WST
BAI WINS FIRST WORLD WOMEN’S TITLE
Home favourite Bai Yulu beat Mink Nutcharut 6-5 on the final pink to win a dramatic final at the World Women’s Snooker Championship in Dongguan Changping, China.
Victory earns 20-year-old Bai a place on the World Snooker Tour for the first time and she will join the main circuit for the 2024/25 and 2025/26 seasons. Talented Bai reached the final last year before losing to Baipat Siripaporn, and has now clinched her maiden world title.
Women’s world number one Nutcharut, who lifted this trophy in 2022, had not dropped a single frame in the tournament until the final. Bai took an early 3-1 lead, helped by a break of 122 which was the highest of the tournament and highest ever in the World Women’s Championship final. Thailand’s Nutcharut hit back to take three in a row with a top run of 62 to lead 4-3, before Bai knocked in 97 and 75 to edge 5-4 ahead. Nutcharut then took frame ten on the colours to set up the decider.
Both players had chances and it came down to the colours – Nutcharut leading 46-43 when she failed to gain position on the brown. Bai potted brown and blue to lead 52-46 during a safety battle on the pink. Trapped in a snooker, Nutcharut hit the pink but left her opponent a chance, and Bai slotted it into a baulk corner to clinch the Mandy Fisher Trophy.
It has been an impressive rise to the top from Bai, who had never competed on the women’s tour before last year’s World Championship. She went on to win her first women’s ranking event at the British Open in May last year, beating Reanne Evans in the final.
Bail also won the world under-21 title earlier in the week, beating Narucha Phoemphul in the final.
Eve of the 2024 World Open in Yushan … Ronnie honoured
As always in China, the players are made to feel very welcome with an opening ceremony and a red carpet walk, but this time, Ronnie was particularly honoured as he was inducted in the World Billiards Museum Hall of Fame
Here is a short video of that event shared by Roger Leighton on Youtube
And there were some pictures shared on weibo, of the red carpet walk, the induction ceremony and the opening ceremony
As well as this video shared by WST
Ronnie O'Sullivan 
This World Championship was by far the best presented event ever and was marred only by the lack of live scoring – especially in the latter stages.
Not being able to follow the scores without watching the (poor) stream wasn’t great.
I still don’t think the women are up to the standard of the main tour but Bai might well prove me wrong. She looks very different to the others who have hardly won a match between them.
But overall, very positive for the future of the women’s tour. They must have had some decent sponsorship money come in and lessons must have been learned as to how to attract more.
On some of Matt’s pictures one can see the crowd on site and it was a very decent one, certainly on the last day. Indeed the lack of live scoring needs to be addressed. Bai has won the Youth Championship in China this season. That’s an event open to both genders and, as you would expect, most competitors are males. What she needs to work on is the tactical side of the sport. I’m sure she can. As for the streaming, the one on youtube was terrible, the one on facebook much better – for the same match, the final. So either the platform or the number of viewers were a factor. The Youtube stream lagged with 8K+ watching, the FB one didn’t with 3K+ viewers. What was horrible in both was the background noise …
Actually, we estimated the the crowd during the final was as much as 800 people, in a packed arena. Most of the participants were there, as were some government officials. The crowd was a bit bigger towards the end, perhaps encouraged to come along with the prospects of a Bai Yulu victory. Anyway, this is totally unprecedented for women’s snooker, and it’s hardly surprising that the players were very nervous at times, especially Bai Yulu who had to cope with massive expectation. In order to get tickets, you just had to scan a QR code on your phone, so in principle local people could just wander in.
It is a great result for Bai Yulu, Chinese snooker, and women’s snooker. Bai has real potential to change the game. It’s not quite so good for Ng On Yee and Hong Kong snooker in general, as Chang Yu Kiu also missed out narrowly in the Q Tour play-offs.
Monique I do have some pictures of the crowd. But I’m having some technical issues in China and I can’t connect to my regular e-mail or Twitter. If you send an e-mail to my gmail account, I might be able to forward.
Done. I hope it reaches you…
I think you could get some updates on https://sd.crand.cc/n. If so, then if this happens again next year I can probably hook up a relay from my website.
YESSS! I really hoped for this outcome, when otherwise I would feel more sad for Mink. But great that they both can get a tourcard and I do have hopes for Bai Yulu, who has not yet spent much time on the women’s tour to lose competitiveness.