CRUCIBLE QUALIFYING DAY TWO: RÉVÉSZ WEATHERS THE STORM
Hungary’s Bulcsú Révész roared back from 6-1 down to beat Sean O’Sullivan 10-8 and make the second round of Cazoo World Championship qualifying in Sheffield.
The 17-year-old rising star earned his place on the World Snooker Tour from next season by winning this season’s WSF Junior Championship. Révész defeated China’s Gong Chenzhi 5-3 in the final to become his country’s first ever main tour professional.
He’s only appeared on the main circuit three times before, most recently only breaking off and watching Shaun Murphy fire in a stunning 147 break at the Shoot Out just prior to the New Year.
Revesz is appearing in World Championship qualifying for the second time, having lost out to Jamie O’Neill last year. He had looked in trouble again yesterday, when he trailed 6-1 and today when he was 8-5 behind. However, a brilliant blast of five frames on the bounce saw him claim a momentous 10-8 win and set up a second round clash with James Cahill.
“I’m so happy for those people from Hungary who are always supporting me and behind me. I’m getting messages all of the time. It is a really good feeling to have their support. I hope it is going to improve the whole of snooker in Hungary.”
Bulcsú Révész
WSF Junior Champion
Révész added: “I was 6-1 down yesterday and the one thing I wanted to do was not give up. It ended 6-3 and I thought if I played my best today then I could win. At 8-5 down it was the same thoughts again. I didn’t want this match to be 10-5 to him.
“My goal before this tournament was to win this match. I’ve reached my goal and I would like to enjoy the next game. Today I did enjoy it and I hope I will in the next match as well. Of course I would like to win that. I still didn’t play my best game today and I know I can play better. I’ve already played a match and James hasn’t, so I think I can beat him.”
Fergal O’Brien’s 33-year professional career came to an end after a 10-8 loss against Egypt’s Mostafa Dorgham.
The highlight of O’Brien’s time on the World Snooker Tour saw him lift the British Open trophy in 1999 and he’s appeared at the Crucible on 10 occasions. However, the Dubliner has taken the decision to hang up the cue and focus on commentary and coaching.
It’s Dorgham’s first full match win of the season and he will now play 2006 World Champion Graeme Dott.
Louis Heathcote set up a crunch second round clash with close friend Oliver Lines, after scoring a 10-4 win over Oliver Sykes this afternoon.
Last year Heathcote lost his professional status after defeat here in Sheffield to Andrew Higginson. He bounced straight back on to the circuit via Q School. Relegation could await Lines if he loses to Heathcote, with his position on tour hanging by a thread.
Heathcote said: “It’s not very nice, but it is dog eat dog in this game. We will both be wanting to win and after that we will shake hands and be friends again.”
Swiss number one Alexander Ursenbacher completed a 10-0 whitewash win over Ukraine’s Iulian Boiko, while Oliver Brown defeated 12-time Women’s World Champion Reanne Evans 10-0.
URSENBACHER REFLECTS ON WHITEWASH WIN
Note that I have edited the text above … I have corrected “Bulcsú Révész” spelling all over WST report. Why on earth that they even make the effort to spell the names of some of the non British players correctly? In snooker we hear all the time “This (anything) is disrespectful” and most of the time it’s so minor that I wonder why people even bother with it. But WST can’t even be arsed to spell the names of their non British professional players correctly. Well … that IS disrespectful.
Ok, now that I got this out of my system … here are my thoughts on what happened on the baize.
The women – all of them so far, except for Bai Yulu – have been terrible. Mink got beat by 10-5 having lead 4-1 and it’s not as if Adam Duffy played outstanding either: his HB was 55 and his pot success a mere 51%. Reanne Evans managed to get herself whitewashed by Oliver Brown who is a very decent player but hardly a world beater. This isn’t the Reanne who beat Robin Hull by 10-8 as this same event in 2017 and ran Dominic Dale uncomfortably close the next year. Baipat unsurprisingly was beaten 10-1 by Marco Fu, and ok, that was to be expected as Marco is a top player and he scored very heavily: he had seven breaks over 50 during the match. All the same it’s all quite disheartening.
And then, we say goodbye to Fergal O’Brien … I had the pleasure to meet Fergal on several occasions, notably in Jason’s Francis’s “Legends Cups”. His pace on the baize drove me mad a few times, but off the table he’s a truly charming person, a family man, and great company … jovial, smiling … he likes his Guinness and and his Irish Square Dances! He’s a good mover, is Fergal. I will miss him and I do hope that he gets involved in Seniors Snooker in some capacity. Fergal, come on … we need a Seniors Irish Masters in Goffs every season!
All the best for the future Fergal ! ☘️
I was agreeably surprised by Mostafa Dorgham, the man from Egypt who beat Fergal yesterday. I thought he played really well although to succeed as a pro he need to score more heavily. Despite what was at stake, it was a good match to watch.
12 thoughts on “The 2024 World Snooker Championship Qualifiers – Day 2”
Yes, I think ‘pot rate’ is just the number of pots divided by the total number of shots, so it is a pretty meaningless stat. At the moment, ‘pot success’ requires human input to decide what constitutes a pot ‘attempt’. Some day, I might look into building an AI App to determine it from the video feed, but that sounds like a retirement project!
So it shows how many pots were made of out of striking the ball? Pretty meaningless.
Monique, do you know where one can find detailed statistics for the matches?
If you go to “match centre”, and scroll down, on the left you see the frame scores. in that same “table” you have a “match tab” and there you find some statistics for the match in object. But maybe that’s not what you are after?
Thanks. I didn’t know about that tab.
But have you managed to make sense of what “pot rate means here? Because it cannot be what we usually see as pot success.
No, I’m not sure what it means if it’s not “pot success” … unless is the percentage of shots that are pot attempts but I can’t see how that’s something meaningful.
55% for Bai feels not right, right?
I don’t think it does and in previous matches at tournaments with top players it gave ridiculous numbers, so it cannot be pot success regarding attempted pots.
I agree with you, the numbers are preposterous, but I struggle to figure out what else it actually could be. So basically either it’s supposed to be the pot success and the computing is completely wrong, or it’s some weird stat that none of us understands and is unlikely to be meaningful. Either way pretty useless as it is.
I didn’t see Bulcsú go down 6-1, only the comeback from 6-3, and he played some good snooker, dropping only 2 frames, of course it became exciting and nervous-looking when suddenly at 8-8 one started to feel he could actually win it. This was his first best of 19 victory, so big congratulation: he improved a lot since last year when he won the U 18 EBSA European Snooker Championships. I’m looking forward to seeing him on the tour and also Bai Yulu: I expect nothing from the others. We had this discussion on these pages about Evans and I gave up on her a long time ago, but Mink has also been a disappointment and there are all the mocking sexist comments on social media, so I do find all this rather disheartening.
I only saw the last few frames of the Dorgham-O’Brien match, but I have to say Mostafa Dorgham was really excellent, and produced clinical snooker at the most important time. Perhaps we have a real player from Africa for the first time. In this instance, a long match must have helped the inexperienced player relax and just play snooker.
There were also strong finishes by Revesz, Higginson and Jiang. Adam Duffy found a bit of form to pull away from Mink – it’s difficult to evaluate Duffy’s recent results as he’s had so much happening off the table.
So although we were disappointed with Bai Yulu’s performance, she’s actually won as many frames as the other women players combined… Oliver Brown did well of course, but it wasn’t a procession: the match was hooked off after only 8 frames in the morning session.
Ma Hailong is a good tactical player, but yesterday he just went for everything. He obviously felt that Victor Sarkis was not a threat. There have been several completely one-sided matches, along with several matches which have had big momentum swings, something unique to the long-match format.
But now things are heating up with the second round matches beginning today. It’s slow burn for sure, but there are always good matches happening somewhere in the building.
Ronnie O'Sullivan 
Yes, I think ‘pot rate’ is just the number of pots divided by the total number of shots, so it is a pretty meaningless stat. At the moment, ‘pot success’ requires human input to decide what constitutes a pot ‘attempt’. Some day, I might look into building an AI App to determine it from the video feed, but that sounds like a retirement project!
So it shows how many pots were made of out of striking the ball? Pretty meaningless.
Monique, do you know where one can find detailed statistics for the matches?
If you go to “match centre”, and scroll down, on the left you see the frame scores. in that same “table” you have a “match tab” and there you find some statistics for the match in object. But maybe that’s not what you are after?
Thanks. I didn’t know about that tab.
But have you managed to make sense of what “pot rate means here? Because it cannot be what we usually see as pot success.
No, I’m not sure what it means if it’s not “pot success” … unless is the percentage of shots that are pot attempts but I can’t see how that’s something meaningful.
55% for Bai feels not right, right?
I don’t think it does and in previous matches at tournaments with top players it gave ridiculous numbers, so it cannot be pot success regarding attempted pots.
I agree with you, the numbers are preposterous, but I struggle to figure out what else it actually could be. So basically either it’s supposed to be the pot success and the computing is completely wrong, or it’s some weird stat that none of us understands and is unlikely to be meaningful. Either way pretty useless as it is.
I didn’t see Bulcsú go down 6-1, only the comeback from 6-3, and he played some good snooker, dropping only 2 frames, of course it became exciting and nervous-looking when suddenly at 8-8 one started to feel he could actually win it. This was his first best of 19 victory, so big congratulation: he improved a lot since last year when he won the U 18 EBSA European Snooker Championships. I’m looking forward to seeing him on the tour and also Bai Yulu: I expect nothing from the others. We had this discussion on these pages about Evans and I gave up on her a long time ago, but Mink has also been a disappointment and there are all the mocking sexist comments on social media, so I do find all this rather disheartening.
I only saw the last few frames of the Dorgham-O’Brien match, but I have to say Mostafa Dorgham was really excellent, and produced clinical snooker at the most important time. Perhaps we have a real player from Africa for the first time. In this instance, a long match must have helped the inexperienced player relax and just play snooker.
There were also strong finishes by Revesz, Higginson and Jiang. Adam Duffy found a bit of form to pull away from Mink – it’s difficult to evaluate Duffy’s recent results as he’s had so much happening off the table.
So although we were disappointed with Bai Yulu’s performance, she’s actually won as many frames as the other women players combined… Oliver Brown did well of course, but it wasn’t a procession: the match was hooked off after only 8 frames in the morning session.
Ma Hailong is a good tactical player, but yesterday he just went for everything. He obviously felt that Victor Sarkis was not a threat. There have been several completely one-sided matches, along with several matches which have had big momentum swings, something unique to the long-match format.
But now things are heating up with the second round matches beginning today. It’s slow burn for sure, but there are always good matches happening somewhere in the building.