I must confess that I didn’t see a ball of the matches played in Telford yesterday, as I was kept very busy with updating snooker.org with the scoring at the 2025 EBSA championships in Antalya. All I can do is share the reports by WST.
Higgins Edges Wakelin In Thriller
John Higgins battled past Chris Wakelin in a nerve shredding final frame to win 6-5 and book his place in the quarter-finals of the Sportsbet.io Players Championship in Telford.
The Scot recently ended a four-year ranking title drought by winning the World Open in Yushan. That extended back to the 2021 Players Championship, after which Higgins was beaten in his subsequent five ranking final appearances.
Higgins briefly fell out of the world’s top 16 earlier this season and admitted to being at a low point in terms of his confidence. However, he now has a renewed sense of optimism with the Sportsbet.io Tour Championship and the World Championship on the horizon.
Defeat for Wakelin ends both his hopes of qualifying for the Tour Championship. As a result, he is also unable to force his way into the world’s top 16 and must now face the qualifying rounds for the World Championship.
It was Wakelin who seized the early initiative this afternoon. Breaks of 92 and 129 helped him to lead 3-1 at the first mid-session interval.
The next two frames were traded to leave the score at 4-2, but a break of 61 helped Higgins to pull back within one. A marathon eighth lasted an hour and seven minutes, before Higgins eventually claimed it to restore parity at 4-4.
The 32-time ranking event winner then made it three on the bounce to lead for the first time since the opening frame at 5-4. A tense tenth saw Wakelin spurn two frame ball opportunities on the brown, but he was eventually afforded a third and took it to force a decider.
The final frame saw Wakelin embark on a potential match winning clearance, before he missed a tricky final red to the top left. The ball remained over the pocket and Higgins cleared to the black to earn himself a quarter-final clash with China’s Xiao Guodong.
“I did think I would return to the table in the last frame. When things start to go for you, then you believe you will get another chance. I fancied something to happen because I’m on a good run,” said four-time World Champion Higgins.
“If I hadn’t won that event and I was struggling for confidence, Chris may well have cleared up there. It is a crazy game. You have to enjoy it when things are going for you. There are more downs in this game than there are ups.
“I was trying my hardest but Chris was playing really well. He is such a clever player. You can tell he has spent many years practising with Mark Selby. It was a great win for me.”
On the other table, Xiao overcame compatriot Wu Yize, in another deciding frame, to prevail 6-5 and book his last eight showdown with Higgins.
This season has seen Xiao, 17 years on from first turning professional, finally capture a maiden ranking title at the Wuhan Open. He followed that up with a tremendous run to the final of the Champion of Champions, where he was beaten by Mark Williams.
Xiao rallied from 3-1 down this afternoon, making a brilliant 73 to clinch the tie in the final frame.
Xiao said: “The first thing to say is sorry to Wu Yize. We are good friends and he played so well. He put me under a lot of pressure. The fluke in the last frame changed the whole game. I got a chance and cleared up. This is snooker.
“Winning the Wuhan Open gave me a lot of confidence. After that I relaxed and I haven’t been too nervous. I’ve just enjoyed playing good players and being in nice venues. Everything is going amazing and is perfect to me right now.“
Warrior Derails The Potting Machine
World Champion Kyren Wilson enhanced his already dominant record against three-time Crucible king Mark Williams, beating him 6-3 to make the semi-finals of the Sportsbet.io Players Championship.
The Warrior now leads Williams 8-1 in their head-to-head record. His only loss came in a 6-5 defeat earlier this season at the Champion of Champions, an event which Williams went on to win.
Wilson has enjoyed a tremendous first campaign as World Champion, having already won titles at the Xi’an Grand Prix, BetVictor Northern Ireland Open and the Machineseeker German Masters.
The nine-time ranking event winner says that winning the world title last season has acted as a massive boost of confidence rather than a burden. However, he will have one eye on breaking the Crucible Curse next month. No first time World Champion has ever defended their title at the Theatre of Dreams.
Williams, who turns 50 this week, will now turn his attention to the Players Series finale at the Sportsbet.io Tour Championship in Manchester. Despite having had a strong season himself, he has admitted that deteriorating eyesight is causing him to struggle with his game and says it is an issue he wants to address after the World Championship.
The opening two frames went Wilson’s way this evening with breaks of 58 and 62, but 26-time ranking event winner Williams responded strongly by taking consecutive frames to level up at 2-2.
The next two frames were traded to make it 3-3, before Wilson then made his move. Runs of 61, 79 and 71 gave him three on the bounce and saw him emerge with a 6-3 win.
“It is very satisfying to have that record against Mark. In some ways it makes your life easy, because you know to beat Mark all departments have to be good. He is such an experienced match player that you need to try and craft chances and put him in trouble. I’m very proud I’ve managed to do that over the years,” said 33-year-old Wilson.
“My natural style is finally coming out. This is how I used to play as a junior. I used to be very quick. To take that into the main arena, there is a lot of pressure out there, that is the biggest thing I can take away from becoming World Champion. It has given me that confidence to do it. I believe in the modern era you need that style of play to be successful.
“It has been a really tough draw. Mark Allen, then Mark Williams and now Neil Robertson or Mark Selby. They are two of the form players this season. It is going to be a tough game. Whoever I play I am going to have to play well.”
As I wrote above, I can’t really comment on those matches.
Now … regarding the 2025 EBSA Championship…
Yesterday was the last day of the group stage. All the results so far are available on snooker.org.
In the past the draw was often dominated by British/Irish players. Not this time. I haven’t actually counted the various nationalities, but my estimation is that about 75% of the remaining players are coming from “the rest of Europe”, and if one looks at players who have never been pros before, the proportion is even higher. That’s great and I want to hope that WST will take notice and make a real effort to really earn the “W” in WST. No more than one quarter of all events should be held in the UK. That said I’m not optimistic and here is why…
Unwelcoming UK … Why?
Since the World Seniors Snooker Championship organised by Jason Francis, I have been at the event every year, except during covid. I plan to go again this year but I had a nasty surprise…
After I reserved my flights, I got a message sent by my my airline (Aegean), telling me that to enter the UK, I will need an ETA, an Electronic Travel Authorisation . “What is that?” you will ask me. Well, in essence, it’s like a visa, and it comes at a fee that amounts to about 100 Euros. You have to apply, you can do it via an app (actually called iVisa 😉) , provide a picture and pay. The process is not too complex and my ETA was granted within a couple of hours. No big deal then? Well, still, it is to me. UK citizens don’t need a visa for EU countries, why do EU citizens now need one to enter the UK? Imagine a family of four, wanting to visit London just for a week-end … they will now all need that ETA, adding about 400 euros to their trip costs not mentioning the feeling that they are not exactly welcome to the country. I do understand that a country wants to control and avoid illegal immigration, but this isn’t it. This will do nothing to that effect. It feels like institutionalised xenophobia and a cash-cow wrapped into one package I’m afraid. I wish EU would retaliate but it’s unlikely.
Don’t get me wrong, I have many British friends, interesting, friendly and perfectly decent people BUT here in Santorini we also have to deal every year with hordes of drunk hooligans1, who break things around, are rude with the locals and shout at them for speaking only “broken English” when themselves don’t speak a word of Greek2.
Ronnie O'Sullivan 
Be careful with all the fake apps promising to help you with the ETA! The real fee is £10, plus some sort of extra charge which meant I paid around £12.50
I hope you did not send anything to iVisa? Because that’s someone trying to make money off of this new regulation.
This is the real app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.gov.HomeOffice.ho3&pli=1
Or for iPhones: https://apps.apple.com/be/app/uk-eta/id6444912481
Anything other than that tries to scam you. This one is the one the UK government links to, from their official website about the ETA rules.
Unfortunately, when you try to look up the info about this, iVisa and a number of similar sites come up first, and the actual government website with the links to the official app is further down the list of hits.
Thank you for this Zimena. Much appreciated.
Don’t get me started on the he UK’s immigration phobia and how parties try to outbid each other on the issue, as if oblivious to that it will only help the extreme right. But that is mainly making life hard for foreigners and their main obsession is “small boats” (maybe immigrants should come on big boats, lol). But the ETA I think is due to the BS that was underlying Brexit (“we control our borders”) and to the pain of having to queue and maybe show money when entering the EU (especially the Schengen area). So let’s screw them.
But the ETA costs 16 pounds and is good for 2 years, so it’s not prohibitive. I got it from the Gov page: where did you get the 100???
I used my phone, used the app they recommended for it… and it cost me 88 pounds. And yes, it’s good for two years. But still. I have traveled back and forth from Greece/Belgium to the UK several times since Brexit. Yes, there are queues, and it’s no fun, but THEY voted for it, not us EU citizens. I never heard anything about having to show money to enter Schengen zone, not as a private person anyway.
Please don’t blame all of us Britons for this dreadful policy. Those of us who didn’t vote for Brexit and still absolutely decry it are in no way responsible, and dearly wish it would be reversed so disgraceful measures such as this could be lifted.
Andy, I don’t hate the Britons. As I wrote, I have many friends in Britain. What I hate is the current political climate. I’m sure that some measures, like this one, are only there to distract the people from the real causes of the current state of Britain. It’s nothing new in politics, and nothing specific to the UK. Blame the foreigners, blame the “different” … you can observe that through history, everywhere, since history is recorded.
Moin – erstmal ein großes Lob für deine Seite. Wg der ETA: auf der offiziellen Seite kostet es 10 Pfund, lt ADAC nehmen Airlines etc. die den „Service“ mit anbieten, teilweise horrende Gebühren. Und, die EU wird ca Mitte 2025 ebenfalls ein derartiges System etablieren, über das sich Nicht- EU Bürger kostenpflichtig registrieren müssen, egal in welches EU-Land sie einreisen wollen. Ursula