It was quite the day, yesterday on the green baize … so many things happened!

2025 EBSA Championships in Antalya

The 2025 EBSA Championships in Antalya came to a conclusion yesterday. Liam Highfield won the main event. Two of those events were “carrying” a professional tour car for the winner: the under-21 event, won by Iulian Boiko last week and the main event won by Liam Highfield yesterday. The story of the championships though was very much Michal Szubarczyk, an extraordinary young talent.

Michal is only 14, he was born on 12 January 2011. At the tender age of 12 he won the Polish snooker championship. Earlier this month he won both the under-16 and the under-18 EBSA championships. Yesterday he played Liam Highfield in the final of the “main” EBSA event. He didn’t play well in that match, he was beaten by 5-0. Maybe the occasion got at him, maybe he was tired … after all he had played in all four EBSA events. He won the first two, made it to the final in the main event, played 26 matches over the last two weeks and won 24 of them. No mean feat, especially at just 14 years of age! The good news for Michal though is that, because Liam had already secured his tour card for the next two seasons via the Q-Tour, the losing finalist, Michal is now offered that card. The news was shared by WBSA before the final:

Szubarczyk, 14, To Be Nominated For Tour Card

Fourteen-year-old Michał Szubarczyk will be nominated for a two-year World Snooker Tour (WST) tour card after reaching the final of the 2025 EBSA European Championships in Antalya, Türkiye.

Should he accept the nomination, then Poland’s Szubarczyk will make history by becoming the youngest ever professional snooker player.

Organised by the European Billiards & Snooker Association, the 2025 European Championships in Antalya feature Under-16, Under-18, Under-21 and Main tournaments with the winners of the Under-21 and Main events each earning two-year tour cards.

Having already won both the Under-16 and Under-18 events in impressive fashion, Szubarczyk has reached a third final of the Championships by dropping just two frames in knockout stage victories over Maksim Kostov, Daan Leyssen, Chris Peplow and Nicolas Mortreux before stunning former professional Harvey Chandler 4-3 in the semi-finals.

He will face England’s Liam Highfield in the title match later today (22 March) after he overcame Dylan Emery in a deciding frame.

The 34-year-old has continued his fine form in Antalya which earlier saw him secure a two-year WST tour card via the WPBSA Q Tour Global Play-Offs. Therefore, Szubarczyk has now guaranteed himself a nomination to the professional ranks as a result of reaching the European Championship final.

Congratulations to Liam and Michal!

Today, the 2025 Players Championship Final will be played in Telford. The World Number One, Judd Trump, will face the reigning World Champion, Kyren Wilson over a possible 19 frames. It can’t get better than this, can it? Those two have been the star competitors this season.

Yesterday Judd Trump beat John Higgins by 6-4 to book his place in the final (report shared by WST).

Trump Beats Higgins To Make Telford Final

Judd Trump extended his ranking event win streak over John Higgins to 12 consecutive matches, prevailing 6-4 in the semi-finals of the Sportsbet.io Players Championship in Telford. 

Trump’s winning run over Higgins includes the 2019 World Championship final and extends back to a quarter-final meeting at the 2018 China Championship. The Englishman now leads their head-to-head standings 19-14.

Victory this evening for the Ace in the Pack sets up a mouth-watering meeting with World Champion and world number two Kyren Wilson in tomorrow’s final. They will be battling it out over the best of 19 frames for a top prize of £150,000.

The pair have been the two standout performers of the season. They’ve already met in two finals, with Wilson emerging victorious at the Xi’an Grand Prix and the BetVictor Northern Ireland Open. However, the overall head-to-head is 13-12 to Trump.

Trump has enjoyed a tremendous campaign, having already racked up £1,375,600 in prize money. The 30-time ranking event winner has picked up titles at the Saudi Arabia Snooker Masters and the UK Championship, as well as the invitational Shanghai Masters.

Trump set the tone in the opening frame of the evening with a superb 130 to move 1-0 up. Further runs of 126 and 88 helped him to claim three of the next five frames to go 4-2 up.

At that point Higgins stepped up with two on the bounce to restore parity at 4-4. The Scot made the first significant move in the ninth, but crucially missed a red to the top left on 41. Trump hammered home a crucial break of 61 to punish and go 5-4 ahead.

The last frame of the evening was won with contributions of 53 and 23, which put Trump in the final.

“I had four or five years where he (Kyren Wilson) didn’t beat me before this season. I can see the confidence when he walks around the table. His body language has been different since winning the World Championship,” said 35-year-old Trump.

“For me it is difficult because I’m playing at my level, I’m not full of confidence. If I win the World Championship or something like that I would take the game to that kind of level. He’s in a purple patch, but it’s not going to last forever. It makes for an exciting rivalry for snooker.

“I feel that at the start of my career it was the other way around (against John Higgins). He was making incredible clearances to beat me. It is nice to turn it around. I’m obviously confident to beat him. It is probably in the back of his head that he hasn’t beaten me for a while, but I still have to go out there and do it. I need to play near my best every time.”

And last but not least … WST has published the list of players who have entered the World Championship.

2025 World Championship Entrants Confirmed

The World Championship entry deadline has now passed and WST is delighted to now announce the full list of entrants for the sport’s showcase event.

The final stages take place at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield from April 19th to May 5th, where the top 16 in the world rankings are pitted against 16 players that have come through a nerve shredding qualifying process.

…

The qualifiers will be staged from April 7th to 16th, at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield. The competitors will be battling it out for places at the Theatre of Dreams, as well as vital ranking points in the quest for tour survival.

The full list of players is below. Please note that the players are not necessarily in order, with the seeding cut off set for the conclusion of the Sportsbet.io Tour Championship.

WST Tour Player Entrants

• Kyren Wilson
• Judd Trump
• Mark Selby
• Ronnie O’Sullivan
• Mark Williams
• Luca Brecel
• John Higgins
• Mark Allen
• Ding Junhui
• Shaun Murphy
• Neil Robertson
• Zhang Anda
• Barry Hawkins
• Si Jiahui
• Ali Carter
• Xiao Guodong
• Gary Wilson
• Jak Jones
• Tom Ford
• Stuart Bingham
• Chris Wakelin
• Wu Yize
• David Gilbert
• Hossein Vafaei
• Jack Lisowski
• Pang Junxu
• Stephen Maguire
• Elliot Slessor
• Noppon Saengkham
• Ryan Day
• Joe O’Connor
• Zhou Yuelong
• Jackson Page
• Jimmy Robertson
• Yuan Sijun 
• Matthew Selt
• Lyu Haotian
• Robert Milkins
• Xu Si
• Ricky Walden
• Lei Peifan
• Anthony McGill
• Thepchaiya Un-Nooh
• Ben Woollaston
• Scott Donaldson
• Fan Zhengyi
• Martin O’Donnell
• Robbie Williams
• Dominic Dale
• Daniel Wells
• Mark Davis
• He Guoqiang
• Matthew Stevens
• Jordan Brown
• Aaron Hill
• Graeme Dott
• Liu Hongyu
• Jamie Jones
• David Lilley
• Long Zehuang
• Sanderson Lam
• Jamie Clarke
• Anthony Hamilton
• David Grace
• Joe Perry
• Ishpreet Singh Chadha
• Stan Moody 
• Louis Heathcote
• Tian Pengfei
• Marco Fu
• Ashley Carty
• Zak Surety
• Ma Hailong
• Stuart Carrington
• Jiang Jun
• Ross Muir
• Xing Zihao
• Michael Holt
• Alfie Burden
• Rory Thor
• Hammad Miah
• Ian Burns
• Oliver Lines
• Alexander Ursenbacher
• Liam Graham
• Andrew Higginson
• Gong Chenzhi
• Duane Jones
• Antoni Kowalski
• Liam Pullen
• Jimmy White
• Ben Mertens
• Sunny Akani
• Andrew Pagett
• Dean Young
• Amir Sarkhosh
• Artemijs Zizins
• Bulcsu Revesz
• Allan Taylor
• Liam Davies
• Ka Wai Cheung
• Julien Leclercq
• Haydon Pinhey
• Chris Totten
• Wang Yuchen
• Haris Tahir 
• Mostafa Dorgham
• Robbie McGuigan
• Farakh Ajaib
• Manasawin Phetmalaikul
• Bai Yulu
• Huang Jiahao
• Mitchell Mann
• Reanne Evans
• Mink Nutcharut
• Kreishh Gurbaxani
• Jonas Luz
• Ken Doherty
• Mohamed Shehab
• Hatem Yassen
• Ahmed Elsayed 
• Baipat Siripaporn

WPBSA Nominations

• Gao Yang – WSF Champion
• Leone Crowley – WSF Junior Champion
• Zhao Xintong – Q Tour Europe Winner
• Steven Hallworth – Q Tour Playoff 1 Winner
• Liam Highfield – Q Tour Playoff 2 Winner
• Florian Nuessle – Q Tour Playoff 3 Winner
• Brian Cini – WSF Runner-Up
• Kaylan Patel – WS Junior Runner-Up
• Fergal Quinn – WSF Semi-Finalist
• Mateuz Baranowski – WSF Semi-Finalist
• Zhou Jinhao – WSF Junior Semi-Finalist
• Amaan Iqbal – WSF Junior Semi-Finalist
• Michal Szubarcyzk – EBSA U18 Winner
• Iulian Boiko – EBSA U21 Champion
• Dylan Emery – Q Tour Europe Ranking
• Ryan Thomerson – Q Tour Europe Ranking

Q School Top Ups

• Simon Blackwell
• Joshua Thomond
• Paul Deaville
• Daniel Womersley
• Anton Kazakov
• Joshua Cooper

The seeding still could change with the 2025 Tour Championship coming next, and last before the World Championship itself.

Ronnie has entered the event. Will he play? Time will tell. Some posts by Jason Francis and Phil Seymour on social media suggest he will, but then, Ronnie himself had said he would play at the Players Championship in Hong Kong and he withdrew last minute. Now, this is the World championship, he won’t need to travel abroad which of course can be tiring.

We can only wait and hope … IF he does play, how will he perform? Again, it’s impossible to predict. In 2013 he had sat the whole season out, except for a single match he had lost in a PTC, and he won the title. But that was 12 years ago … he was 37 back then, not much older than Judd currently is. Now he is 49. His eyesight is likely not as sharp as it was, and fatigue could be a factor as well. Anyway, there is nothing we can do about … just, as already mentioned, wait and hope.