Stephen Maguire has withdrawn from this week’s World Grand Prix for medical reasons.
Maguire was due to face Shaun Murphy in the opening round on Tuesday. Instead he will be replaced by the next player in line, Ben Woollaston, who will now take on Murphy.
The tournament features the leading 32 players of the season so far and will run from March 4th to 9th, staged in Hong Kong for the first time.
This has lead to some discussion on twitter, started by Mark Allen
It’s definitely better for the fans and the promoters to have replacements. That said Mark Allen certainly has a point, and replacements don’t happen in the World Championship, even if it were to lead to an empty session. There is no consistency here. Snooker Hub also brings a valid point, but a redraw may bring a complete overhaul of the draw and schedule, leaving many spectators unhappy if they booked tickets to see specific players or matches. There is no straightforward answer to the issue.
Meanwhile … those who are in Hong Kong seem to have had a great time on a boat trip. Here are some pictures shared by various sources on social media…
Winners Crowned at Historic World Disability Snooker Championship
The inaugural World Disability Snooker Championship held in Nonthaburi, Thailand has now concluded with seven players claiming gold medals in their respective WDBS classification groups.
Organised by World Disability Billiards and Snooker (WDBS) and the Sports Association for the Disabled of Thailand under the Royal Patronage of His Majesty the King (SPADT), the historic event has seen 66 players across wheelchair, ambulant, intellectual, visual and deaf classification groups compete to become the first-ever world champions on the WDBS Tour.
Group 1
England’s Gary Swift made it a Thailand double in the Group 1 classification group for wheelchair users following a 3-1 victory against Thailand’s Numpol Thongpusawan in Sunday’s final.
Having triumphed at the World Abilitysport Games in Nakhon Ratchasima 15 months prior, Swift repeated the feat in Nonthaburi following a hard-fought final with home favourite Thongpusawan, who had previously scored a 3-1 win of his own against Swift during the round robin group stage.
The pair each scored 3-0 victories during the semi-finals against Poramet Boonphak and Ma Wah Keung respectively, before they met in what would prove to be a marathon title decider which lasted over six hours.
Thailand’s Thongpusawan claimed the opener, before Swift responded to take the following two frames to move to within one of gold, ultimately clinching victory on the final pink.
Swift completed a perfect week as he claimed the highest break of the group with a run of 30 during the group stage against compatriot Matthew Lester.
Group 2
Thailand’s Surasit Loisaratrakul defeated Dave Beaumont 3-1 to land his first WDBS title at the World Championship on home soil.
A bronze medallist at the World Abilitysport Games in 2023, Loisratrakul topped his round robin group with a perfect 100% record, before he defeated compatriot Niwat Kongta and England’s Darren Taylor in the knockout rounds to reach the title match.
Awaiting him was the in-form Dave Beaumont of England – winner of his previous four WDBS appearances – who had seen off Tony Southern in a blockbuster semi-final to ensure that he will rise to world number one in the latest world rankings following the tournament.
It was to be Loisratrakul who would triumph in the gold medal match however, winning the final two frames to take home the title.
The highest break of the group was a run of 35 compiled by Italy’s Fabio del Zoppo during the group stage.
Group 3
Home hero Thanapol Seekao made history early in the day as he became the first-ever WDBS world champion following a 3-1 final win against India’s Shayan Shetty.
The talented duo both progressed through Group A during the round robin stage, before they overcame Mohit Gupta and Andy Lam respectively to set up a final rematch with Shetty hoping to turn the tables on the reigning Group 3 World Abilitysport Games champion.
It was to be Seekao’s day again, however, as he clinched a crucial opening frame on the black – having seen Shetty pot the previous five colours before missing the key ball – on his way to a 3-1 success and his first world ranking crown.
The Thai player also hit the highest break in Group 3 with a run of 37.
Group 4
England’s Carl Gibson defeated countryman David Church 3-1 to lift his ninth WDBS title at the World Championship in Thailand.
The Hull player has enjoyed considerable success on the Tour having previously won the Champion of Champions, European Championship and World Abilitysport Games titles during the past 15 months and added the most prestigious title of all to his record with his first world title.
Having topped his group with 12 frames won from 13 played, Gibson whitewashed Steve Cartwright before surviving a deciding-frame finish with record WDBS champion Daniel Blunn in the semi-finals to reach the title match.
There he met friend and rival Church, who himself had seen off Phudis Sukijnoppakun and William Thomson to set up another clash between the top ranked Group 4 players.
It was Gibson who made the faster start as he won the first two frames comfortably and though Church claimed the third to threaten a comeback, Gibson was not to be denied as he closed out a memorable victory in frame four.
Church would take the consolation of having compiled the highest break with his 56 during the group stage.
Group 5
Songkiat Raebankoo was the fourth and final repeat winner from the 2023 World Abilitysport Games as he edged out WDBS debutant Anant Mehta 3-0 to claim his maiden world title.
The pair had in fact both progressed from Group 4 with Mehta winning their opening clash, but in the all-important final it was Raebankoo who turned the tables to claim make it two WDBS titles from two.
The group would prove to be one of the most hotly contested of the event with WDBS debutant Shazad Butt from Pakistan hitting the overall highest break of 86 on the opening day during a 3-2 victory against world number one Dave Bolton.
Both Butt and Bolton would fall at the semi-final stage, before Raebankoo completed victory on Sunday evening.
Groups 6+8
Belgian star Kristof De Bruyn became world champion for the first time in the combined Groups 6+8 tournament for deaf and players with learning disabilities
The 49-year-old was in strong form throughout the event as he progressed through a five player group for the loss of just three frames before seeing off Ireland’s Aidan Pollitt in the last four to reach the title match.
Awaiting him was England’s Lee Hague, who accounted for Niall Pollitt in the semi-finals to earn a match against De Bruyn for the world crown.
It was to be De Bruyn who would emerge victorious and win his fourth main ranking event crown as he dominated the title match to run out a 3-0 winner.
The highest break was made by Hague with a run of 30 – with De Bruyn dramatically missing a difficult final black on 25 with the title already sealed in the last frame of the match.
Group 7
An all-Irish final in Group 7 saw Dylan Rees defeat world number one and compatriot Colvin O’Brien 3-0 to become world champion for the final time.
With six players in the competition, the pair were joined by England’s Mike Gillespie and Welsh veteran Ronnie Allen in the semi-finals following a competitive knockout stage in Thailand.
Having progressed to the decisive match, it was O’Brien who arguably had the momentum having edged out Rees 3-2 in the group stages, but it would prove to be a different story on finals day as Rees largely dominated on his way to claiming a seventh ranking title sealed with an impressed pot on the final pink.
For O’Brien, he would claim the honour of the highest Group 7 break with 80 during the group stage.
Following an outstanding championship WDBS would like to thank everyone who made the event possible including SPADT, the Billiard Sports Association of Thailand and of course each of the 66 players and their carers and supporters.
The inaugural staging of the World Disability Snooker Championship represents another huge step forward for disability snooker and the ongoing quest to restore snooker to the Paralympic Games.
Congratulations to the Winners!
And to all participants … they are all heroes
You will find many more pictures, information and videos of some matches on the WDBS Facebook page.
WPBSA Q Tour Global Play-Offs 2025 | Draw & Preview
The draw has been made for the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) Q Tour Global Play-Offs, where players will compete for a trio of two-year World Snooker Tour (WST) cards.
The prestigious event will be held alongside the EBSA European Championships in Antalya, Turkey from 11-13 March 2025.
A total of 24 players have qualified from the WPBSA Q Tour series’ in Europe, the Middle East, the Americas and the Asia-Pacific region as well as one nomination by the Chinese Billiards and Snooker Association (CBSA).
The cueists have been split into three sections of eight and the player coming through each will earn their professional status for the 2025/26 and 2026/27 seasons.
Play-Off 1
Quarter-Finals (Best of 9 Frames)
Dylan Emery (Wales) vs. Ali Gharagozlou (Iran)
Connor Benzey (England) vs. Mark Joyce (England)
Steven Hallworth (England) vs. Luo Honghao (China)
Kuldesh Johal (England) vs. Ryan Davies (England)
Semi-Finals (Best of 11 Frames)
Emery/Gharagozlou vs. Benzey/Joyce
Hallworth/Luo vs. Johal/Davies
Final (Best of 19 Frames)
Winner of Semi-Final 1 vs. Winner of Semi-Final 2
Wales’ Dylan Emery is the top seed after finishing second in the Q Tour Europe ranking list, behind only four-time event winner Zhao Xintong, as a result of winning the second title of the season in Bulgaria and finishing runner-up to Liam Highfield in event seven.
He faces a tough opening round tie against Iran’s Ali Gharagozlou, who finished at the summit of the Q Tour Middle East ranking list by winning back-to-back titles in the United Arab Emirates.
Former professionals Mark Joyce, Steven Hallworth and Kuldesh Johal are joined by Connor Benzey and Ryan Davies as qualifiers from Q Tour Europe in the top section while Luo Honghao, a former World Snooker Federation (WSF) champion who reached the televised stages of the World Championship in 2019, completes the line-up as the CBSA nomination.
Play-Off 2
Quarter-Finals (Best of 9 Frames)
Liam Highfield (England) vs. Habib Humood (Bahrain)
Dhimones Moraes (Brazil) vs. Harvey Chandler (England)
Iulian Boiko (Ukraine) vs. Alex Clenshaw (England)
Vinnie Calabrese (Australia) vs. Craig Steadman (England)
Semi-Finals (Best of 11 Frames)
Highfield/Humood vs. Moraes/Chandler
Boiko/Clenshaw vs. Calabrese/Steadman
Final (Best of 19 Frames)
Winner of Semi-Final 1 vs. Winner of Semi-Final 2
A trio of Q Tour event winners from across the globe feature in a strong second section where five nations and four continents are represented.
Liam Highfield, who won the seventh and final Q Tour Europe event of the season earlier this month, is aiming for a quick return to the World Snooker Tour after an unbroken 14-year spell came to an end last year.
He is joined in the second section by Australia’s Vinnie Calabrese and Bahrain’s Habib Humood, who finished top of the Q Tour Asia-Pacific and Middle East ranking lists as a result of winning all but one of the events in their individual regions.
Humood will be hoping to follow in the footsteps of Amir Sarkhosh and Mohammed Shehab, who each earned professional status as qualifiers from the Middle East series 12 months ago.
Former professionals Harvey Chandler, Iulian Boiko and Craig Steadman have qualified from the Europe series, as well as England’s Alex Clenshaw, while Brazil’s Dhimones Moraes will compete as the Q Tour Americas series’ South American nomination.
Play-Off 3
Quarter-Finals (Best of 9 Frames)
Ryan Thomerson (Australia) vs. Ehsan Heydari Nezhad (Iran)
Josh Thomond (England) vs. Florian Nuessle (Austria)
Sean O’Sullivan (England) vs. Oliver Sykes (England)
Vito Puopolo (Canada) vs. Andres Petrov (Estonia)
Semi-Finals (Best of 11 Frames)
Thomerson/Nezhad vs. Thomond/Nuessle
O’Sullivan/Sykes vs. Puopolo/Petrov
Final (Best of 19 Frames)
Winner of Semi-Final 1 vs. Winner of Semi-Final 2
Estonia’s Andres Petrov, the first Q Tour Europe event winner of the season, headlines the third and final section of the play-offs which features competitors from six nations.
Petrov will face Canada’s Vito Puopolo, who won an event on the Q Tour Americas series in Toronto, while the other six contenders have qualified via the Europe series.
Former professional Ryan Thomerson finished fourth in the Europe ranking list and will face Iran’s Ehsan Heydari Nezhad, who reached the final in Stockholm, while the line-up is completed by Josh Thomond, Sean O’Sullivan and Oliver Sykes from England as well as Austrian national champion Florian Nuessle.
This is a proper competition, and the ones who will emerge from it will really deserve their tour card.
It’s interesting that the Q-Tour actually travels more than the main tour, the latter being mainly confined to the UK and China. It is also interesting that it’s “combined” with the EBSA championships that also offer tour cards, possibly making it easier and cheaper for players who want to play in both.
Regarding the main tour, they should scrap the invitational championship league and use the calendar slots for events in mainland Europe. They could also make the ranking championship league shorter by using four tables instead of two. This year the Players Championship is played in Hong Kong. What about having one of the events of that series in mainland Europe? Sponsoring has been an issue in mainland Europe events, I know that. BUT, a big part of the problem is the strong ties between the sport and gambling, something that is much more “regulated” in mainland Europe than it is in the UK, and doesn’t have a very favorable image with the general public. Surely they can find sponsors in other areas? Maybe, at the start, those sponsors won’t offer as big price money as WST would like to get but they surely can and should “complement” it. It’s called “investing” in the future. After all they call themselves “World” snooker, not “UK, China and friends” snooker.
Also I mention mainland Europe, but if successful, in the future WST will have to consider the Americas and Africa and then they will need to consider simultaneous events in various locations like other big sports do because the calendar has only 52 weeks and then, to be fair to all players they will be forced to “depart’ from the money list and adopt a different “rating” system. I’m 70, I may never see it but there will come a time when they will have to evolve to that model … or never grow into a global sport.
John Higgins scored one of the most satisfying victories of his career and ended a sequence of four years without a ranking title by beating Joe O’Connor 10-6 in the final of the Weide Cup World Open in Yushan, China.
One of snooker’s all-time greats, Higgins feared that his days of lifting trophies were over, particularly after a series of a narrow defeats in crucial matches, most painfully a 10-9 reverse from 9-4 ahead in the 2022 Tour Championship final against Neil Robertson.
Wishaw’s 49-year-old Higgins has, at last, buried those demons by capturing his first ranking title since the 2021 Players Championship. And it’s a huge event – with a top prize of £175,000 which lifts him to eighth in the Johnstone’s Paint World Rankings and up to third in the Johnstone’s Paint One-Year list. He now has 32 ranking titles, behind only Ronnie O’Sullivan (40) and Stephen Hendry (36).
Set to turn 50 in May, the Scot becomes the second oldest ranking event winner in snooker history, after Ray Reardon who was just the other side of his 50th birthday when he won the 1982 Professional Players Tournament. Higgins also sets a new record for the longest gap between first and most recent ranking titles, 30 years and 129 days after his maiden success at the 1994 Grand Prix.
Fellow ‘Class of 92’ members O’Sullivan and Mark Williams have had moments in the limelight in recent seasons, which may have stung for Higgins as his standard was still high but he struggled to handle nerves in big moments, describing it himself as “mental fragility.” He has never lost the hunger to win more titles and has experimented extensively with different cues as well as techniques to keep his emotions under control. This week he has found a formula that works, and the four-time Crucible king will hope that lasts as he looks to extend his astonishing longevity.
O’Connor had played perhaps the best snooker of his life in reaching the final, knocking out the likes of Judd Trump, Shaun Murphy and Ali Carter. The 29-year-old from Leicester started slowly today and left himself too big a deficit to claw back, and is still waiting for his first pro title, having lost his only previous final 9-2 against Gary Wilson at the 2022 Scottish Open. Still, the £75,000 pay day is a career best and lifts him eight places to world number 31.
Leading 6-2 after the first session, Higgins soon extended that advantage as a break of 68 helped him take the opening frame of the evening session. Runs of 71 and 70 got O’Connor back to 7-4, only for Higgins to respond with 57 and 94 to go 9-4 ahead.
In frame 14, Higgins had a chance for victory from 45-1 down, but made just 24 before missing a risky plant to a centre pocket, handing his opponent the chance to pull one back. Higgins established a 43-8 lead in the 15th before O’Connor got the better of a safety exchange and, with the balls in unpromising positions, made a marvellous 67 clearance including a double on the final green to a centre pocket.
At 9-6, Higgins may have feared a late collapse, but he composed himself and finished in superb style with a break of 100, his fifth century of the tournament.
Update …
WST has now added John Higgins quotes: “I’m just delighted. I am drained, there has been a lot of nervous energy in the last couple of days. I am dead proud to win another big event at this age,” said Higgins, who has now won four ranking titles in China. “I didn’t know if I was going to win another event because I have taken so many devastating losses over the last three or four years. To come back and win this is a proud moment.”Joe didn’t play his best today, having been unbelievable all week. He didn’t have the same game he had against Shaun, Judd and Ali. The first frame was massive because he had a chance to win it on the last black and if he had gone 1-0 up he would have taken confidence. I kept him under pressure, my safety was pretty good all day. He’s a great all-round player but just didn’t turn up today, he’ll come again I’m sure.”It should give me belief and confidence. I hope I can win more but it’s still the toughest it has ever been at the top. I’ll try and do well in the World Grand Prix and then take some decent presents back to the kids.”
People who read this blog know how much I struggle to appreciate Higgins after what happened in 20101 but there is no doubt that he’s a great player, one of the greatest, and that his dedication to his sport is to be admired.
I still feel that he has got away with what he did very, very lightly at the time. He only missed some minor events early in the season. The fact that he was set up is nor here or there because he didn’t know that he was set up. That said, he wasn’t the main culprit, nor was he the main target. He may just have been collateral damage. His manager Pat Mooney had much more responsibility in this than John himself if only because he was a member of the board, in charge of developing the game in Eastern Europe. As a result, Pat was banned from all things snooker. Rightly so. To John’s credit, on his return, he worked very hard to redeem himself. What I REALLY wish to know one day is what was the TRUE purpose of this setup and who was behind it. I doubt that the NOTW just wanted a big scoop … Surely there was something deeper and more sinister behind it all. Maybe the real target was Hearn, who had just taken control of the sport and wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea. By discrediting his “board”, someone may have tried to discredit Hearn himself. ↩︎
Ronnie O’Sullivan has pulled out of next week’s World Grand Prix in Hong Kong for medical reasons.
O’Sullivan was due to face Si Jiahui in the opening round on Wednesday. Instead he will be replaced by the next player in line, Hossein Vafaei who is 33rd in the Johnstone’s Paint One-Year Rankings. Vafaei will replace O’Sullivan directly in the draw and will play Si.
The tournament features the leading 32 players of the season so far and will run from March 4th to 9th, staged in Hong Kong for the first time.
Despite promising in a video on the event site, to make his come back at 2025 World Grand Prix, Ronnie has again withdrawn for medical reasons… and, I must admit that this time, it gets me seriously worried. For the first time, I consider the real possibility that he may not play at the Crucible and that he may put an end to his career altogether. It would be sad if it all ended this way. 😥
Ronnie O'Sullivan 