Here is the short report shared by WST:

Slessor Seals Group Two

Elliot Slessor overcame fellow Newcastle cueman Gary Wilson 3-1 in the Group Two final at the BetVictor Championship League Invitational in Leicester. 

Results And Table

The pair were competing alongside five other players seeking to prevail and earn a spot in the next phase, but it is 31-year-old Slessor who earned his place to return in February. 

The group phase concluded this afternoon, with the top four players progressing to the semi-finals. Slessor scored wins over Wilson and Chris Wakelin and lost out against Jackson Page to finish third. Meanwhile Wilson beat Joe O’Connor 3-2 to finish top.

The semis saw Wilson beat O’Connor 3-1 and Slessor prevail 3-0 against Thailand’s Noppon Saengkham. 

Wilson one the opening frame of the title match, but a spectacular three frame blitz saw Slessor swoop. Breaks of 108, 57 and 138 gave him three on the bounce and the win. 

All the detailed results are available on snooker.org

Group 3 will start today, with Si Jiahui, Xiao Guodong and Antoni Kowalski joining Gary Wilson, Chris Wakelin, Yuan Sijun and Joe O’Connor in Groyp 3.

Meanwhile, the 2026 German Masters qualifiers got underway yesterday, with the lowest ranked players needing to win three best of 9 matches to get to the venue. The results for that competition can be found here on snooker.org.

The two women involved yesterday, Mink and Reanne, were beaten heavily, both lost by 5-0!

The more this goes on, the less I’m convinced that it’s promoting snooker for women and that it will possibly attract young girls to the sport, or convince their parents to support them if they want to embrace the sport. From comments I see on social media, it only feeds the already existing prejudices against women in snooker. It certainly doesn’t help their confidence either.

The usual discourse from WPBSA is that there is “no reason” why girls wouldn’t be as good at snooker as boys, and, of course, Bai Yulu was nominated by the CBSA on merit, not because of her gender. But statistically boys/men do have a better eye-hand coordination than women/girls, and they are taller and stronger. Every mother or teacher who deals with young kids of both genders sees it, right from the early months in life. These differences are almost certainly inherited from millennia of slow evolution in primitive societies where men were the providers/hunters and women the ones caring for the young and elderly. A good eye-hand coordination is an essential attribute needed to succeed as an efficient hunter, it’s not that important to be a good carer¹. Of course “statistically” is saying nothing about any particular individual but it is meaningful at the scale of an entire population.

1. Other qualities are more prevalent in women – patience, resilience, empathy, linguistic skills – and they are just as valuable than the more “male” attributes. ↩︎