Jimmy White scored his second win of the season as he came from 2-0 down to beat Cheung Ka Wai 4-3 in the first round of the BetVictor English Open, setting up an intriguing clash with Luca Brecel.
The first event in the 2025/26 BetVictor Home Nations Series got underway on Thursday in Brentwood. The non-televised phase runs until Sunday and then the top 32 seeds join the fray from Monday.
After losing the first two frames, veteran White recovered to 2-2 with breaks of 50 and 57. He lost the fifth, but then nicked the sixth on the colours before dominating the decider with a top run of 41. The crowd favourite now meets Brecel in round two on Saturday morning.
Liam Highfield enjoyed a 4-2 victory over On Yee Ng, despite a record break of 137 from Ng in the second frame. Marco Fu, the fastest player on the tour this season with an average shot time of 15 seconds, needed just 59 minutes to beat Gao Yang 4-0 with breaks of 62, 79, 110 and 104. There was more success for Hong Kong as Wang Yuchen came from 3-2 down to edge out Florian Nuessle 4-2.
Pakistan’s Haris Tahir top scored with 127 in a 4-0 win over Michal Szubarczyk while Julien Leclercq beat Aidan Murphy 4-0 with runs of 115, 68, 58 and 104.
The first two matches to finish yesterday were won by two Chinese players, Huang Jiahao and Zhao Hanyang who beat Oliver Sykes and Connor Benzey respectively.
Sunny Akani came back from 0-2 down to beat Oliver Brown, with a top break of 107.
Liam Graham beat Antoni Kowalski by 4-1 in a match that was much closer than the score suggests. The last two frames in particular were hard fought and very close. Liam won them both.
The match between On Yee and Liam Highfield could easily have gone the distance. On Yee lost the last frame on a score of 70-69 to Liam … having made a 69 break in that frame. She also scored the only century of in that match, her 137 in frame 2.
Julien Leclercq missed the 14th red in a maximum attempt in frame 4 of his match against Aidan Murphy. Julien won that match by 4-0 with breaks of 115, 68, 58 and 104.
As you probably know the Pink Ribbon is a pro–am snooker tournament that was initially held at the South West Snooker Academy, later renamed the Capital Venue in Gloucester, England.
The first edition was held in 2010. The tournament raises funds for breast cancer charities and has the players all wear pink shirts to show their support. It was created by Paul Mount who had lost his beloved sister, Kay Suzanne to the disease. It was played at the SWSA for ten years. I went to it every year from 2011 to 2019, taking pictures, a lot of them must still be around somewhere on Facebook, and of course on this blog from 2015 until 2018. Ronnie won it in 2015, the only year he participated. It was revived last season and is now played at the Landywood Snooker Club.
It all started last Friday with the “Flyer Event“, won by Riley Powell who beat Peter Devlin in the final.
The “Top Half” amateur event was played on Saturday. Actually this was the “top half” of the main event, up to and included the “last 64” round as the professionals were seeded in the last 32 of the “main event”.
Amateurs entering the Pink Ribbon are granted two bites of the cherry if they so wish. Indeed they have the possibility to play in both halves. 117 amateurs entered the amateur events!
The “main event”, the professional round, was played yesterday. Not all pros won their opening match … some amateurs showed how strong they are! Indeed one of them, Craig Steadman reached the final!
But, eventually, it was a professional, Chris Wakelin who won the event, beating Craig Steadman by 5-3.
Igor Figueriedo Does the Double at 2025 Pan American Snooker Championships
Igor Figueiredo defeated Fabio Anderson Luerson 5-2 to win the 2025 Pan American Open Snooker Championship and earn a two-year World Snooker Tour (WST) tour card.
The continental success means the Brazilian will be nominated for a fourth spell among the professional ranks having first joined the Tour in 2010.
Figueiredo was the dominant force at the Aryan Snooker Club in Sacramento, California as he won both the Open and Seniors Championship titles to earn a two-year WST tour card and qualification for the 2026 World Seniors Snooker Championship – a title he won at the iconic Crucible Theatre last year.
The 47-year-old began the event, which is organised by the Pan American Billiards & Snooker Association (PABSA), with a clean sweep of whitewash victories over fellow countryman Ricardo Bouwman Filho and American cueists Sam McGrath and Pravin Patel.
He dropped just two further frames en route to the semi-finals as he overcame Saif Ibrahim (3-0), Zia Sheik (4-1) and Jason Williams (4-1).
It was an impressive week for Brazilian snooker as the semi-final line-ups for both the Seniors and Open Championships featured all four players from the South American nation.
Three of these – Figueiredo, Luersen and Nelson Rodrigues Morreira – competed in the semi-finals of both events while they were joined by former WST professional Victor Sarkis in the Open competition.
It was Sarkis that faced Figueiredo in the last four but it was the senior man that was in dominant form as he completed yet another whitewash win to move within one victory of the title.
Luersen was his opponent in the title match after he completed a 4-2 defeat of Morreira as he looked to add to the Pan American Seniors Snooker Championship title that he had won 12 months ago.
Figueiredo proved to be too strong once again, however, as he rounded off an unforgettable week by completing a 5-2 victory to secure the title and a WST tour card.
Wether Igor will actually take his tour card remains to be seen though. He didn’t “finish” his last spell on tour and went back to Brazil before his tour card “expired”, explaining that this life abroad was too hard for him and his family. This is understandable. Brazil is too far away for making it possible for Brazilian players to return home just to spend a week-end or indeed any short period of time with their loved ones. The trip is costly and very tiring because the huge time difference. He might however decide to play in the World and Seniors World Championships, as these are “one-offs” in the season and, of course, very special.
I really do hope that he will be able to play in a few events though as he’s very entertaining and (almost) always smiling.
Coalisland’s Fergal Quinn edged out Antrim’s Robbie McGuigan 4-3 in the first qualifying round of the BetVictor Northern Ireland Open, needing one more win to earn a place in the final stages in Belfast.
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Quinn, playing his debut season on the pro tour, will meet Zak Surety on Sunday with the winner to go through to the Waterfront Hall next month. McGuigan came from 2-0 down to lead 3-2, but Quinn took frame six with runs of 47 and 53 then got the better of a low-scoring decider.
Jimmy White reached the last 32 of this event last year but he misses out this time, losing 4-2 to China’s Huang Jiahao whose top break was 97.
Fight-back of the day came from Poland’s Mateusz Baranowski who recovered a 3-0 deficit to beat Wang Yuchen 4-3, making a 62 in the decider. Liam Pullen, who beat John Higgins in the Xi’an Grand Prix qualifiers earlier in the week, built on his momentum with a 4-0 defeat of Ben Mertens, firing breaks of 89, 96 and 100.
As usual as well – alas – the report is far from exhaustive and focuses mainly on the UK and Irish players results. Also, not a single match of the evening session is reported on. And, alas again, I can’t add too much to it.
I watched two matches, the Baranowski v Wang one and the Pullen v Mertens one. Both ended with defeat for player I supported1. Liam Pullen played extremely well, no complaints. The Baranowski v Wang match was a typical “qualifiers match”. It was hard fought, not very fluent at all, with only one breaks over 50, one each, a 63 by Wang.
Although I have absolutely nothing against their opponents ↩︎
The World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) has today announced the 2025/26 WPBSA Q Tour Global, which includes a new format and increased money for the Q Tour Europe series.
The Q Tour Global is an established series of events which provides an elite pathway for talented snooker players around the world to earn their place on the World Snooker Tour.
In its second full season, Q Tour Global continued to see records broken with 711 players from 54 countries completing 1542 matches across four continents.
WPBSA Q Tour Europe
This season’s Q Tour Europe will once again comprise seven events, with five to be held in mainland Europe for the first time, and sees significant changes to the format, ranking system and prize money following player feedback.
Prize money more than doubled from the 2024/25 season to £30,000 per event
New seeding structure
Best-of-seven frame matches from the last 128 stage onwards
New points-based ranking system
Regular seeding cut-off dates introduced to make the seedings per event more up to date and relative to the current seasons results
The circuit will benefit from increased prize money investment with £30,000 to be contested at each of the events – more than double the prize fund from the past season.
Following player feedback, there has also been an important change to the tournament seeding structure, which will now see 64 players seeded through to the last 128 stage. Each tournament will be played under a flat draw, with the remaining players drawn at random.
All matches from the last 128 stage onwards will now be played over the best of seven frames and each event will now be played over four days.
A new points-based ranking system will replace the previously used prize money system and points will be on offer in all rounds of each event. There will also be regular seeding cut-off dates to ensure the seedings reflect the current seasons results.
As in previous seasons, the top ranked player at the end of the campaign will earn a place on the World Snooker Tour. The next 16-ranked players (to include each event champion) will qualify for the season-end Q Tour Global Playoff.
The Dates
The provisional dates for this season’s Q Tour Europe are:
WPBSA Chairman Jason Ferguson said: “We are delighted to announce the new, improved WPBSA Q Tour Europe series for the 2025/26 season. We have listened to the players and consulted with the WPBSA Players Board and we believe these changes are a great start to building for the future not just in Europe but across all the Q Tour Global events.”
“As we move forward, we plan to make further improvements so that WPBSA can establish a truly global secondary tour for our sport. These changes are only the beginning!”
Event Entry
Entry for all seven Q Tour Europe events is now open via WPBSA SnookerScores. Please view each tournament for confirmation of each entry deadline.
We aim to accommodate all players who wish to enter; however, we do reserve the right to limit entries for each qualifier or to extend events subject to the number of tables available at the club and time available.
Q Tour Global
WPBSA Q Tour Global will continue to incorporate regional Q Tour series’ staged around the world as part of the continued international expansion of Q Tour.
The Q Tour Global will once again continue to include series in the Middle East, Americas and Asia-Pacific regions, alongside the CBSA China Tour.
As part of the WPBSA’s commitment to the international growth of our sport, the leading players from these Regional Q Tour events will qualify to compete at the Q Tour Global Playoff, alongside players from Q Tour Europe.
Players competing in Q Tour events outside of Europe, must be resident for a minimum six months to be eligible to play in these events.
This, in my views is great news as five of the seven events are played outside the UK. This is how it should be in the main tour as well, qualifiers included, if snooker really has ambition to be a global sport. It did however trigger negative reaction from British amateurs on social media, complaining about the costs and travels. They were “outraged” when I told them that they have been “privileged” for far too long, that this is, finally, how it should be. To this, of course, they responded that they haven’t be privileged … until I explained how the current structure of the main tour basically forces every non British player to live as expat in the UK, away from their family, which is certainly taxing mentally and emotionally, or to travel back and forth all the time, which is tiring and costly, how communication with the gouverning body is done in English, which for non-UK/Irish players is a foreign language…
I’m sure that I didn’t convince those who feel entitled … but my post was liked by a non British player and the father of another non British player, a young and quite successful one too. The said father left this comment: “It’s about time. Welcome to the world of non UK players 😀”. Exactly that!
Click below for the Q School 2025 Order of Merit. During the 2025/2026 season, should the number of entries in any World Snooker Tour event fall below the required number of entrants, subject to wildcards and commercial agreements, the highest ranked players from the Q School Order of Merit will be used to top up to the required number of entrants. The list was calculated by awarding one point for every frame won. All players who received a bye into Round Two were awarded four points for round one.
The Asian Q-Schools are not included. You will tell me that an Asian “top-up” is unlikely to travel to the UK to play in qualifiers. It would be costly, and would involve a lot of administrative hassle as well. But then again “qualifiers” for Asian events, if any , should be played just before the said events and in locations close to the events’ main venue, and, than “Asian” top ups would make sense.
The 21-year-old from China, who was taking part in a third consecutive World Women’s Snooker Championship final, becomes only the seventh player to lift the Mandy Fisher Trophy on multiple occasions and is the first to defend her title since Ng On Yee achieved the feat in 2018.
The two pre-tournament top seeds met in a repeat of last year’s final in a best-of-11 frame title match contest that was watched by a large crowd at the Changping Gymnasium.
The first two frames of the final were shared between the two cueists, who were each aiming to lift the most prestigious title on the World Women’s Snooker Tour for the second time in their careers.
Mink, the 2022 champion who was competing in her fourth final, managed to pull ahead as she secured a 4-2 advantage with a top break of 54.
Local favourite Bai refused to go down without a fight, however, and rallied with back-to-back frames to restore parity, before going ahead for the first time in the match by taking frame nine with a contribution of 61 to move one away from victory at 5-4.
What ultimately turned out to be the final frame of the match was one that was full of drama as it came down to the last few balls and both players spurned opportunities to win it.
There were gasps from the crowd as Bai missed the ball altogether when attempting a thin pink across the length of the table for victory, only for Mink to go in-off after potting it and looking likely to force a dramatic decider.
After taking a second to compose herself, the Chinese player fired home the pink from distance to complete a momentous victory.
Quality wise, it wasn’t a great match but we shouldn’t be too surprised. Both players wanted it badly and they were certainly feeling very tense. The match was showed on YouTube and at one point there were over 47500 persons watching it (me included 😉). There IS an interest for the women’s game, clearly.
Lewis was in the arena and wrote on social media that, to his estimations, about 700 fans were watching at the venue. Not bad!
