The UK Snooker Championship

 

At the beginning of December we had the UK Snooker Championship. This tournament is the 2^nd biggest tournament on the calendar with the winner getting £100,000 and 8000 points. While the runner up gets £46,000 and 6400 points. All the big boys entered this year. John Higgins won it for the 3^rd time last year and will be looking to defend his title. So what happened?

There were a couple of big 1^st round matches. Ronnie O’Sullivan against Steve Davis with both being 4 time winners of the UK Championship. Another big match was Stephen Maguire against Stephen Hendry. Maguire kicked the 5 times Champion Hendry out 6-3 and O’Sullivan beat Davis 6-1. Higgins and Junhui had tight wins. While Selby whitewashed Day. Fu, Carter, Trump and Williams all won 6-4. Murphy and Walden won 6-3. Stevens and Gould winning 6-2. The last people to progress to round 2 are Robertson and Dott winning 6-1.

In the 2^nd round the big match was Ronnie O’Sullivan vs Trump. Trump winning the final frame to win 6-5. Ding Junhui also won 6-5 against Stevens. Maguire beat reigning Champion Higgins 6-4. Murphy won 6-4. Another big match was Robertson against Dott. Both being top 10 players. Robertson came out on top after some great snooker to win 6-3. Walden made it into his 1^st ever UK Championship Quarter final with a massive win world number 1 Williams 6-3. Fu also beat Selby 6-3 and Allen beat Carter 6-2.

Now the Quarters had 4 big ties with everyone playing well. Walden beat another top 10 big players Shaun Murphy 6-3. While number 8 and 9 in the world Maguire and Trump faced off. Trump was playing amazingly and came out 6-3 winning. Robertson playing to try and regain his 2010 title beat Ding Junhui convincingly 6-2. But the match of the quarters was defiantly Fu vs Allen with each of them grabbing a couple of frames each before Allen went 2 games clear making it 4-2. However Fu wasn’t finished there and went 5-4 ahead, needing just one more frame. Allen managed to regroup to win the last 2 frames and win 6-5.

In the Semi’s there was now 17 frames to play for a place in the final. The 1^st of the matches was Robertson against Trump. The youngster Trump set the early pace going 2-0 up before Robertson hit back to be level at 4-4 before the break. In the 2^nd session Trump once again went ahead 7-5 before Robertson again came back to 7-7. However that was it for Robertson as Trump won the last 2 frames to take his 1^st ever place in the final winning 9-7.

The 2^nd semi of Allen vs Walden started off with the more experienced Allen taking command 3-1 won. Walden though was not going to just disappear and came back with 4 straight frame wins and was 5-3 up at the break. Allen then returned the favour and won the 1^st 4 frames of the 2^nd session to go 7-5 ahead before they swapped frames twice making the score 8-7 to Allen who then closed out the match winning 9-7.

Onto the Final which is 19 frames. Allen vs Trump. Trump won the 1^st frame before Allen answered with 3 of his own. Allen getting a 141 break. Trump needed to find something and he did. He won an unbelievable 7 consecutive frames. Putting him in complete control at this time. Allen though was not out yet. Allen won 5 of the next 6 frames to bring himself back into it. The score was now 9-8. Trump won the last frame with a break of 70 to win his 1^st ever UK Championship and the £100,000 prize money. He also jumped up the ranking to 5^th with Allen moved up to 11^th.

What did you think of the Championship?

For more info on the tournament go to http://www.worldsnooker.com