Snooker Championship League (group 3) - Authority and Magic

One more time, The Captain takes the lead

The first day of the Championship League competition is over and to be honest with you, I’ve found it a little bit strange. Mainly because I didn’t get the feeling that this was an important day for the players. By all means, don’t get me wrong, for I know they’ve done their best, but unlike Group 1 or 2, this group was a shower one, let’s say. At the end of the day four players have only one lonely and sad point and that was quite a surprise for me, as the last groups were more active. What’s even stranger is that four of the present players also played in Group 2 and they did a much better job back then. But let’s say they didn’t quite get into the snooker mood and let’s wish them good luck for today’s matches. ;-)


First in line, winning three out of four matches are "The Captain" Ali Carter and “The Magician Shaun Murphy. Quite a pair of fighters we have here.
Ali was the man of the game back in Group 1 when he reached the final, where he lost 2-3 to Mark Selby and he did a pretty good job by playing in Group 2 also, as he almost reached the semi-finals, so it wasn’t` a big surprise to see the little guy up in front with 3 points, after he defeated Shaun Murphy 3-1 (with breaks of 82 and 70), whitewashed Mark King 3-0 (with breaks of 65 and 81), won over John Higgins 3-1 (with breaks of 91 and 54) and lost just one match, the one played against Peter Ebdon 1-3.

Carter’s collegue, the one with whom he shares the same place after the first day of the competition, Shaun Murphy was definitely in his element. Although he had a pretty rough start after losing to Carter (1-3), he put himself back together to win one match after another. He crashed the world number 1, John Higgins 3-0 (with breaks of 45, 47 and 70), he ended on a very tight 3-2 the match played with Stuart Bingham (breaks of 71 and 100 being part of the game) and he defeated this year’s Masters runner-up, Marco Fu 3-1 (with breaks of 57 and 87).

Murphy`s magic cue has brought him 3 points

Next in line, Peter Ebdon succeeded in winning two matches (out of three) so he earned two valuable points. What’s very interesting to see is that Ebbo won his first and last match of the day with the same score 3-1; he first beat Mark King by firing in breaks of 72, 41 and 55 and Ali Carter while hitting breaks of 74, 87 and 88. If Ebbo keeps up the good work, he might just get a spot in the today’s semi-finals and why not, in the final.


Unfortunately for John Higgins, Stuart Bingham, Marco Fu and Mark King, yesterday wasn’t a very prolific or lucky day as all four of them only won one match, receiving one point. The situation is pretty critically for Marco as he played four matches, so today he has to fight really hard to obtain a good place. However, this doesn’t mean that the other three players don’t have a hard task today as they are still very poor in points so they really need to improve their game.
To make the story a short one, Higgins started his day with a beautiful 3-0 scoreline over Stuart Bingham by hitting in breaks of 54 and 106, Bingham hammered Marco Fu with a 3-1 final result, Mark King won his last match of the day, meaning the one he played against Marco Fu 3-2 (quite a tight battle, as King was leading 2-0) and Marco won just the match played against Peter Ebdon 3-1.


Today’s snooker programme looks something like this:


Table 1 (all times are approximate)


Table 2 (all times are approximate)
*all hours are UK time


Leaving you with the same link to watch snooker online (link that sometimes works, sometimes it doesn’t) I wish you a very cool day, enjoy snooker, smile more often and see you tomorrow for some gossip. :-))