As the last of the thirty-two players began their campaign for the 2026 Halo World Snooker Championship, both Ronnie O'Sullivan and Mark Selby achieved comfortable victories in securing their places in the second round of the tournament at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre.
O'Sullivan barely took any time at all in securing the three frames he needed to defeat qualifer He Guqiang 10-2 and he now faces an absolute blockbuster of a second round clash with four-time world champion John Higgins, who had defeated Ali Carter 10-7. Higgins will be looking to seek revenge against O'Sullivan, with their most recent Crucible meeting being the 2022 semi-final where O'Sullivan came out on top as a comfortable 17-11 victor.
Selby also had a rather surprisingly comfortable 10-2 victory over another qualifer in Wales' Jak Jones, who was expected to have given the four-time world champion a much more difficult match than transpired. Jones' performance was a surprise given he was possibly the most difficult of the qualifers whom Selby could have drawn against, given that he performed so well in defeating Luca Brecel in last week's last qualifying round
Elsewhere, qualifer Liam Pullen could hold his head high after a fine performance in his Crucible debut, even though his dreams of progressing were brought to an end following a 10-6 defeat against friend and practice partner, Chris Wakelin.
Si Jiahui, who stunned much of the snooker world with his superb run to the 2023 World Championship semi-final, started off quite well against Iran's Hossein Vafaei, taking a 3-1 lead into the mid-session interval, but it was a different story after the interval when Vafaei all remaining five frames to take a 6-3 overnight lead heading into Thursday afternoon's concluding session.
Meanwhile, 2010 champion, Neil Robertson, shrugged off the extraordinary error of accidentally forfeiting the second frame to take a narrow 5-4 lead against Pang Junxu overnight. After Robertson had won a narrow first frame, Pang made a break of 54 and held a lead of 57-10 as the Australian came to the table in an attempt to claw back the defecit. Using the rest, Robertson attempted to pot the black into the top right pocket, before seeing his effort rattling the jaws. At this point, Robertson, completely unaware that he was still able to win, conceded the frame. As referee Terry Camilleri informed him, Robertson was actually 47 points behind with 51 still on the table, not even having to require any snookers if he tried to steal the frame. Conceding early, with still enough points on the table can incur penalties including a fine, which Camillieri told Robertson that he would be facing a fine for his indiscretion.
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