The order of play for tonights action at the Mosconi Cup is as follows:
M1: Team USA v Team Europe (all 5 players)
M2: Johnny Archer/Dennis Hatch v Niels Feijen/Darren Appleton
M3:Shane van Boening v Mika Immonen
M4:Corey Deuel/Oscar Dominguez v Ralf Souquet/Thorsten Hohmann
M5: Captain’s Pick v Captain’s Pick
The semi finals of the 2009 Betfred.com World Snooker Championships started yesterday afternoon with twice former World Champion, John Higgins against rising Northern Irish talent, Mark Allen.
Allen has been playing some of the best snooker of his career after already having dispatched Ronnie O’Sullivan and Ryan Day. This session started well, Allen winning the first frame, however Higgins came back and handn’t even looked as if he was playing at his best. He lead 3-1 at the mid-session interval.
In the interval the players spoke to the tournament director about the less-than-adequate table conditions, aparantly caused by increased humidity. This led to a very hot iron and a complete change of balls at the halfway point in the session.
The table played better in the latter half and Higgins extended his lead to 6-2, this match continues this morning from 10.00.
Honours Even With Robertson and Murphy.
The other World Champion still in the draw, Shaun Murphy, had a very tight session against Australian Neil Robertson. The match will continue at 14.00 today with the score at 4-4. There were six breaks over 50 with Murphy winning this stat 4-2.
Day six saw the completion of the first round as both a former champion and the world number 2 eased through.
Former World Champion John Higgins playing what I thought would be a tricky tie against Michael Holt was thouroughly in control throughout and went into round two with a 10-5 victory. His opponent in round two will be Jamie Cope.
World Number 2, Maguire went through by the same 10-5 scoreline against fellow Scot, Jamie Burnett. This was their first professional encounter since December. The December match shrouded in the controversy of irregular betting patterns, something that is still under investigation.
Maguire will now play Mark King in round 2.
The first matches to start in round 2 were the matches between Ronnie O’Sullivan and Mark Allen, this one ended 4-4 after the first session, and Ronnie looked out-of-sorts with Allen playing some good snooker early on.
In the other second match, Stephen Hendry came up against a re-energised potting machine in Ding Junhui. The score was 3-1 in Ding’s favour at the interval only for Hendry to come back fresh after the break to level the match at 4-4.
Both of these ties are poised nicely for the second session. Don’t forget in round two it is now best of 25 frames.
The video below was recorded by us back in October last year whilst we were broadcasting from the Isle of Man Festival of Pool. The quality is not great due to us recording directly from the 148kbps live webcast.
The main match we were covering had finished so we turned the camera around to other matches still going on. We focused on Bob Douglas’s game on an adjacent table when he was faced with this impossible red, or so we thought!
Watch the video to find out what actually happened.
You can find this video on the following video sites:
YouTube, Metacafe, DailyMotion and Veoh
That’s right we covered around 100 hours of pool in the Isle of Man and what a way it finished with the eagerly awaited CueSport TV £50k series. 7 days of the festival went out live on air, where else can you get that amount of prolonged exposure for a pool event. Not even the World or European championships get that much coverage!
Simon Ward has shown over the last few months that he likes the TV cameras, 3 tournaments, 3 wins! This one was once again a tremendous match against another Welsh player Craig Marsh. The best-of-25 frame final was a match of the highest order with Wardy walking away with the £3500 winners cheque and Marsh settling for the £1500 runner-up prize.
All of the action from the Isle of Man can be witnessed on CueSport TV again over the next few weeks as we trawl through the matches that we recorded.
It has now been made official that the Belgium Snooker Open will be broadcast LIVE on Cuesport TV in September.
The live broadcast will only be available on pay-per-view for the low price of £8.00 (Eur10.00, $15.00) for the complete three day tournament.
The Belgium Open features such players as John Parrott, Neil Roberston, Mark Selby, Graeme Dott, Ken Doherty, Mark Williams, Shaun Murphy, Stephen Maguire and many more main tour professional snooker players.
It takes place over the weekend of 19th-20th-21st September and the only place you will be able to watch the action is on www.CueSport.tv - tickets for the online broadcast will be available from 9am September 1st 2008 so be sure to sign-up way in advance!
The Belgium Open is brought to you by Belgian company Connect Management and comes to you from the Tennis centre in Duffel, Belgium.
For more information about this great Live Snooker Broadcast contact enquiries@cuesport.tv
