A place in the final of the British Championship is determined!The world's No. 1 victory, O'Sullivan set a record, or will face off with Ding Junhui. In the first semi-final of the 2023 Croatia-Britain Championship, world No. 1 O'Sullivan faced Iran's Vafi. In this competition, O'Sullivan has been in an advantageous position, and finally easily advanced to the final with a total score of 6-2, becoming the first player to break into the final. At the same time, this is also the ninth time that O'Sullivan has reached the final of the British Championship, setting a new record. Next, O'Sullivan will compete for the championship with the winner between Ding Junhui and Trump. Prior to this tournament, O'Sullivan had participated in five tournaments this season and won the Shanghai Masters. In the ranking round, his best result was the semi-finals of the National Championships. Due to O'Sullivan's absence from many ranking matches, the current point gap between him and Trump is only 34,000 points. If Trump ends up winning the championship, O'Sullivan will lose the No. 1 position in the world.
In this British Championship, O'Sullivan's road to promotion was relatively difficult, and he narrowly won two consecutive rounds with a score of 6-5. He defeated McGill, Milkins and Zhou Yuelong to reach the semi-finals. Fortunately, O'Sullivan has accumulated a lot of experience in the competition, and even if the form is unstable, he can quickly adjust. On the contrary, Wafei won two consecutive rounds in the qualifying round to advance to the main event, and defeated strong players such as Murphy and Zhang Anda in the main match. Judging from the process of the game, Wafai's condition is quite good, which makes many people sweat for O'Sullivan. After the start of the game, O'Sullivan first entered the state, hitting 54 and 113 in a row, winning two consecutive games to take the lead. However, Wafei fought back strongly, hitting 112 consecutive single shots to tie the overall score at 2-2. After the break, O'Sullivan played well, while Wafei made frequent mistakes. O'Sullivan shot consecutive 60, 52, 50 and 90 to win four consecutive games and beat Wafei with an overall score of 6-2.
After 5 years, O'Sullivan once again reached the final of the British Championship, and it was also his 9th time to reach the final of the British Championship. Previously, O'Sullivan had won the British Championship 7 times, and he will fight for the 8th title next. The other semi-final will be China's Ding Junhui against world No. 2 Judd Trump. The two have played each other 17 times before, and Ding Junhui has a slight upper hand, with a slight disadvantage with an 8-9 record. Since winning the British Championship in 2019, Ding Junhui has not been able to win any ranking tournament for 4 years. Prior to this season, his best result was the quarter-finals of the National Championships. However, the British Championships have always been a blessed place for Ding Junhui, where he has won three championships and one runner-up. In this competition, Ding Junhui once again showed strong strength, successfully defeating Mark Allen, Tom Forde and Mark Williams to enter the semifinals. Trump, meanwhile, has won 3 titles and 2 runners-up this season and is in first place in the single-season rankings.
Although the outside world is not optimistic about Ding Junhui's victory, people still hope that he can go all out and strive to create a miracle. This article was originally written by Xiao Lizi, and plagiarism or ** is strictly prohibited.