Shanghai Masters qualifiers 2011 - Day 1

Oooh my Lord! We have snooker on TV!

The first day of the Shanghai Masters qualifying rounds and the bombe has exploded when surprisingly we have discovered that two matches from each snooker session were being broadcasted on bet356.com as well as on good old fromsportcom.com free of change. Twitter became in no time the perfect place to discuss this problem, World Snooker statement saying that they were just trying to see if the broadcast was good enough and if that resulted to be a success, they would have announced it right away.


The cat was out of the bag so moments later the same World Snooker posted the breaking news of the season: We have LIVE World Snooker TV. This is practically the best way to see the lads in action, but remember that only two matches per session will be broadcasted. Since the streaming is said to be in high-quality, a price will be applied, as it follows: £2.99 per month or £29.99 for the year in the UK and £3.99 per month or £39.99 for a year outside the UK.


Now, that being said let's move on to the serious business: the first day of the Shanghai Masters qualifiers!

She has China in her eyes, can you feel it?

As usual, when the qualifiers starts the players that take the best possible start are the Chinese ones. And this time the story wasn't going to be different, for Tiang Pengfei resisted in front of the Thai Dechawat Poomjaeng with a 5-3 scroeline, Li Yan defeated the Scottish Paul Davison by 5-2, Yu Delu hammered the youngster Sam Baid 5-1, while Cao Yupeng ended up on a rough decider with Joe Meara signing off the match that closed the first day of the qualifying rounds.


James Wattana didn't disappoint his fans either, the Thai managing to win his first match, 5-1 against Matthew Couch, the same happening to the proud of India - Aditya Mehta crashing a pretty tough opponent, Stuart Carrington by 5-0.


A very good start was also succeeded by Q School Event One's graduate Davis Grace, whose 5-1 result over Daniel Wells gives him the needed confidence to continue his run, for his next opponent is the powerful and hungry for winning, Jack Lisowski.
Norway's Kurt Maflin has obtained a very good 5-2 victory over England's Sam Craigie, while Finland's Robin Hull and his 123 break (the highest so far) put an end to Andrew Pagett's run with a 5-3 scoreline.

Adam and Andrew, the Pink Army recruits

Sadly, Belgium lost another ambassador, after Luca Brecel's defeat from the preliminary round, coming the news that Bjorn Hanevver had to pull out of the event due to a shoulder injury. This has given a bye to David Hogan, who will meet Scotland's Alan McManus into the next round.


After almost succeeding to reach the Australian Goldfield Open ( if you remember he lost the last qualifying match in front of Ken Doherty), Scott McKenzie has experienced an excruciating 5-0 defeat, performed by the Pink Army's member Adam Wicheard, while Poland's Kacper Filipiak followed his footsteps being whitewashed by another pink recruit, Andrew Norman.


Tomorrow the lads will continue their run through the crazy balls hopping to obtain victory after victory in order to qualify for the main event. And since the fun has just begun, I'm expecting some surprising scorelines in the following days ;-)


Below you can find the complete list of today’s matches:

10am


2.30pm
7pm


Matches schedule for Day 2:


10am


2.30pm


7pm
*all hours are UK time


Please don't forget you can watch the snooker players in action on www.fromsportcom.com or by subscribing to World Snooker LIVE TV.