German Masters 2012 (Day 2) - Ding out, Allen in

Yu Delu sends home Ding

The second day of the German Masters tournament has brought with it the first surprise: the 2011 Masters champion, Ding Junhui experienced an early exit, being defeated 5-3, by his fellow-country Yu Delu.

At the same time, Graeme Dott performed the third whitewash of the tournament on his opponent the Thai James Wattana, while Mark Allen put out quite a snooker show and came back from being lead 4-1, to beat Tom Ford in a decider.

Thrilling start for Day Two, here at Berlin's Tempodrom where China's Ding Junhui was totally out of form almost handing the victory diploma to his opponent.

Not a good day for Ding

It's a well known fact that a player needs some time to settle in, but for Ding that didn't seem to be the problem. His problem was that he just wasn't at his best and Yu Delu found no difficulty in winning the battle of cues against him.

Breaks of 34, 68 and 41 were brining Delu the first three frames, while Ding only managed to grab one just as the interval was kicking off. 

After the break, Delu extended his lead at 4-1, but Ding tried to perform a comeback and took the next couple of frames with runs of 36, 37 and 28. But it wasn't enough as Delu used runs of 43 and 56 to close the deal at 5-3.

Mark Allen comes back for victory

The tension was also high at the table where Mark Allen and Tom Ford were playing. For most of the match, it seemed a one-way-traffic with Ford taking on shots after shots and hitting in breaks of 89, 100 and 69 to cash the first three frames.

Just as in the previous match his opponent, in this case Mark Allen, managed to pull back a frame at the interval, as the lads retuned into the arena the pattern repeating itself and Ford winning another frame to go 4-1 up.

However, what happened next doesn't resemble with Ding v. Delu affair, for Allen used breaks of 35, 39, 73 and 52 to build himself a nice and steady comeback for 4-4. It was the second match whose faith would be written in the decider. 

Dotty is on fire

And although Ford got the chance to be the first one in with a considerable break of 43, Allen managed to pot enough balls and get enough penalty points in order to win the snooker encounter 5-4.

At a near table Scotland's Graeme Dott was practically on fire after crashing Thailand's James Wattana by hitting a rain of breaks (59, 47, 56, 66 and 51), Judd Trump put an end to Paul Davison's run with a 5-1 scoreline, while Neil Robertson saw off Marcus Campbell 5-3.

The day continues with: