Snooker Championship League (group 5) - two is the magic number

King hitting a set of century breaks

Back to Essex peeps, as Groups 5 and 6 of the Snooker Championship League are disputing their matches for the next four days (from 28th of February until 3rd of March). But first things come first - Group 5: these time, the six mighty players who will try their best to get a place in Groups Final are: Mark Allen, Mark King, Matthew Stevens, Ryan Day, Ricky Walden, Ding Junhui and Liang Wenbo. And what do you know? After a day of combat the majority of the players have scored only 2 points...but snooker is wise enough as to leave a few differences here and there. Want to know what are those differences? Keep reading ;-)


As usual, three players disputed four matches during the first day, in our case: Mark King, Liang Wenbo and Ryan Day...and all three of them have won two and lost two.
King hit in runs of 66 and 64 to crash Matthew Stevens 3-0 and some amazing breaks of 136, 108 and 127 to whitewash Ryan Day by the same scoreline, but lost 2-3 to Ding Junhui and to Ricky Walden.

Liang Wenbo, a dangerous opponent

Wenbo seemed to be quite in good form and won his first battle with a 3-0 result over Ricky Walden (breaks of 50 and 40 included), then lost to Ryan Day and Mark Allen 2-3, only to see him end his day with a 3-1 lead over his fellow-country, Ding Junhui.
On the same note - two victories, two defeats, Ryan Day lost 2-3 to his countryman Matt Stevens, then he turned around the score as to go 3-2 in his favor with Liang Wenbo, lost 0-3 to Mark King and end with a 3-1 victory over Mark Allen.
So two points go for each player, but please note that while King and Wenbo have 10 frames a piece, Day has only eight.


As for the rest of the players, meaning those who only played three matches per day, the score isn’t very different, two of them having two points in their pockets (Ding and Allen) and two of them just one (Walden and Stevens). Frames related, things aren’t very pretty for The Welsh Dragon Matthew Stevens as he only has three, as well as for Walden. Ding and Allen have seven frames a piece and they played quite good during their first day, so they might add something more to their collection.


The results for the first day are:


Today we shall find out the winner of Group 5, so let’s see the schedule and start cheering for our favorite, ok?


Table one (all times are approximate)


Table two (all times are approximate and subject to change)
*all hours are UK time


You can watch the boys online, if you have an account of these betting sites, or right here ;-)