Premier League in Guildford

01:28:00 Ramona Dragomir 0 Comments

The city of Guildford
If it's Thursday, then there's Premier League snooker ... well, at least this week it is. This time, the Premier League caravan will travel to Guildford where another special night of snooker will take place. The rules, though a bit different from last seasons' tournaments, will give us the chance to experience yet another mini-competition, with semi-finals and of course, the grand final.


The first week featured the name of the current world champion John Higgins, who took on the people's champion Jimmy White and last year world champion Neil Robertson, who faced an incredible well-prepared Matthew Stevens.
 The Scotsman defeated White by three frames to nil, while the Welshman applied the same treatment on Robbo, so the final was given between Higgins and Stevens. As I've told you before, "The Welsh Dragon" was in the form of his life and with a constant smile upon his face he crashed, almost effortless, Higgins by 3-0.

This puts Matthew Stevens up on the first place with six points, followed by Higgins with three, while White and Robertson are yet to fill their pockets with some precious points.


Will the Whirlwind case damage to the Potting Machine?
But "The Whirlwind" White has the chance to make a difference tomorrow, as he will play against Mark Williams, while one of the most expected players to put his cue into action, Ronnie O'Sullivan, will face his last year Premier League’s final rival Shaun Murphy.
It's going to be interesting to see if the history will repeat itself in the case of these two, although the Smurf will definitely try his best to change it ;-)


So, please don't forget to tune in on SkySports 1 from 19:30 (UK time) tomorrow night, for I believe we'll see some fireworks, especially after O'Sullivan's showed to be in such a great form lately (great runs during the PTCs and that amazing 147 from last week, just to name the obvious).
In antithesis with Ronnie's performances Mark Williams didn't shine on the recent PTCs, but had a very good run in the Australian Goldfields Open, when he reached the final. Hope to see "The Welsh Potting Machine" functioning at full capacity!


What's going to be boys?
I remind you that the rule is "the best of five" and that players get one point per each frame they win. The shot-clock time has been reduced from 25 seconds to 20 seconds and in case of a decider the Shoot-Out rule will be applied: the frame will last no more than 10 minutes, with a shot-clock of 20 seconds per shot for the first five minutes and a 15 seconds limit per shot for the remaining five.

Also, under the current “miss rule” if a player misses to touch the object ball three times on a row, his opponent gets "ball in hand" and can place the cue ball wherever he chooses on the table.


The matches can be viewed on your personal TVs, but also online on mypremium.tv (by selecting SkySports 1 from the right side of the screen) or on sportlemon.tv (by choosing the competition from the list).


Sky Sports 1 (from 19:30)


The semis
Mark Williams v. Jimmy White
Ronnie O'Sullivan v. Shaun Murphy


The Final
Williams/White v. O'Sullivan/Murphy

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