World Championship 2012 (Day 12) - Rocket Ronnie and Captain Carter fly into semis

O'Sullivan reaches the semis

The last two spots from the semi-finals of this year’s World Championship were carefully occupied by Ronnie O'Sullivan, who proved to be merciless against Neil Robertson and beat the Aussie by 13-10, and also by Ali Carter who had to fight one very tough and dangerous Crucible-debutant Jamie Jones, whom he finally beat by 13-11.

That's it peeps, the countdown has started, we've entered the final stages of this year's grandiose and sumptuous World Championship (I know, I know, some big words out there) the line-up for the semi-finals being completed by the arrival of Rocket Ronnie and Captain Carter.

Although Robertson took a very good start and managed to finish the first session leading O'Sullivan by 5-3, what happened during the next ones, was just madness.

The man that two years ago conquered the world title and up until recently held the record for winning each final he reached, struggled so baddy, while O’Sullivan was on top of his form and practically cruised towards victory.

Not a good day for Robbo

The second session saw O'Sullivan winning no less than six consecutive frames with runs of 48, 47, 97, 62 and 42, while the Australian player barely managed to pull back two by taking a scrappy 15^th frame and hitting a 63 to trail 9-7.

As the lads returned for the final session, Robertson seemed a bit more in touch with his winner-mood and after collecting 50 point off the table he was reducing the gap at just one point. But then everything went back to the way it was during the previous session.

O'Sullivan fired in breaks of 104, 71 and 100 to go one away from victory and leave his opponent way behind.

However, Robertson still managed to win the next couple of frames with runs of 89 and 77 before one-very-eager-to-win O'Sullivan closed the match with a top break of 59 to set a meeting with Welshman Matthew Stevens in the semi-finals.

Captain Carter lands in semis

Ali Carter and Jamie Jones offered us one hell of a snooker show, Carter coping very well with the pressure and with his opponent's tremendous shots that got him in the quarter-finals.

The first session ended with the Captain in charge at 5-3 and continued in the same way, the second one being finished at 9-7. Still, that doesn't mean there weren't tense moments throughout the session, especially when Jones drew level at six apiece.

The last of their encounters started with the Captain reaffirming his dominance at 10-7 and with the same "Kiddo" trying to "return" the favour and winning the next frame.

Still, the first to reach the 12 frames, hence to be closer to the finish-line, was the Englishman whose breaks of 38 and 79 were leaving Jones in big trouble.

Jones put on quite a fight, but his run ends in the QFs

But the kid fought back and managed to win the next two frames with runs of 64 and just a top break of 26 and put an enormous pressure on his opponent.

At the end of the day though, experience was the name of the game and Carter knew very well how to cope with the situation, a break of 73 freezing the scoreboard at 13-11.



Tomorrow, we start our semi-finals journey, with the first two players to reach 17 frames getting a place in the final:

1pm
SF1 Stephen Maguire v. Ali Carter
7pm
SF2 Ronnie O'Sullivan v. Matthew Stevens
TV coverage: