UK Championship 2012 - Day 4

Captain Carter flying on a perfect blue sky

Yesterday marked the start of the mighty Last 16 matches, at the end of it four players finding their way into the next round.

Amongst them was 'Captain' Ali Carter who seemed to fly totally undisturbed over Mark Joyce, who has sadly played nothing like (the other day) against the defending champion, Judd Trump.

Carter took a 4-0 lead with breaks of 58, 57 and 73 to welcome the mid-session interval with a huge relief and although after the break Joyce tried his best, he didn't manage to perform his most-wanted comeback.

Two runs, of 50 and 7,6 brought Mark a couple of frames, which resulted to be his firsts and his lasts, while Carter used a top break of 73 to smooth his way into the quarter-finals with a decisive 6-2 victory.

Stuart Bingham seems to be winning everything these days, this time his victim being Scotland's Stephen Maguire (actually one of the favorites to win this year's trophy) who was defeated 6- 4.

Stuart started his journey with a 73 that guaranteed him a 2-0 lead, but Maguire was sure to catch up with him by firing in breaks of 67 and 50.

A "copy-paste" situation was about to happen after the interval when Bingham jumped two frames up at 4-2 by using breaks of 65 and 63, and as before, Maguire replayed in order to make the scoreline go 4-4.

The Englishman hit a beautiful 120 break to go one away from victory and continued potting (60 and 54) until reaching the finish-line, now having to face Carter in the quarter-finals.

Stevens is happy with his win

Also with a place in the quarter-finals is Shaun Murphy, whose 6-2 victory over Graeme Dott was enough proof that he's up for the job.

With just a top break of 62 Murphy got on a 3-0 advantage, while Dott just managed to squeeze a frame in his bag as the mid-session interval was kicking off.

A great century break of 130 points was extending Murphy's lead at 4-1, to which the Scottish player responded by taking the next frame in order to reduce the deficit. Still, it was too late as the "Magician" cashed the last two frames to secure himself a place in the next round.

Last but not the least, Matthew Stevens performed quite a remarkable win over Marco Fu after a very delightful match.

Flying at  4-1 up with just a top break of 72, Stevens was sure to make a statement as what he's really after to, but all of the sudden his opponent raised from the dead and started winning frame after frame.

With runs of 97 and 60 Fu secured his comeback at four apiece, but that just made Stevens more eager to win, what he ended up doing after hitting in breaks of 74, 59 and 34.