2015 UK Championship - Wins for Bingham, Higgins & Murphy

The first televised day of the 2015 Betway UK Championship kicked off today and with it the LIVE snooker cue action covered by either the Beebs or EuroSport. 

The most important part though, was that today meant getting a comfy seat in the Last 32 for the likes of Stuart Bingham, John Higgins and Shaun Murphy.

The current world champion, Stuart Bingham had to face the "Sheriff of Pottingham" Anthony Hamilton and it wasn't to be an easy task.

Although the first frame went Stuart's way after a 71 clearance, Hamilton cued an outstanding 135 break to draw level at one apiece.

The interval found Bingham 3-1 up thanks to a 77 break, but with less fireworks than expected. The player himself said he had no idea how he end up at this scoreline, since his opponent had more table time than him.

After the mini-break Hamilton managed to grab one more frame, but Bingham stole the next frame on the pink to which he added a 68 to go 5-2 up.

The suspense was prolonged thanks to a great 98 break from Anthony, but in the end Bingham sealed the deal with a beautiful 143 break (the highest of the tournament - so far) to win 6-3.

At the next table John Higgins was cueing against China's Tian Pengfei and doing a great job at it.

Although the ice was broken by Tian, Higgins' breaks of 60, 63 and 96 were sure to accelerate his cruise towards the mid-session interval for a 3-1 scoreline.

The Chinese player returned a bit more focused despite the fact that he lost the 5^th frame after making a 50 break, but recovered with a perfect 116 during the following one to win his second frame of the match.

Time would prove it was also going to be his last, as Higgins took a tense 7^th frame and closed with a 103 to win 6-2 and book his place into the next round were he'll meet the winner of Ali Carter v. Daniel Wells match.

The evening came with the televised match between Shaun Murphy and Zhou Yuelong, the Englishman losing no time into cruising towards the victory line.

Shaun grabbed the first four frames of the match with a myriad of glorious breaks (63, 124, 100 and 73) so the mid-session interval came precisely on time for his poor opponent.

Zhou re-grouped and after the 15-minutes break hit a great 92 break to avoid being whitewashed by "The Magician", but sadly enough that was his entire contribution as Shaun's runs of 49, 31 and 36 were more than enough to win him the match 6-1.

Tom Ford is also through to the next round after a 6-5 victory obtained in front of Mark Williams (tremendous comeback from being led 5-3 by the Welshman), the same happening for Jack Lisowski who beat Graeme Dott by 6-5 after being 5-2 down.

Kyren Wilson obtained an important 6-2 victory in front of Mike Dunn, while Mark Davis beat Ken Doherty 6-3.

The full list of scorelines can be checked here.