2016 Masters (Day One) - Bingham gets QF spot

The second match of this year's Dafabet Masters tournament kept up wide awake till ... well, it mostly depends on where you live, but around here it's 1:30 am, so go figure. The players "to be blamed" are Stuart Bingham and Ding Junhui, the Englishman prevailing a pretty struggling battle of cues by 6-4.

The first two frames of the match were genuine scrappers, Ding being the one who broke the ice, while Stuart was sure to reply with a top break of 39 and draw level at one apiece.

Still, frame three arrived with an unexpected surprise, Bingham cueing beautifully and getting closer and closer to making a perfect 147. However, he missed the yellow, thus his break stopped at just 120 points.

To this, the reigning world champion added a break of 60 and so the mid-session interval was welcoming a 3-1 scoreline. 

At returning into the arena, Ding seemed a bit more focused, a top break of 42 (his highest break of the match so far), helping him to pull back two consecutive frames.

Bingham used a 43 to restore his dominance, when Ding hit back with a great 71 to make the scoreline go 4-4. This was getting interesting.

Or maybe not? The struggle became pretty obvious during the next two frames which bared Stuart's signature, in the end the Englishman getting away with victory thanks to a 6-4 final scoreline.

The Masters continues today with two more matches:

1pm
Judd Trump v. Stephen Maguire

7pm
Barry Hawkins v. Joe Perry

*all hours are UK time