At present, the Snooker Champions League is in full swing. Although China's snooker brother Ding Junhui has been in a slump for the past two seasons, the world ranking has fallen out of the top 16. However, in recent years, the Chinese snooker legion has performed well, and some very good snooker players have emerged. In the Champions League, which is currently in full swing, the Chinese team has lived up to the expectations of fans and performed well. Among them, Zhao Xintong, the champion of the British Championship New Branch, was in a state of explosion, directly came to a wave of 8 consecutive wins, created a personal record, won the group championship, and entered the winner group. In addition to Zhao Xintong, a popular Chinese rising star, there is also a Chinese player who has also performed quite well. From the first encounter with the world number one master scoring only 4 points in the whole game, to the second encounter, playing four consecutive 50+ performances, from being swept to defeating the opponent, such an adjustment is indeed worthy of praise.
A match in the third group of the Champions League in the early morning of January 5 attracted the attention of many fans, because this match was a match between China's famous Xiao Guodong and the world number one world champion Selby. In fact, xiao Guodong was not optimistic about this game, the opponent was not only the world number one Selby, but also in the sixth round of the previous group stage round robin, Xiao Guodong was compared with Selby. But that contest made Xiao Guodong feel very embarrassed. Because not only was the big score very ugly, 0:3 was swept, but even more ugly was Xiao Guodong's score. In the whole game, Xiao Guodong only scored a very pitiful 4 points, two of which were directly clean sheeted. Selby, on the other hand, was in a very hot state, scoring two hundreds in three innings, one 108, one 131, and a 94. Therefore, before this semi-final, almost no one was optimistic about Xiao Guodong.
However, in a very short period of time, Xiao Guodong adjusted his emotions and state. Facing Selby again, Xiao Guodong did not show weakness. After the opening, Xiao Guodong showed a very strong desire to win. In the first set, Xiao Guodong directly scored a single 70 points after getting started, and won the first set at 81:74. In the second set, Selby showed off his world number one strength, hitting a single 97 to equalize 121-4.
In the third set, Xiao Guodong did not give Selby a chance and played very actively, in this set, he twice hit a single 50+. First a 52 points, then another 79 points, and finally won the third set 131:1, leading the big score 2:1. In the fourth set, the match point game, Xiao Guodong did not give Selby a chance, directly scored a single 89 points, and directly locked in the victory at 129:5. In the end, Xiao Guodong defeated the world's number one Selby by a score of 3:1 and advanced to the final.
Although he lost to Selby in the group stage round robin, Xiao Guodong's ability to adjust is indeed very good. In just a day or two, he had a big swap with Selby's state, directly beating Selby without a little temper and winning easily. In fact, in this Champions League, Xiao Guodong's overall performance is still very good, in the previous group round robin, he has defeated another world champion, the famous Bingham.
Xiao Guodong's state was hot, but Zhao Xintong's state was obviously better. In the following final, Xiao Guodong lost to Zhao Xintong. Although he lost, Xiao Guodong also performed very well in the Chinese derby, once equalizing the big score. The winning Zhao Xintong entered the winner's group, while Xiao Guodong entered the fourth group with Lu Ning to continue the game, and he will once again get the opportunity to continue to compete with Selby and Bingham. However, the difficulty of group 4 is quite large, because except for Xiao Guodong and Lu Ning, the remaining 5 players are all the top 16 players in the world ranking, including three world champions. But I believe that Xiao Guodong will not show weakness, after all, in the 3rd group against Selby and Bingham, he still has the advantage.