In the early morning of April 19, Beijing time, in the first round of the Snooker World Championships, Lu Haotian challenged Bingham. Lü Haotian is a Chinese rising star of the same age as Zhao Xintong, who once reached the round of 16 of the World Championships, which is the third time in Lu Haotian's career and the second consecutive year to enter the World Championship main event of Crucible. This time, Lu Haotian played against world champion Bingham for the first time.
The first set was full of ups and downs, with the two exchanging big gifts and more than once, Bingham took the lead in establishing a 54-0 lead. Lu Haotian also made a mistake after chasing to 30-54. After that, the two players exchanged hands several times, Bingham's simple blue ball loss became a fatal mistake, and Lu Haotian finally completed the extreme turnover 71-63. In the second and third sets, Lu Haotian had more problems in the position of the mother ball, resulting in his own attack was not smooth, playing hesitantly, Bingham seized the opportunity to win two consecutive sets, and contributed a single shot of 52 points in the third set.
In the fourth game, Lu Haotian finally relaxed, the mother ball was more accurate, the attack was more fluent, and he shot out a single shot to break 103 points to win. First four innings (Lu Haotian-Bingham): 71-63, 0-65, 22-97 (par 52 points), 104 (par 103) -0. In the big score, Lu Haotian equalized Bingham 2-2 with the breakthrough of the fourth set.
In the first half of the first half of the first 4 sets, overall, the overall standard is not high. World champion Bingham is in very average form. Lu Haotian is not meticulous enough in the position of the mother ball. It wasn't until the fourth inning that Lu Haotian seemed to relax and really found his own rhythm of the game.