In the early morning of April 24, Beijing time, the second round of the 2022 World Snooker Championships ended a focus battle at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England, and the chinese star Yan Bingtao and the defending champion Selby played the third stage of the match, and finally Yan Bingtao resisted Selby's counterattack and won 13-10, eliminating the four-time champion Selby at the same time, but also achieved the breakthrough of advancing to the top 8 of the World Championship for the first time in his career. In the quarter-finals, Yan Bingtao will face off against Welsh's williams, who have a fierce momentum in the first two rounds, to compete for a place in the top 4.
Selby, the defending champion and number one seed who advanced to the round of 16 on the first day of the opening match, after a long week of waiting, ushered in the second round of the competition, against China's famous player, the 16th seed Yan Bingtao. Two players with similar style of play are hailed by fans as the "Grinding King War" of the new generation. For Yan Bingtao, Selby is not invincible, in the last two seasons, he has defeated him many times, and even in the last three encounters, Yan Bingtao has maintained three consecutive wins, so he is not psychologically inferior.
In the first stage of the 8-game duel between the two, although Yan Bingtao only scored 1 shot to break the hundred, while Selby was 5 shots and 50+, Yan Bingtao successfully dragged Selby and ended the stage of the competition with a 4-4 draw. In the second stage of the 8-inning competition, Yan Bingtao took the lead in the ninth inning, and the ninth inning began to directly play the second shot of the game to break the hundred, and scored 101 points in a single shot. Yan Bingtao then played two more sets in a row, winning three sets in a row to take a 7-4 lead.
Selby then seized the opportunity to break the hundred and scored a single 132 points to make it 5-7. In the 13th set, Yan Bingtao scored 91 points and led 8-5. Selby then shot a 64-pointer and a 131-point breaker to go down two consecutive sets to make it 7-8. In the final set, both of them scored a certain number of points first, and in the defensive battle, Selby made a mistake, and Yan Bingtao cleared the table to win the super point, ending the stage of the showdown with a 9-7 lead.
In the third stage of the game that night, Yan Bingtao won two consecutive sets, with a big score of 11-7, further extending the lead. But in the next three sets, Selby grasped the mobile phone meeting, all of which were one-shot wins, 86 points in the 19th inning, 117 points in the 20th inning, and 88 points in the 21st inning, winning three consecutive sets to chase the big score to 10-11. In the crucial 22nd set, the two fought for 85 minutes, and finally won the match point with Yan Bingtao's black ball, taking the lead and leading 12-10. In the last set, Yan Bingtao won with one shot, completed the kill, the big score was fixed at 13-10, China's only seedling sent the defending champion, and the four-time champion Selby was out.
Yan Bingtao, who participated in the world championship for the fourth time, finally broke through again this year after entering the round of 16 for three consecutive years, and entered the top 8 for the first time in his career. In the quarter-finals, he will face The 8th seed Williams, who won the first two rounds, beating two of his fellow Wales 10-3 and 13-3 in a row. According to the schedule, the first stage of the two will start at 5 pm Beijing time on April 26, the second stage will be played at 2:00 am on April 27, the third stage will be decided at 9:30 pm on the same day, and the 1/4 final will still use the 25 sets and 13 win system.