After the end of the 2022 Snooker World Championships, the schedule of the season has also completely come to an end and entered the off-season of about two months, and the players can rarely have a comfortable leisure time.
The Chinese snooker legion has performed remarkably well this season and won three tournaments (Zhao Xintong's British Championship and German Masters, Fan Zhengyi's European Masters), and Zhao Xintong, Yan Bingtao, Zhou Yuelong and Ding Junhui ranked 32nd in the world in the year-end rankings.
Among them, the new generation of young player Yan Bingtao through the world championship eight performance allowed him to keep his top 16 ranking, but due to the style of play Yan Bingtao during the world championships encountered a lot of controversy, the outside world is claimed that he is the snooker sport China snooker "grind king".
Born in 2000, Yan Bingtao is an uncompromising post-00s Chinese teenager, winning his first ranking championship in 2019, and defeating the best player in history, John Higgins, to win the first three major championships of his career in the final of the Masters last season.
However, in the past two seasons, yan Bingtao's pace of play has become slower and slower, this style of play has also been greatly criticized by domestic fans, and his performance in the World Championships has also suffered a lot of ridicule, and Yan Bingtao, who is spending his offseason recently, also publicly responded to this matter in an interview.
After the end of the World Championships, Yan Bingtao conducted a video link interview at his home in the United Kingdom and a domestic media, and in this interview, when he was dissatisfied with the domestic fans' dissatisfaction with his style of playing called "China's version of Selby", Yan Bingtao also showed the advantages of his playing style.
Yan Bingtao said: "Every player has a suitable way of playing, I was instilled in the concept of defense since I was a child, at that time I understood that I needed to win in the offensive and defensive conversion. Offensive fluency requires a lot of talent, which I can't make up for, but I can build my own advantage through defense.
I can't play as fast-paced as O'Sullivan and Zhao Xintong, otherwise there will be a lot of mistakes on the field, which will lead to more games being lost, not everyone can be called a genius like them, I don't want to compare with them, I just want to win the game my own way.
It can be seen that Yan Bingtao is also very familiar with the controversy of the outside world, but considering his own reasons, there is no way to have too high appreciation like O'Sullivan and others, and as Yan Bingtao said, not everyone is a genius who can win the recognition of fans through gorgeous playing style like O'Sullivan Zhao Xintong and others.
Although Yan Bingtao's playing style is not recognized by most people, we have to admit that Yan Bingtao is the most stable player in the Chinese snooker army in the past two seasons, and this season is the Chinese player who has reached the top eight and the top four, which is enough to prove Yan Bingtao's strength.