On January 8, Beijing time, the 2024 Snooker Masters kicked off, and the new world champion Luca Brecel and Lisowski started the opening match. In this game, Lisowski finally defeated Brecel 6-2 with a 5-shot 50+ and a single-shot performance of breaking 100 and advanced to the quarterfinals. And just tonight, the much-anticipated "Ding Olympics" will be staged again, and after the final of the British Championship, the two will face off again in one of the three major tournaments, the Masters.
The Snooker Masters and the World Championships, the British Championship and become one of the three major snooker tournaments, only the top 16 players in the world are eligible to be invited to participate in each season, and it is the most expensive invitational tournament, with a total prize of 720,000 pounds, a championship prize of 250,000 pounds, a runner-up of 100,000 pounds, a semi-final of 60,000 pounds, a quarter-finals of 30,000 pounds, the first round of knockouts is also 15,000 pounds, and the highest prize for a single stroke is 15,000 pounds.
Ding Junhui and O'Sullivan are also a pair of old rivals, the two have played against each other a total of 29 times in official competitions, and Ding Junhui has 7 wins and 22 losses, which is a big disadvantage. At the end of 2023, the two have also played against each other frequently in official and various invitational tournaments.
In the final of the 2023 British Championships, Ding Junhui defeated O'Sullivan 7-10 and won the runner-up in the British Championships for two consecutive years, witnessing O'Sullivan win the 8th British Championship trophy in his career. In the subsequent first round of the Macau Masters, Ding Junhui lost to the Rockets again 2-6.
Time to play me on New Year's Day 2024, the first game of the new year, Lhasa Invitational Ding Junhui challenged O'Sullivan again, this time Ding Junhui was in a slow state, falling behind with a score of 1-5, and then began to catch up, and finally won 5 games in a row to defeat O'Sullivan 6-5 to win the championship, and pocket the 125,000 pounds bonus. Although the victory in this game is not as important as the final of the British Championship, it more or less boosted Ding Junhui's confidence in defeating O'Sullivan in the next Masters.
The Masters is a long-established event, O'Sullivan has won the Masters 7 times before, and Ding Junhui also reached the final of the Masters in 2011, and defeated Hong Kong, China star Fu Jiajun in the final to win the first and only Masters championship in his career.
Previously, Ding Junhui and O'Sullivan had a total of 5 encounters in the Masters, and Ding Junhui lost all of them. 2005 Masters 1/4 finals, Ding Junhui 2:6 O'Sullivan, 2007 Masters finals, Ding Junhui 3:10 O'Sullivan, 2012 Masters first round, Ding Junhui 4:6 O'Sullivan, 2019 Masters semifinals, Ding Junhui 3:6 O'Sullivan, 2020 Masters first round, Ding Junhui 5:6 O'Sullivan.
This time after 4 years, we met again at the Masters, hoping that China's first brother Ding Junhui can defeat the biggest nemesis in his career O'Sullivan, break the curse of O'Sullivan's invincibility in the Masters, and surprise Chinese fans at the beginning of the new year, after all, it has been 12 years since he last won the Masters, and 12 years are a reincarnation, I hope Ding Junhui can hit the second Masters championship in 2024!