On the evening of April 5, Beijing time, the 23/24 Snooker World Tour Championship ushered in the semi-finals. In the first stage of the first semifinals, the No. 2 seed and world No. 1 O'Sullivan faced off against Gary Wilson, the No. 6 seed of the tournament, and O'Sullivan lost two games first, and the two sides drew 4-4, which can be described as evenly matched. The second phase of the best-of-19 format is still full of suspense.
O'sullivan
Rocket O'Sullivan has won 5 championships this season, the 2023 Shanghai Masters, the British Championship, the Masters, the 2024 World Grand Prix and the Riyadh Carnival Season Masters, 3 invitational tournaments and 2 ranking tournaments. He has won 8 consecutive championships in the British Championships and Masters, and he is only short of the World Championships to complete the "8 full championships" of the three major tournaments. Gary Wilson has also been in good form this season, having won both the Scottish Open and the Welsh Open, ranking 6th in a single season. The Rockets defeated Ali Carter 10-2 in the quarterfinals, and Gary Wilson eliminated Selby and Zhang Anda in two 10-8 successively.
Gary Wilson
O'Sullivan and Selby have only faced each other 5 times in their careers, the "Rocket" has the upper hand with 4 wins and 1 loss, and the 4 games won by the "Rocket" are all long game systems of 9 games and 5 wins and above, and only the one that loses is a short game system of 7 games and 4 wins, so the 19 games and 10 wins system looks more beneficial to O'Sullivan. The two sides had previously played a tie-break in the first round of the 2017 Snooker World Championship, when the "Rocket" won 10-7, which was the second meeting between the two sides this season, and in January in the 2024 Snooker World Grand Prix quarterfinals, O'Sullivan won 5-1.
After the opening, Gary Wilson took the lead in winning two games, Ronnie O'Sullivan scored 102 points in the third game to pull one back, and then in the fourth game O'Sullivan won through two hands, and the two sides were tied 2-2 at halftime.
After returning from the break, the Rockets continued to remain strong, winning with 110 points in a single stroke, 3-2. In the sixth game, O'Sullivan scored 53 points with a single stroke, and Gary Wilson accidentally fouled after scoring 40 points with a single stroke, and the Rockets won another game 80-40. In the seventh game, Gary Wilson won with a single stroke of 83 and stopped the decline, and O'Sullivan was 4-3. In the eighth game, Gary Wilson scored 84 points in a single stroke, and the two sides tied 4-4 in the first stage.
The second stage of the competition between the two sides will start at 02:00 tomorrow morning, pay attention to the author and enjoy the wonderful snooker event together.