On the evening of April 6, Beijing time, the 23/24 World Snooker Tour Championship ushered in the second semi-final matchup. At the end of the first half of the first stage, the No. 8 seed "Golden Left Hand" Mark Williams was still young, and the attack and defense were both good and the No. 5 seed Mark Allen of the tournament was 4-0 clean sheet, and entered the halftime break.
Mark Allen is currently ranked 3rd in the world, and has won 3 championships this season, 1 invitational tournament and 2 ranking tournaments: the 2023 Champion of the Champions, the single-game limited-time tournament and the 2024 Players Championship, and is the player who has won the most championships in addition to O'Sullivan and Trump, ranking 5th in a single season.
Mark Allen
Mark Williams, one of the "Big 75", is still in high form. He won one British Open title this season and is currently ranked 8th in the world and 8th in a single season.
Mark Williams
On the way to promotion, Mark Allen eliminated the world champion Higgins 10-7 in the first round, and reversed China's first brother Ding Junhui 10-8 in the quarterfinals. Mark Williams narrowly defeated Tom Forde 10-9 in the first round and beat top seed Judd Trump 10-4 in the quarterfinals.
The two sides have played each other 22 times in their careers, and the "small steel cannon" has the upper hand with 14 wins, 1 draw and 7 losses, and in the 11 long-game battles between the two sides with 9 rounds and 5 wins and above, Allen is also in an advantage with 7 wins and 4 losses. This is the second meeting between the two sides this season - in the first round of the 2024 Snooker Players Championship, "Little Steel Cannon" won 6-3, this is the first time that the two sides have met in 19 rounds and 10 wins, and it is also the first tour championship matchup, which can also be said to be the pinnacle duel between the 70s and 80 generations.
In addition, Mark Allen scored 142 points in a single stroke in the 10th game against Ding Junhui, which is also the highest single score in this tournament so far. Mark Allen also topped the list with 6 strokes in this tournament, and his career 100 strokes also reached 616, continuing to rank 10th in the all-time single-stroke 100 list, only 7 strokes away from the previous Mark Williams (623).
In the first game, Mark Williams scored 57 points in a single stroke and took the lead in the first game.
In the second game, Mark Allen scored 50 points and made a turnover, and Mark Williams got back on the game to finally win 69-50.
In the third game, entering the defensive battle, Mark Williams scored 23 points without scoring a goal and relying on defense. Then he scored 99 points in a single stroke. In this game, Mark Williams was really both offensive and defensive, and Allen had no temper. 3-0。
In the fourth game, Mark Williams relied on defense to get offensive opportunities, scored 105 points in a single stroke, and entered the halftime break 4-0 in the first half.
In the first half of the first period, Mark Williams played a textbook game with both offense and defense. It felt like Mark Allen was solving the ball all the game and didn't have a temper at all. I have to say that the reasonableness of Mark Williams' play is very worthy of Ding Junhui's learning, attacking when attacking, and defending when defending. Mark Allen is in danger tonight!