At 17:00 on April 23, Beijing time, the first round of the 23/24 World Snooker Championship continued at the Crucible Grand Theater. Ding Junhui, the godfather of Chinese snooker, appeared on the stage and launched an attack on his 18th World Snooker Championship.
Ding Junhui made his debut in the background music accompanied by a laugh from the sea. From 2007 to 2023, Ding Junhui participated in the main event of the World Championships 17 times in a row, and won 0 championships, 1 runner-up, 2 top 4 times, 3 top 8 times, 5 top 16 times, and 6 first-round exits. During this period, Ding Junhui played a total of 38 games in Crucible, with a record of 21 wins and 17 losses, with a winning rate of 55.26%. But since he reached the finals in 2016, Ding Junhui's record has only fallen but not risen, and he has not been able to play better results than the previous year every year.
Ding Junhui has 14 ranking tournament championships and 4 three-major championships in his career, and the only thing missing the Grand Slam puzzle is the World Championships. This season, Ding Junhui has reached the finals of the ranking tournament twice and won the runner-up, and has reached the semi-finals and quarterfinals once in other tournaments, and is currently ranked 7th in the world.
The first round opponent is the top seed in qualifying, Jack Lisowski. A typical offensive player who has won six ranking tournaments in his career and missed out on the championship. This season, the results have been even more mediocre, with only one semi-final, two quarter-finals, and even two months without a match since the second round of the Welsh Open. He is currently ranked 17th in the world. The two sides have only met three times before on the tour, and "Chinese Dragon" has won all of them, and the last meeting between the two sides was the 2019 World Snooker Grand Prix, when Ding Junhui won 4-1. Lisowski started from the qualifying round and was in good shape, 10-4 Liu Hongyu and 10-3 Stevens advanced to the main event.
At the beginning of the game, in the first game, Ding Junhui fainted and killed the Quartet, angrily slashing a single stroke of 127 points to clear the stage. In the second game, Ding Junhui was blessed by the goddess of luck, and 3 libraries were stunned by the opponent, and then hit 60 points in a single stroke, completing two lightning whips. Subsequently, the "little driver" returned with 2 shots of 70+, pulled back 2 games, and entered the halftime break with a big score of 2-2.