The 2024 World Snooker Championship 1/8 finals will feature two key battles, in which world No. 1 O'Sullivan will face Ryan Day, who broke through from the qualifying round. The two have faced each other nine times before, with the Rockets leading 7-2. In this campaign, O'Sullivan scored a high score of 123 points in a single stroke in the first game, and maintained a leading posture throughout the whole game to advance.
After two stages of competition, O'Sullivan shot a total of 10 single-stroke 50+, and the score went from 2-0 4-2 6-3 to 10-4. However, Ryan Day did not give up and scored 70 points in a single stroke in two consecutive games. At this point, O'Sullivan led 10-6 into the third stage.
It is worth mentioning that the 48-year-old rocket is still young. This season, O'Sullivan has made a total of 54 appearances and participated in 10 events, including 6 finals, winning 5 titles (2 ranking matches + 3 invitational tournaments), and the winning rate is 78%. Coming to the World Championships, O'Sullivan easily advanced with 10-1 Page in the first round. In the second round, the two faced Ryan Day, who had met once at the 2006 World Championships, and O'Sullivan won 13-10. Now, the Rockets once again have the initiative to advance.
So far, O'Sullivan has 7 world championship titles, and the last time he won the championship was in 2022, O'Sullivan defeated Judd Trump, the No. 4 seed of the tournament, 18-13, and became the oldest world champion at the age of 46 years, 4 months and 28 days. Last year, the Rockets stopped in the top eight.
If O'Sullivan wins the championship this year, he will become the first snooker player in history to win 8 championships in the World Championships, the British Championships and the Masters.
Another big fight is Mark Allen vs. John Higgins. The match was also comparable to the matchup of the century, with the two having met 29 times and Allen leading 16-13. In the world rankings, Mark Allen is ranked 3rd and John Higgins is 17th. In the first game, Allen won with a single stroke and a hundred clean sheets, however, Higgins bit the score, Mark Allen fought all the way from 1-0 3-2 4-3 to 5-5; at the critical moment, Higgins won two games in a row to overtake the score 7-5, but Allen adjusted his state in time, and hit a single stroke of 70+ in four consecutive games, and once again overtook the score, and is currently leading 9-7.
Interestingly, the two have met twice before at the World Championships, with Higgins having the last laugh, the first time in the 2009 semi-finals, Higgins 17-13 Mark Allen, and the second time in the 2017 second round, Higgins 13-9 Mark Allen. Therefore, although Mark Allen has a temporary lead, it is still not to be taken lightly, and the counterattack of "The Wizard" is always caught off guard.
In addition, the top 8 of this World Championship have produced 4 seats. Judd Trump will compete with Jack Jones for a place in the semi-finals, while David Gilbert will face Stephen Maguire for a place in the semi-finals.