Selby Takes Group Five

Group Five

THE FINAL
Barry Hawkins 0 – 3 Mark Selby
0-83 (Selby 82), 35-93 (Selby 59), 16-97 (Selby 97)

SEMI-FINALS
Dave Gilbert 0 – 3 Barry Hawkins
33-90 (Hawkins 90), 0-81 (Hawkins 77), 53-62

Stephen Maguire 2 – 3 Mark Selby
124-13 (Maguire 124), 6-111 (Selby 98), 77-0 (Maguire 77), 39-68, 0-76 (Selby 50)

Mark Selby overcame a stubborn Stephen Maguire before easing past Barry Hawkins to claim the honours at Championship League Snooker as Group Five played out in the Ricoh Arena, Coventry.
World No.1 Selby had started out the group yesterday with just one win from his first four matches.

However, he recorded wins over Anthony McGill and Joe Perry to make it into the top four and the play-off stages on ‘frames won’. The Leicester man then edged past Maguire in a heavy scoring affair before beating Hawkins with telling breaks of 82, 59 and 97.

Commented Selby, “At one stage, I’d played four games, won one and was looking like I was going out the group. I won the last two to get in the top four but that’s the beauty of this tournament though; one minute it looks like you’re going out and the next, you’re the top of the group’

“It’s 15 to 20 minutes just down the road for me, great match practice playing the top players in the world so it’s a win win for me.

The winners’ group is going to be tough; the players who have won the groups so far are all top class players so I’m looking forward to it.”

Earlier, an in-form David Gilbert recorded the 147th maximum break in snooker history. The elusive 147th 147 had been on the cards for some time now and it was Gilbert who the honour fell to. He collected £500 for the group’s high break prize.

Selby will now join Stuart Bingham, Neil Robertson, Jack Lisowski, and Judd Trump in the Winners’ Group, which takes place at Barnsley Metrodome on March 13th and 14th. They will be joined by the winners of the next two groups.

Having finished fifth in the round robin group table, Ali Carter will return to compete in Group Six along with Hawkins, Maguire and Gilbert. They will be joined with Mark Davis, Xiao Guodong and Martin Gould.

Championship League Snooker is a venture between Matchroom Sport and Perform where 25 of the game’s elite players compete with matches on a host of betting websites and on zhibo.tv, one of the biggest sports streaming platforms in China.

Each group features seven players with each man playing the other six once in a round-robin basis. Every match is the best of five and the winner gains one point with the loser getting zero.

At the end of the league phase the top four advances to that group’s semi-finals before the two winners meet in the final and the group champion advances to the Winners’ Group in March. The losing finalist, two losing semi-finalists and player finishing fifth move into the next group where they are joined by three new players and the process is repeated.

Group Six commences at 11am on Wednesday January 23rd. Live scoring can be found at www.worldsnooker.com. Group fixtures and results can be found at https://championshipleaguesnooker.co.uk/