Championship League: Fourth time lucky for Bingham in Group 4

We're at the halfway stage now overall of the Championship League and after Barry Hawkins and Matt Selt were the winners of groups 1 and 2 prior to the Masters and Ali Carter was the group winner earlier in the week, it was Stuart Bingham who was able to take the victory and put himself into the Winners Group, after beating Mark Davis in the final (who himself made the final of both groups this week and will be disappointed not to have won one).

To go back to the start of the second day of group four, Matthew Stevens was unable to get any wins from his three remaining games as he finished bottom of the group and was eliminated. Meanwhile, Ryan Day's only win of the day came against Stevens as he was the other player eliminated only managing two wins. A last gasp win for Mark Davis in the final round-robin match against Peter Ebdon saw him secure a place in the semi-finals in fourth place ahead of David Gilbert who was called in late on for this group.

Mark Davis then went on to play Peter Ebdon again in the semi-finals after a very brief break between games and he was the winner again getting over the line 3-1. Such was the length of the final round-robin match between Ebdon and Davis, Stuart Bingham and Michael White had pretty much completed their semi-final where Bingham was a quick 3-0 winner before the other semi even started leaving Stuart a rather long wait. Having played in all of the first three groups and losing the final of the first, Stuart would've been desperate to finally book his place in the Winners Group once his chance arrived and the long period sitting about before the final didn't upset his rhythm too much though and he was the victor 3-1 against Mark Davis. This is everything that happened yesterday in full:

What this all means is that when we come back again on Monday for group 5 of the Championship League at Crondon Park the seven players in competition will be the three new players coming in who are Ronnie O'Sullivan, Liang Wenbo and Fergal O'Brien while David Gilbert, Peter Ebdon, Michael White and Mark Davis are the four players that have come through from group 4. The stand out players there obviously are Ronnie O'Sullivan though it will be interesting to see how he plays in front of no-one with little inspiration while Mark Davis will want to make the Winners Group after his two group finals in the last week.

I'll be back all week next week again with updates from the Championship League groups 5 and 6 with of course my classic notepad pictures. Meanwhile, the Asian Tour 3 event that has also been going on this week is now down to four players ahead of tomorrow which sees the semi-finals and final where Mark Williams will take on Thepchaiya Un-Nooh with both players looking for tour finals spots by making the top 8 on the Order of Merit, while Tom Ford will take on Joe Perry with Joe already looking to be qualified in that top 8, while Tom Ford needs to win that one to qualify, and that would be huge for Tom as he looks to defend the money he earned two years ago by making the Players Championship semi-finals, so to not qualify would be a huge money loss.