Championship League Group 6: Day 1

It was a fairly mixed day yesterday at the Championship League in terms of the day one table in group 6, and it really is anyone's group to win in many respects as the everyone is beating everyone in this group and there is no one stand out top quality player that lights up this group, just several top 32 players who are all great on their day.

This came after the withdrawal late on Tuesday night of Ronnie O'Sullivan who'd made the group 5 final, while Martin Gould had pulled out slightly earlier and the pair were replaced by Ben Woollaston and Rod Lawler.

After day one it is Rod Lawler and Ben Woollaston who currently make up the bottom two in the league. Rod has in fact only won two frames in his three matches combined and both of those came in his match with Peter Ebdon which finished at roughly 10.30pm after an 8pm start for a best of 5. Meanwhile, Ben Woollaston had a mixed day losing two matches 3-0, but winning his only match in three on the day 3-0 also. He's only behind Kurt Maflin by one frame won as Maflin has won one match, but his has come in four matches so he has more work to do. Dominic Dale and David Gilbert are the next two players up as they have both won two matches our of three so far and are looking in good early positions for a semi-final spot, but need to continue their good play today. Finally, our top two after day one of the group are Peter Ebdon and Fergal O'Brien who have each won three matches out of their four, with Ebdon's only defeat coming to O'Brien while Fergal's was against Gilbert.

One of the stand out points from yesterdays play was that out of the 12 matches played on day one yesterday, there was only one decider, three 3-1 results while the other eight were all 3-0 whitewashes which just signals that this group is wide open and anything can happen today. This is my classic notepad picture of all those results:

That means, looking ahead to today, that Fergal O'Brien and Peter Ebdon are looking very good for semi-final spots and only need one more win to absolutely guarantee those spots, though they may already have enough wins, depending on how things turn out. Dominic Dale and David Gilbert both have two points with three games left, so will be targeting at least the one win, but know that if they can repeat yesterdays performance and get two from three that they'll be in the semi-finals for sure. Kurt Maflin meanwhile needs to win both of his last two games just to avoid elimination you feel, though one win may be able to see him scrape into group 7 in a couple of weeks. Ben Woollaston will also be targeting a couple of wins to guarantee safety, but he has the extra leeway of three games to get them within, so while he's still up against it, he's not in the same boat as Kurt. Finally, Rod Lawler is in serious trouble and has to win at least two of his remaining three games to have any chance, but for two wins to be enough to survive elimination he'll have to win those games very convincingly after his poor results yesterday, and he'll need to get a frame or two on the board in a match if he does end up losing it today.

That's everything from me today, and i'll be back at some stage tomorrow to round-up the results from today and reveal the sixth man through to the winners group.