Not Ding's Day in Berlin

Defending champion Ding Junhui was sent home at the first hurdle at the final stages of the German Masters as Ryan Day came from 4-3 behind with Ding Junhui missing match ball to win the match 5-4 and get into the Last 16 on a cracking day of snooker at the Tempodrome in Berlin. Along with those matches in the morning was another two high quality affairs as Bingham beat Selt and Burden beat Georgiou. Meanwhile, the five afternoon games were one-sided ones that were over rather quickly (giving me enough time for an afternoon nap) as O'Sullivan looked in brilliant form on the TV table to beat Mark Davis 5-1 despite Davis having a century in the opening frame. Shaun Murphy continued his Masters winning form to beat Michael Wasley, while Mark Allen played well in seeing off Mark Williams. Joe Perry got the only whitewash of the afternoon as he destroyed Jimmy Robertson, while the all-Chinese affair saw Liang Wenbo beat Li Hang.

Meanwhile in the Evening session we saw the start of the Last 16 games, as the four second round ties from the bottom half were played out. What this saw was quite a large number of one-sided games once again as Neil Robertson got his second whitewash in Berlin in beating Xiao Guodong, while Judd Trump did lose a frame this time in his 5-1 win against Martin Gould. The 5-1 win for Mark Selby was much more comfortable than I'd have expected against Peter Ebdon, but it was still a match that lasted nearly 3 hours. Stephen Maguire was the other winner last night as he brought an end to the run of Mark King with a 5-2 win.

Yesterday's Last 32 Results:

Ryan Day 5-4 Ding Junhui
Alfie Burden 5-3 Michael Georgiou
Liang Wenbo 5-1 Li Hang
Stuart Bingham 5-3 Matt Selt
Mark Allen 5-2 Mark Williams
Shaun Murphy 5-1 Michael Wasley
Joe Perry 5-0 Jimmy Robertson
Ronnie O'Sullivan 5-1 Mark Davis

Yesterday's Last 16 Results:

Neil Robertson 5-0 Xiao Guodong
Stephen Maguire 5-2 Mark King
Judd Trump 5-1 Martin Gould
Mark Selby 5-1 Peter Ebdon

Today's Last 16 Preview: (Picks in Bold)

Ryan Day Vs Alfie Burden - Both of these guys were superb yesterday in their first round victories at the venue and both appear to be in pretty good form at the moment. Alfie Burden reached the quarter-finals of the Asian Tour event recently, and has actually won his meetings with Ryan Day, though the last of these was over two years ago so that's not too relevant. If Alfie plays like he did yesterday again today then he will surely push Ryan Day all the way here and has a great chance of reaching a big ranking quarter-final. Meanwhile, Ryan Day was brilliant in sticking with, and then eventually beating Ding Junhui to end the defending champions reign, and Ding Junhui was the only man who could stop him last season at the Tempodrome as the Welshman lost out in a semi-final deciding frame. A repeat of that run is certainly not out of the question, and it does seem that after a bit of a blip there for a time, that Ryan Day is back fairly close to his best game and I think that gives him the slight edge in this last 16 encounter.

Stuart Bingham Vs Liang Wenbo - Stuart Bingham is another guy in fantastic form at the moment after reaching the UK semi's and get his match sharpness up in the New Year by playing in the first four Championship League groups, and his performance against Matt Selt yesterday seemed to be quite brilliant with some great scoring from both players in pretty much all of the frames apart from the eighth and eventually final frame that did go on for nearly an hour on it's own. Stuart will be confident of winning this match, because these are the types of games that he is losing less and less of now that he can be considered one of the games top players, and he showed that yesterday in what was another very tricky game against Selt. Liang Wenbo has been in pretty inconsistent form for a while now however, and while he can play well one day, he equally play pretty poorly the next and that may well happen again today, and to be honest, there hasn't been much for Liang to shout about so far this season in terms of his tour results, and I can't really see that changing much here.

Shaun Murphy Vs Mark Allen - These two guys will be looking forward to the prospect of yet another big game against each other after their most recent semi-finals in last months Masters and last years Haikou World Open, both won by Shaun Murphy. Shaun is in superb form at the minute, and he showed that again with his scoring against Michael Wasley, and he knows that he will have to score very heavily again if he is to have any chance of beating his good friend Mark in another important game. Meanwhile, Mark Allen is also scoring very heavily, and he demonstrated that against Mark Williams yesterday and to be honest he didn't do a whole lot wrong in his last defeat to Shaun at the Masters, despite the score being 6-2 to Murphy such was how brilliantly he was playing. I think this match is more important though for Mark Allen though as he hunts down a piece of major silverware which is the only thing missing to his season so far, having already reached two full ranking event finals, but his scoring yesterday would suggest his form is as good now as it was during his very productive spell at the start of the season. Shaun's levels meanwhile probably won't be as intense as they were that week at Alexandra Palace and that was purely down to that extra determination from Shaun, which was probably as determined to win as I've ever seen him. It's bound to be a close encounter but I just fancy Mark to edge it this time.

Ronnie O'Sullivan Vs Joe Perry - When Joe Perry played Ronnie O'Sullivan at the World Championships over the much longer format of the best of 25 frames, Joe was ahead for much of the match against Ronnie, keeping the Rocket on the ropes and it was only in the last four frames that things turned and he lost the match 13-11. Today Joe will have much less time though between frames and sessions to think about the match overall and what he could achieve by beating O'Sullivan if he puts himself in that position. The one thing that hasn't changed since April is how well Joe is playing. He took the title at the Asian Tour event just a couple of weeks ago, and has continued that form on here by dominating Jimmy Robertson yesterday in that whitewash, and I fully expect Joe to give Ronnie another very good and close game. However, the one thing that good settle this match is the way that O'Sullivan could just get out in front at the start and totally dominate things, no matter how well Joe is playing which is what the current UK Champion did to Mark Davis who did little to nothing wrong in a 5-1 defeat. Ronnie was simply superb in that game and if he keeps that form up throughout the tournament he'll win it. It's as simple as that. Such form from O'Sullivan is unstoppable. He says he feels sharp and when O'Sullivan is sharp, beware the chasing pack.


Those matches are this afternoon and the winners of those games will be back on again this evening to play their quarter-final ties and the last 8 matches that are known so far are Neil Robertson Vs Stephen Maguire and Judd Trump Vs Mark Selby, so those already look like two cracking games and I'm pretty certain that there will be two more great affairs to join that. If I'm able to I will try and write a quick preview of the evening's quarter-finals after this afternoons games, but if I can't i'll definetly be back late on tonight with a look ahead to Semi-finals Saturday at the German Masters.