What an outstanding day of play .
We saw every player bring their A Game and every single match was played out with skill and determination.
We witnessed some very close calls with it going to deciding frames even for Judd Trump who won 5 ranking title events last season against Mitchell Mann who won 3-2 over Mann.
Spectators who were welcomed to the venue in Leicester today were also very lucky to see first hand the last winner of The British open back in 2004 being John Higgins achieve a 147 against Alexander Ursenbacher in this afternoons match.
There was always going to be pressure on players Including Reanne Evans the 12-time Women’s World Champion who is competing on this season Professional tour and held her nerve and delivered an outstanding performance and proved why she has earnt her place on the Tour through her skill and determination against Mark Allen former Masters Champion who is ranked number 10 in the World who also showed his pure professionalism and sportsmanship at every point in the match regardless of what is being discussed off the table which has been heavily featured ahead of their match today. Todays match was always going to be a tense one and we weren’t disappointed with the match going to a deciding frame which saw Allen winning 3-2 over Evans
With a winners cheque of £100,000 and Trophy all to play for we can expect some some outstanding matches still to come in the next few days.
Todays results in the best of 5 frames.
| Robbie Williams | 3 | v | 1 | Sunny Akani |
| Steven Hallworth | 2 | v | 3 | Joe O’Connor |
| Xu Si | 3 | v | 2 | Fan Zhengyi |
| Zhang Anda | 1 | v | 3 | John J Astley |
| Liang Wenbo | 3 | v | 1 | Simon Lichtenberg |
| Andrew Higginson | 2 | v | 3 | Jordan Brown |
| Dylan Emery | 3 | v | 2 | Gao Yang |
| Jak Jones | 3 | v | 2 | Lyu Haotian |
| Alexander Ursenbacher | 1 | v | 3 | John Higgins |
| Yuan SiJun | 2 | v | 3 | Louis Heathcote |
| Ben Woollaston | 2 | v | 3 | Hammad Miah |
| Chen Zifan | 3 | v | 0 | Farakh Ajaib |
| Zak Surety | 0 | v | 3 | Ken Doherty |
| Gerard Greene | 2 | v | 3 | Martin O’Donnell |
| Mark Williams | 3 | v | 0 | Tian Pengfei |
| Aaron Hill | 0 | v | 3 | Jimmy White |
| Matthew Selt | 3 | v | 2 | Thepchaiya Un-Nooh |
| Mitchell Mann | 2 | v | 3 | Judd Trump |
| Ashley Carty | 0 | v | 3 | Bai Langning |
| David Lilley | 3 | v | 1 | Craig Steadman |
| Ian Burns | 3 | v | 1 | Michael White |
| Stuart Carrington | 0 | v | 3 | Liam Highfield |
| Mark Allen | 3 | v | 2 | Reanne Evans |
| Zhou Yuelong | 3 | v | 2 | Tom Ford |
It all commences again tomorrow at 9am where we see the next set of 48 players competing
| Lu Ning | v | Igor Figueiredo |
| Lee Walker | v | Sanderson Lam |
| Dominic Dale | v | Xiao Guodong |
| Wu Yize | v | Fraser Patrick |
| Anthony McGill | v | Zhao Jianbo |
| David Grace | v | Mark Lloyd |
| Andy Hicks | v | Chang Bingyu |
| Zhang Jiankang | v | Peter Lines |
| Ashley Hugill | v | Kyren Wilson |
| Elliot Slessor | v | Peter Devlin |
| Jimmy Robertson | v | Mark Joyce |
| Joe Perry | v | Ben Hancorn |
| Iulian Boiko | v | Anthony Hamilton |
| Dean Young | v | Scott Donaldson |
| Stephen Maguire | v | Jackson Page |
| Jack Lisowski | v | Barry Pinches |
| James Cahill | v | Ricky Walden |
| Michael Holt | v | Mark Davis |
| Michael Judge | v | Andrew Pagett |
| Mark Selby | v | Shaun Murphy |
| Jamie Jones | v | Hossein Vafaei |
| Ross Muir | v | Ryan Day |
| Chris Wakelin | v | Stephen Hendry |
| David Gilbert | v | Matthew Stevens |
