UK Championship 2021

[itsnoteasy]

Fantastic, two great semis today fingers crossed for tomorrow.

[Odrl]

A surprising final for sure, but both players are definitely playing at a level worthy of winning the UK title. Looking forward to tomorrow.

[Stony152]

26th ranked player vs 40th ranked player. Has there ever been anything close to this in any ranking final? Or at least triple crown final.

[Stony152]

A surprising final for sure, but both players are definitely playing at a level worthy of winning the UK title. Looking forward to tomorrow.

I think their (Zhao and Brecel) combined pot success today must have been close to 95%. Basically peak Ronnie.

[Odrl]

26th ranked player vs 40th ranked player. Has there ever been anything close to this in any ranking final? Or at least triple crown final.

Obviously it can't happen in the Masters. The 2005 UK Championship had Steve Davis as the 16th seed against Ding Junhui who was ranked 62nd at the time. I think that's probably the closest comparison in terms of the rankings of the two finalists. Of course finals like that are much more common in the short format.

[PatBlock]

Really looking forward to tomorrow's match, but just a bit worried that one of them is going to look down and suddenly realise how high up they are. Oh well, fingers crossed it's neither or both.

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[balkend]

Really looking forward to tomorrow's match, but just a bit worried that one of them is going to look down and suddenly realise how high up they are. Oh well, fingers crossed it's neither or both.

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Well I hope they "Don't Panic"

[PatBlock]

Well I hope they "Don't Panic"

Haha yes, lets hope so.

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[DeanH]

Does anybody know where I can find the stats for today's Brecel match? Cuetracker has the points scored by frame and a few other things, but not percentage of balls potted and some of the other stats that the BBC displays during matches. I'm mostly interested in how many balls potted and how many shots he missed.

His lowest break in the 6 frames that he won was 80. That has to be some kind of record. If he plays at close to this level tomorrow he'll win the title.

I believe these stats are by a person behind the scenes at the venue and not on any site externally

[PatBlock]

I believe these stats are by a person behind the scenes at the venue and not on any site externally

That's a shame. Wouldn't it be great if snooker had it's own Wisden.

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[Stony152]

I believe these stats are by a person behind the scenes at the venue and not on any site externally

So there is no way to find out career or individual match number of balls potted and number of pots attempted? Or a list of all time best matches by percentage of balls potted? That's hard to believe.

[DeanH]

So there is no way to find out career or individual match number of balls potted and number of pots attempted? Or a list of all time best matches by percentage of balls potted? That's hard to believe.

not hard to believe at all, as usual it all comes down to money, some events get a budget for such a person to do the tally, most do not.
If there is a site of such data, as well you know me, I would be the first to have a look

[Stony152]

not hard to believe at all, as usual it all comes down to money, some events get a budget for such a person to do the tally, most do not.
If there is a site of such data, as well you know me, I would be the first to have a look

So are you saying that the data exists but just hasn't been collated or that it's gone forever. Cuetracker is actually pretty good. They have historical matches and frames won. For the latest matches they have frame scores, average time per shot and H2H record. Of course there is snooker.org which has been my go to site for going on 20 years. But it seems like pot success is the one thing that's just not out there. I read somewhere that there is a famous 99% performance and that Brecel's 96% yesterday is barely in the top 100 all time. That there have been a number of 97% matches. I can't remember if I read that here or somewhere else. I think that % of frames won is a decent metric for ranking players, but career pot percentage would be a fascinating list to look at. Like scoring average in darts. I think it would show that the standard of play today is much higher than it was in the 80s or even 90s.

[trains]

Lost in all of this is the fact that Tom Ford was 5-4 ahead of Brecel in the second round and Brecel barely won the 10th frame 61-45. It just shows how one or two frames can completely change a career. If he had lost one of those last two frames we'd still be talking about his unfulfilled potential. Now this run my still be a blip in the radar, but I think he's going to use this as a stepping stone to be a very good player over the next 10-15 years.

Same with Zhou. Won a decider 73-66 against Un-Nooh in the 2nd round. Then he came back from 5-3 down against Higgins in the 3rd round. Lose any of those four frames and his season would have continued to be the disaster that it had been up to that point. So now we have all of these narratives and superlatives about the two players, where they really needed some luck to advance beyond the second round. I guess that's sports.

zhao had some run of the ball against peter lines too according to lines facial expressions and murphy's commentary , and outside of these two finalists the born in the 90's duck would likely only be broken from the english angle by wilson and lisowski , two players who had a pro career on a plate so kind of the same old same old really.

[Odrl]

I think the average pot success numbers have gone up over the years, but I wouldn't necessarily say it's because the standard of play is higher. It's basically still mostly the same players at the top of the game, but the % is higher for everyone because the conditions for breakbuilding are much better. For instance, you will see a huge inflation of centuries per frame in recent years, even though the average age of top players is getting higher and higher. It's hard to believe this group of players have somehow drastically improved their technical ability compared to their younger years.