I forgot slightly to write anything about the final. So I’m making a post a day late for completion’s sake.
Higgins vs Ding, 8-10
Oh, John. Oh, Ding!:):):):):):)
Snooker is SO STRANGE when you like everyone in it. Read the rest of this entry »
Day Nine – Final
14 December 2009 at 5:38 pm (snooker, uk championship 2009)
Tags: ding junhui, john higgins, snooker
Day WHATEVER JOHN HIGGINS, WHATEVER.
13 December 2009 at 3:24 am (snooker, uk championship 2009)
Tags: jan verhaas, john higgins, ronnie o'sullivan, snooker
It’s day eight. UK Championship, Semi final 2.
I watched this evening’s snooker with my sisters, so I wasn’t near a computer, which is as well, because I was furious. Pretty much from the mid-session interval onwards. Before that. Forever. The last ten years I have spent being cross with John Higgins and/or everybody who says anything about John Higgins that isn’t along the lines of ‘he’ll probably miss this’.
Day Eight – Semi Final 2
12 December 2009 at 5:25 pm (snooker, uk championship 2009)
Tags: john higgins, ronnie o'sullivan, snooker
OH SNOOKER. In the stats Ronnie has won most times these two have met, but they’ve never met in a UK. And recently John has a good record against Ronnie I think, from what I remember, which is always suspect. And in ranking tournaments John has beaten Ronnie 12 matches to 6, and in semi finals he’s won 4 to 2. Because John Higgins really does play better when he needs to. It’s a fantastic thing.
John vs Ronnie, 6-2
6-2 means NOTHING, let me just say so. But I don’t care because it is like a proper match and I love them, I love when real people play each other. They’re both well shaved, and wearing white shirts and neat bow ties, and Ronnie’s shirt is all properly tucked in, as if they’re all set up to be made into comparison pictures with their younger selves. When everyone was neat.
Day Seven – Semi Final 1
12 December 2009 at 1:14 am (snooker, uk championship 2009)
Tags: ding junhui, snooker, stephen maguire
Hazel tested Ken and Steve on how much they knew about Telford, but really it was about darts. And Ted Hankey came and said that the darts players do always mean to come and see the snooker, it’s just usually easier for snooker players to come to the darts. It looked a little bit like Barry Hearn was forcing his darts children to make friends with his new children so that they could all have a big pub-games party together. But that’s quite well. I wish Martin Adams would come and play snooker. Or at least watch. He’s better than Damien Hurst. (Damien Hurst has been hanging out with Ronnie and watching snooker, that is not just a random ranking of celebrities.)
Ding vs Maguire, 9-5
Willie Thorne wore brown to commentate this match. Read the rest of this entry »
Day Six – Evening
11 December 2009 at 1:03 am (snooker, uk championship 2009)
Tags: snooker
YAY SNOOKER ♥
Higgins vs Liang, 9-2
O’Sullivan vs Selby, 9-3
Both semis are really really tough to pick a winner for. What I would like most is Ding vs Higgins. What I think will actually happen is Maguire vs O’Sullivan and I like that too.
I know John usually plays really well against Ronnie, I do hope it’s a good good match, but I think Ronnie’s due a win really. And Ding vs Maguire could do anything, and they both deserve finals, and I don’t know. Maybe one of them will show up surprisingly alive and awake and whatnot.
Day Six – Afternoon
10 December 2009 at 5:57 pm (snooker, uk championship 2009)
Tags: john higgins, ronnie o'sullivan, snooker
Afternoon sessions are all about keeping things possible. And both matches did that. I like snooker so far. It’s World Champions 6, Other People 2. Everyone’s wearing beautiful white shirts today except Mark Selby, but Mark Selby had all his stuff stolen from his hotel so I’m trying not to judge him for his wardrobe choices.
Higgins vs Liang, 6-2
John Higgins won the first frame with a big break thing, and the commentators (Ken and John Virgo) pretended that it’s a great start for him, but it’s not, it’s the worst start possible. He’ll probably lose the next 7 frames out of confusion.
“Another surprising miss from John Higgins.” You can’t go through your life being surprised when John Higgins misses things, John Virgo. It’ll exhaust you. He didn’t miss many things, though. He made some centuries and everything. It was nice. He didn’t lose the next seven frames, he went to 5-0 instead. I like 5-0.
Day Five – Evening
9 December 2009 at 11:25 pm (snooker, uk championship 2009)
Tags: ali carter, ding junhui, peter lines, snooker, stephen maguire
The snooker has separated itself out into two distinct halves. Basically there is this half, and then the Better Half. I’m not saying these people are entirely useless at snooker, but they’re not exactly glittering, and if you matched them up against O’Sullivan, Higgins, Selby and Liang, I think we’d lose them all quite quickly. But then there is the thing where they don’t actually need to glitter yet, so they don’t, because they do that thing that snooker players do where they only get better when they need to, but actually actually only John Higgins and O’Sullivan actually do that any more, so I don’t believe it’s what’s happening. Everyone in this half looks very tired. Really EVERYONE looks very tired. But particularly this lot. Maybe they’ll cheer up in a couple of days for their semi.
(If the bbc have gone and spoken to Liang Wenbo and discovered that actually his family name is Wenbo and they’ve been slightly wrong for a while, then that is totally great. But if they haven’t, and his family name is Liang as we believe it to be, then it’s getting to the stage now where they could REMEMBER THAT for more than ten seconds at a time. I don’t understand why they find it so difficult.)
The camera people are obsessed with close up shots of snooker balls again, and while they are quite pretty and shiny and lovely colours, but it isn’t very helpful in knowing what is going on in a snooker match, when all you can see is the pack of reds and then they suddenly explode.
Day Five – Afternoon
9 December 2009 at 6:56 pm (snooker, uk championship 2009)
Tags: snooker
Carter vs Ding, 4-4
I at sticking up for whoever lost the last frame. It’s the only way I could make a decision to stick up for anyone. Mostly this meant I spent a long time sticking up for Ding, and then a long time sticking up for Carter.
Hazel asked Ken and John Parrott if really Ali Carter having a baby had been a terrible/catastrophic career choice, and they both just took the opportunity to say how lovely it was to have a baby and how you were suddenly ‘blessed by god’ (JP) and ‘complete’ (KD). Read the rest of this entry »
Day Four
9 December 2009 at 3:35 am (snooker, uk championship 2009)
Tags: john higgins, mark selby, neil robertson, o'sullivan, shaun murphy, snooker, stephen hendry
I’ve been with family today so snooker has mostly been a background thing. A soul destroying very tense and awful background thing in a couple of cases. I didn’t see a lot of the real coverage; I am totally missing Hazel a lot this week. But they did a build up to Ronnie vs Ebdon, and re-showed bits of the most amazing match ever seen on television and everything, (Ronnie had a slight breakdown because Ebdon was sucking his life spirit away and Ebdon played in slow motion and Ronnie climbed on chairs and died inside and nobody knew what to say or what to do and OH GOD I LOVE SNOOKER). And sometimes I feel like that was a mass delusion because it doesn’t seem real, but it was all there and wow. It feels like much longer ago than 2005.
O’Sullivan vs Ebdon, 9-3
Day Three – Evening
8 December 2009 at 1:49 pm (snooker, uk championship 2009)
Tags: snooker
Hendry vs Selby, 3-5
This is not as bad as I thought it might go. Mostly if you try to concentrate on every shot that Hendry takes then you end up giving up or forgetting to after about 30 points, and that’s just sitting at home being comfortable and unpressurised. Being Stephen Hendry and having to remember not to stop concentrating must be nearly impossible.
Did anything exciting happen in this match? I can’t remember. Stephen Hendry smiled a bit. I hope he’s much more cross today. He’s good when he’s cross.
Day Three – Afternoon
7 December 2009 at 7:52 pm (snooker, uk championship 2009)
Tags: hendry, john higgins, matthew stevens, o'sullivan, snooker, uk championship 2009
Today is brilliant at putting on snooker I love, and everyone is playing on tables where I can see them, and all is good. Obviously nobody I love will win snooker, but apart from that. I’m feeling quite calm about that.
O’Sullivan vs Stevens, 5-3
Dennis and Ken commentated on this. When it looked like going 4-4 they totally thought that was a fair reflection of the match, but then it went 5-3 and they thought that was fair too. Because in a lot of ways the ACTUAL SCORELINE is a quite fair scoreline really, it’s how the game is designed.
Day Two – Evening
7 December 2009 at 12:14 am (snooker, uk championship 2009)
Tags: snooker, uk championship 2009
Evening session
Selby vs Cope, 9-8 – UGH UGH UGH UGUHSGHSKHGH. Read the rest of this entry »
Day Two – afternoon
6 December 2009 at 7:35 pm (snooker, uk championship 2009)
Tags: hendry, higgins, snooker, uk championship 2009
I missed the start of the bbc 2 coverage when they made Hendry and Davis say nice things about each other. Hmph.
Early afternoon
Hendry vs Davis, 4-4
Steve Davis went 17 points in the lead in the first frame and then missed a ball and Dennis said that he couldn’t really see Steve Davis recovering from losing this frame. He did lose that frame; Hendry got a century and it was lovely. But astonishingly Steve Davis recovered.
(I don’t understand who designed the set, do you call it a set, you probably don’t, arena. Is snooker in such a state that it can only afford the UGLIEST grey carpet I have ever seen? Do Pukka Pies really think grey and orange and red is a winning colour combination? GREY IS NOT A COLOUR YOU WANT NEAR A PIE, or near either red or orange. They could at least have gone for a nice seventies feel of brown and orange, that would be okay.)
Day One
5 December 2009 at 11:46 pm (snooker, uk championship 2009)
Tags: snooker, uk championship 2009
I did not watch a lot of the snooker today. Some of it just wasn’t on tables that I was allowed to see, and for a huge bit of the day there just wasn’t any snooker on freeview at all. So I watched Star Trek and Come Dancing instead. But with snooker in the background.
Actual results (only not, because I am too lazy to wait for matches to finish):
Murphy vs Greene – I don’t think this has finished yet, but Murphy is going to win it. And this is a sad thing.
Maguire vs Holt – This hasn’t finished yet either. It’s at 8-6 to Maguire. I really really like Stephen Maguire but I am incapable now of sticking up for him in any match he plays, because he seemingly has no intention of ever finishing tournaments, so I consider him a bit of a waste of hope and care. And most of the people I stick up for are a *complete* waste of hope and care, so it’s not just that, it’s that it’s no good letting him knock perfectly good players out if he’s then going to collapse and let people I hate win tournaments. So I’m not sticking up for him and he’s winning. Whatever, Maguire. I really like Holt as well, I’m not just sticking up for him because he’s not Maguire. I think it’s hilarious that they’re playing each other, the entire match is actually just a montage of both of them returning to their seats judging themselves for another opportunity missed, or looking down at the table at the appalling positional shot they just played and sighing the sigh of a person who does that to themselves quite often. They’re well suited, but also quite depressing.
UK Championships 2009
5 December 2009 at 2:20 pm (snooker, uk championship 2009, Uncategorized)
Tags: snooker, uk championship 2009
I thought I might make a few posts about the UK Championship, if maybe not in as much detail as April. Snooker is about to start. I’m so happy. I won’t be happy tomorrow when Hendry, Higgins and Williams have all taken the first opportunity to lose. But for now they are going to play snooker for my amusement and delight.
Hazel is going to explain Barry Hearn to us in small words. I don’t have a cursor. That’s not about snooker, I just want you to know how hard my life is.
The draw means that we can have quarter finals of Liang vs Higgins, Hendry vs Stevens, Williams vs Holt and Carter vs Ding. That is what I would like please. It’s so entirely not snooker’s plan, but would be absolute love. My lower hopes are just that they don’t let Murphy win it again by mistake.
