Mark Williams of Wales competes during the third round match against Mark Allen of Northern Ireland at 2018 World Snooker China Open tournament in Beijing, capital of China, April 5, 2018. (Xinhua/Zhang Chenlin)
BEIJING, April 5 (Xinhua) -- Mark Williams and defending champion Mark Selby advanced to the last eight of the World Snooker China Open here on Wednesday night.
All five remaining Chinese players including home favorite Ding Junhui were eliminated.
Welsh Potting Machine started his night session clash against Mark Allen with a break of 130.
After the dramatic race ball after the 84-84 tie in the third frame Williams was leading by 3-0. But Allen won four out of the five following frames to tie 4-4. After exchanging one frames with each other, Allen missed a crucial chance before Williams took the victory with a 67-point break in the decider.
"Well we are competing. We've won a lot of tournaments. Probably, should we be competing with the youngsters? I suppose not. But I suppose for some reason, the three of us are still doing quite well," answered Williams to the question about him, Ronnie O' sullivan and John Higgins.
"They two are doing much better than me, but I come back into a bit of form as well. And the three of us - I think they're 42, I'm 43 - and we're still winning tournaments. So, how long we can keep winning tournaments, I don't know. Just see it year by year and what happens."
World No. 1 and defending champion Mark Selby was one of the five who eliminated the home players. He had two century breaks to win Lyu Haotian 6-1.
Zhou Yuelong lost to Neil Robertson 1-6. Luo Honghao, who started from the prequalifies and enjoyed four consecutive victories, failed to move one step further after the 2-6 loss against Tom Ford. Cao Yupeng once led by 5-2 before Barry Hawkins won four frames in the row.
Home favorite Ding Junhui tied the match 5-5 after wasting a 4-2 lead on Kyren Wilson, but he missed a pink after leading by 61-0 in the decider and the latter finished the match with a 67-point break.
Stuart Bingham won the clash between two world champions by defeating Dott 6-2, Jack Lisowski ordered a quarterfinal berth after beating Gary Wilson 6-2.
