Betfred World Championship (Sat April 18th) Last 32 !!

Snooker Overdrive wrote:Where are andre and wild? We need them here now!

Sorry mate but I was away when the match started and I had no Internet acess where I was.

But I did watch most of 2nd session, in fact I watched the whole thing fro 8-4 to Selby and all I can say is WHAT A MATCH THAT WAS!

It had a bit of everything, Kurt did so well on his debut, at 8-4 from 9-8 I dodnt think many players could have done what he did there. He definately had a golden chance to win 10-8, he was on a frame winning break, played the black but made a sily positional shot and that seemed to affect him afterwards as he started to miss many by miles.

Still at 9-9 he had a chance, but the damage was already done and you could see it on his face he really wanted to win it 10-8.

No matter, I'm very proud of what Kurt managed to do here.

As for Selby, this very tight victory will be good for him, if it was a straightfoward one he wouldnt have been pushed, but the fact he was makes me go back to a comment Wild said: "This are the kind of matches that very often end up in being Championship winners".

I still don't think Selby will win it though, but this match will give him massive confidence now. I can't see him losing to either Mags or Ants, so maybe an inspired performance by possibly Murphy in Quarters will prevent Mark from reaching far in the event.

One thing for certain for me right now, someone will have to really play out of their skin to knock Selby out, I can't see Mark playing badly to lose, so yeah someone will have to play some inspired snooker against him.

This was only opening match, so hopefully we'll have plenty more like this.

Roland wrote:There was absolutely nothing wrong or disrespectful in the way Selby celebrated winning the match.

I agree, like you said on Twitter, Tennis players do that all the time. Ok This isn't Tennis, but in a way, despite what some think, it's a sign that you respect your opponent with the way it was so hard for you to win it.

Robbo also does it, even Ronnie in recent times has made some fistpumps, so I see no problem in it. Just letting go of your emotions you contained for the whole match, nothing else.

Roland wrote:I had a curry with PSB Matt, Snookerbacker and others and we were all in agreement and some of us pretty wound up at the reaction to his reaction.

Conclusion: people who don't like him and wanted him to lose or morons who have no idea of the pressure he was under or how distraught he was looking at 8-8 with the amount of bad luck he was having. Him and Kurt were chatting away to each other afterwards just emphasising the bullshitness of the "disrespectful to his opponent" argument.

At 8-8 he said he didn't believe he could win it and in fact was getting his Crucible Curse speech ready.

That in a way might have helped him to relax, fact is Selby is very strong when being put under immense pressure, and he showed it again here.