by Vallomas » 19 Nov 2016 Read
I'm very-very happy for Anthony Hamilton, but absolutely gutted for Hossein Vafaei, who gifted the match to Mark King. When he was 3-2 ahead, he potted a fantastic long red, which was the last one and frame ball (49-17 with only the colours remaining), but then he missed an easy pink to clinch the frame. Then he made three fouls, King fluked the blue (believe me, it was a tremendous fluke) and after a quite long battle on the pink King levelled on 3-3.
The 7th frame had a similar scenario, with Vafaei gifting the last red to King with a terrible safety shot on the last red, while he had already missed the 4th to go 3-1 up, because of a bad positional shot from the final green to the brown.
King was very nervous after the 2nd frame and what had happened there, he made many unforced errors, but Vafaei choked in the thought that he was close to win the match and progress to the semifinal. To be fair, king produced a nice 66 break under pressure on the last frame, but again, I don't think that King has any chance against in form Wilson.
I also have to say, though, that Vafaei showed some very promising skills. He has smooth cue action, but had many problems with his positional and safety game (he was weak today especially on escapes, as he made some good snookers). I am sure that we will see more from this player in the future.