Click below to read how Ken Doherty and Mark Selby booked their places into tomorrow’s semi-finals…
Ken Doherty 4-0 Rafal Gorecki
In what was a short match, former world champion Ken Doherty had too much for Rafal Gorecki as he won 4-0 in front of a pretty big crowd in Warsaw.
Gorecki had chances in the first frame but in the end a break of 54 from Ken proved to be decisive. In the next two though it was all one way traffic as Ken played the best snooker that I have seen from him so far this season, making breaks of 90 and 89 to go 3-0 ahead. It looked like the fourth frame was going to be similar until he missed a pink on 20, but although Gorecki played a few nice shots in response, he could only make 26 and gave Ken another chance to wrap up the victory.
Although their player could only score 55 points today, the crowd seemed to enjoy a match which was played in good spirit and gave both players a long period of applause at the end of the match. Hopefully they will have more to cheer about in the other matches today.
Ken had this to say:
“The crowd was brilliant and generated a tremendous atmosphere.
I just feel it’s great for snooker that we have this World Series. We are taking the game to different countries and that is what it’s all about.”
Ken Doherty 4-0 Rafal Gorecki 65(54)-19, 90(90)-0, 89(89)-0, 73(47)-36(26)
Mark Selby 4-0 Mariusz Sirko
The second match of the afternoon went the same way as world number four Mark Selby defeated another local hope, Mariusz Sirko 4-0.
The match however was much closer as Sirko put up a pretty good fight, keeping the frames close and even forcing a re-spotted black in frame three. Admittedly Selby was nowhere near his best, but given that Sirko has only been playing the game for three years it was a good effort to push Selby as hard as he did.
Rounding off the match with a century, Selby now meets Ken Doherty in tomorrow’s first semi-final.
Mark Selby 4-0 Mariusz Sirko 75(37)-37, 65-36, 63(35)-56, 100(100)-22