Si Jiahui and Stuart Bingham win stage one Championship League Snooker groups

Runner-up at the German Masters earlier in the year, this season Si will be looking to claim his maiden ranking title, and it could be at this event as he booked his place in the last 32 with a match to spare.

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The 21-year-old Chinese cueist defeated Peter Lines 3-0 in the opening fixture and returned for the second session where he registered breaks of 74 and 82 in a 3-0 victory against Zak Surety.

Going into the final round of ties, Si was already guaranteed to finish top regardless of the upcoming results. However, he ended the day with the maximum nine points following a 3-1 win over Jimmy Robertson, compiling runs of 79, 56 and 65 in the process.

There was a intriguing climax on table two as the identity of the Group 18 winner wasn't discovered until the final frame of the day.

Before the final match between Bingham and Anthony Hamilton broke off, amateur invitee Hamim Hussain sat top of the group on five points but he could not stay there with at least one player in the final match guaranteed to overtake him.

The winner of the Bingham and Hamilton tie would win the group. However, a 2-2 draw would mean that all three of the aforementioned players would be tied on the same points, frame difference and have identical head-to-head records against each other. Therefore, positions would be determined by whoever had made the highest break throughout the day. In that particular driving seat was Bingham due to his effort of 110 during a 3-0 win over Ahmed Aly Elsayed.

Bingham, though, defeated Hamilton 3-1 to pick up the three points and win the group without the need of any tiebreakers.