Sunday evening, 1 November 2026
Good evening, all. Chris Wakelin came within one yellow of a maximum in Nanjing this afternoon, and he still needed every frame to get past Long Zehuang. Over in Gandia the last Predator Euro Tour stop of the year is down to two finals, both breaking off around now. So it's a busy Sunday night.
Wakelin's near-147, and a decider anyway
The 2024 Nanjing runner-up beat Long Zehuang 6–5 in the last 64 of the International Championship. Per snooker.org, Wakelin was on for a maximum in frame 10 and missed the yellow. The match then went all the way, and he got over the line in the decider. Next he plays Chang Bingyu, who beat Ross Muir 6–2 earlier today and made his 100th career century along the way.
The rest of Nanjing's Sunday afternoon session
- Zhao Xintong 6–4 David Lilley: the world number two is safely into the last 32, where he meets Sam Craigie.
- Sam Craigie 6–1 Stan Moody: a heavy win for Craigie that sets up the Zhao match.
- Aaron Hill 6–0 Anton Kazakov: a whitewash for the Irishman.
- Daniel Wells 6–5 Duane Jones: Wells needed a decider against the amateur, who only made the draw as Mark Allen's replacement.
- Xu Si 6–4 Gary Wilson: Xu now plays John Higgins.
- Pang Junxu 6–2 Mina Awad: the end of a good week for Awad, who won his first match on the World Snooker Tour in qualifying. Pang goes on to an all-Chinese tie with Fan Zhengyi, the man who put out Judd Trump.
That completes the last 64. The last-32 matches are all best of 11 and are played on Monday. Times below are GMT, from the snooker.org schedule. It's on TNT Sports and Eurosport in the UK and WST Play elsewhere.
- 01:30: Hossein Vafaei v Mark Selby, Fan Zhengyi v Pang Junxu, Ricky Walden v Liam Davies, Thepchaiya Un-Nooh v Mark Williams, Mitchell Mann v Yuan Sijun, Ben Woollaston v Oliver Lines
- 06:00: Ding Junhui v Zhang Anda, Neil Robertson v Wang Xinbo, Xu Si v John Higgins, Si Jiahui v Liu Hongyu, Julien Leclercq v Marco Fu
- 11:30: Wu Yize v Stephen Maguire, Ryan Day v Kyren Wilson, Chris Wakelin v Chang Bingyu, Aaron Hill v Daniel Wells, Sam Craigie v Zhao Xintong
Vafaei v Selby is the one to set an alarm for. Vafaei made a break of 69 or more in every frame of his 6–0 win over Stuart Carrington, and Selby saw off Jimmy White 6–2. The last 16 is on Tuesday.
Gandia: two finals, and nobody gave Jiang Teng the easy way in
The Revora Spanish Open finals were due on at 20:00 local time (19:00 GMT), live on Pro Billiard TV, with scores on the EPBF draw pages. Neither champion was known when this went up.
- Men's final (race to 11): Felix Vogel v Luca Menn. Vogel beat Yannick Pongers 11–8 in the last 16 and Mieszko Fortunski 11–10 in a hill-hill quarter-final, then pulled away from Iker Andoni Echeverria in the semi-finals to win 11–5. Echeverria had beaten Wojciech Szewczyk 11–7 earlier in the day. Menn has beaten Kristián Mrva 11–4, Francisco Sánchez Ruiz 11–7 and Mika van Berkel 11–9 to get here.
- Women's final (race to 9): Ina Kaplan v Jiang Teng. After beating Pia Filler 9–5 this morning, Kaplan beat Oliwia Zalewska 9–2 in the semi-finals. Jiang has taken the long way round. She lost on the winners' side to Marion Jude and had to win the losers' qualifier against Julia Babica. Then she beat Sandra Baumgartner 9–8, Ana Gradišnik 9–8 and Maria-Teresa Ropero 9–7. That's two hill-hill escapes in two days.
Both events close the 2026 Euro Tour, so the year-end rankings are on the line too. We'll have the champions and the final scores in the morning roundup.
Coming up
- Snooker: the Nanjing quarter-finals are on Wednesday and the final is next Saturday (best of 19). After that it's the Champion of Champions in Leicester from 9 to 15 November, per the WPBSA calendar.
- Pool: the World Nineball Tour heads to Vietnam for the Universal Open at the Sniper Billiards Club in Ho Chi Minh City, 11 to 15 November, with a $63,000 prize fund. The Universal Bangkok Open follows from 17 to 21 November.
- Women's snooker: entries for the Irish Women's Open in Carlow (27 to 29 November) close on Friday 20 November at 12:00 GMT, per World Women's Snooker.
If you're up for Vafaei and Selby at half one, post your predictions below. I'm backing a decider.
— Reggie
Feature image: “Chris Wakelin 2026 (1)” (Chris Wakelin at the German Masters 2026) by Andrej146, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication).
