Players Tour Championship 2011/2012 – Event 6
The Warsaw Classic 2011 ( Event 6 of the Players Tour Championship 2011/ 12) was a snooker tournament, which was held in the Polish capital Warsaw from 29 September to 2 October 2011. The venue was located on the southern outskirts Arena Ursynów.
The tournament was the second PTC event of the season on the European mainland. It was also the second event of the series of minor ranking tournaments, which was televised. For the first professional snooker tournament on Polish soil to 163 participants were reported, including 39 players from Poland, among them the only Polish Main Tour professionals Kacper Filipiak. Although most of the professionals was represented in Warsaw, but with Mark Selby, Mark Williams, John Higgins and Ding Junhui did not have the current top 4 in the world rankings and with Ronnie O'Sullivan and Stephen Hendry two more prominent names.
The Australian Neil Robertson was thus in the world rankings the highest placed participants and took advantage of the absence of the top competitors to pick with a 4-1 victory in the final against Ricky Walden his first win at a tournament of the Players Tour Championship.
All games were played in best-of -7 mode.
- 2.1 Round 3 to knockout round 2.1.1 Group 1
- 2.1.2 Group 2
- 2.1.3 Group 3
- 2.1.4 Group 4
- 2.1.5 Group 5
- 2.1.6 Group 6
- 2.1.7 Group 7
- 2.1.8 Group 8
Preliminary round
96 players were set for the main tournament, the remaining 67 players had to play in the qualifiers for the 32 available places. Three couples had in the pre-qualification, the winner completed the 32 pairings, in which the main round participants were determined. All qualifying matches were held on Thursday 29 September.
Round 1
Round 2
Finals
With the third round of the tournament the main tournament began with 128 participants. One half of the seedings wore the rounds 3 through 5 on Friday, September 30, the other half was on Saturday, October 1, at the tables. The last four laps from the second round until the final round were carried out on the final Sunday.
Most of the players had to make their way through the tournament to fight hard, six of the eight quarter- finalists had at least once in the decision frame. Neil Robertson won by a 4-2 to kick off three times in a row with 4:3 and then succeeded again with the 4-3 semi-final against Shaun Murphy. Stephen Lee was one of two players who were fairly confidently advanced into the Round of 16. He defeated while the winner of the previous event 5 Andrew Higginson 4-1. The Chinese Xiao Guodong, who was (ranked 61 in the world rankings ) of the lowest- placed players remaining, he defeated until the seventh frame.
Youth players Jack Lisowski, who had the week before the semi-finals in the fifth event, missed the repetition after a defeat against veteran Steve Davis. For this it was the best result of the season so far, even though he had to play with a borrowed queue because his own was not arrived on time in Warsaw. Ricky Walden had made only a single frame to the third last round. With young star Judd Trump he had his first serious opponent and as the last who remained he had once in the seventh frame before he could move into the semi-finals. There, Steve Davis proved to be just as stubborn opponents and demanded him from another 4:3. Conversely, it happened to Neil Robertson, the first time clearly and convincingly won in the semifinals and defeated Stephen Lee 4-0.
In the final, thus there were two players for the final participation was in each case been the hitherto best PTC result. Robertson was able to continue the semi-final performance and went with a 76 -break 1-0 lead. The balance of Walden he could counter immediately and in the fourth frame, he just missed a Century, which he led 3-1. In the fifth frame Walden could then indeed go with a 46er -break lead. But it was too little and Robertson could still turn the game in a 4-1 victory. In all four frames obtained had achieved at least a break of 68 points of the Australians. With his first PTC victory, he was the sixth winner in the sixth event of the season.