Stuart Bingham bounced back from the dejection of his World Championship semi-final defeat to Jak Jones to make a winning start to the new 2024/25 campaign.
in losing 17-12 to Jones last month, but showed his quality at the Championship League by winning Group 18 on seven points.
He made two 50-plus breaks in a 2-2 draw with Hamim Hussain before running in 70, 71 and 110 in a 3-0 victory against Ahmed Aly Elsayed, with a 3-1 win over Anthony Hamilton enabling the Basildon potter to add another 64 in finishing two points ahead of Hussain.
Bingham was joined in the last 32 by last year’s world semi-finalist Si Jiahui, who enjoyed three straight victories in topping Group 13 on nine points with wins over Peter Lines (3-0), Zak Surety (3-0) and Jimmy Robertson (3-1) seeing him finish three points clear of Lines.
22 of the final 32 spots at the season’s first ranking event have been settled, with talented Chinese potter Pang Junxu taking to the table on Saturday at the Mattioli Arena.
Stage one consists of 32 groups of four players. The eight group winners contest a further two groups with the winners meeting in the final.
There is £33,000 on the table for the winner plus a spot in the Champion of Champions later in the year which is worth another £12,500 for qualifying.
Championship League: Latest group winners
- Group 21: Neil Robertson (AUS)
- Group 11: Ryan Day (WAL)
- Group 4: Mark Williams (WAL)
- Group 17: Chris Wakelin (ENG)
- Group 25: Matthew Stevens (WAL)
- Group 31: Ashley Carty (ENG)
- Group 23: Michael White (WAL)
- Group 22: Joe O’Connor (ENG)
- Group 10: Jackson Page (WAL)
- Group 32: Thepchaiya Un-Nooh (THA)
- Group 30: Jamie Jones (WAL)
- Group 29: Ben Woollaston (ENG)
- Group 8: Jak Jones (WAL)
- Group 7: Robbie McGuigan (NI)
- Group 24: Martin O’Donnell (Eng)
- Group 28: Wu Yize (CHN)
- Group 26: Alexander Ursenbacher (SUI)
- Group 27: David Lilley (ENG)
- Group 1: Scott Donaldson (SCO)
- Group 14: Hossein Vafaei (IRN)
- Group 18: Stuart Bingham (ENG)
- Group 13: Si Jiahui (CHN)