2022 BetVictor English Open

 

The 2022 BetVictor English Open, organized by the World Snooker Tour and sponsored by BetVictor, is the seventh ranking tournament of the 2022-2023 snooker season and is the third tournament of the illustrious Home Nations Series. It took place after the Northern Ireland Open and the Scottish Open, and the Welsh Open is the tournament which is set to take place next. The English Open took place from the 12th of December to the 18th of December 2022 in the Brentwood Centre in Brentwood, England. The big guns for the tournament include world's number one Ronnie O'Sullivan, Judd Trump, Mark Williams, John Higgins, Neil Robertson, Mark Selby, and the newly crowned Scottish Open champion Gary Wilson. The winner of the tournament received £80,000 out of a total prize pool of £427,000.  

The 2022-2023 season has been one which has been filled with surprises as the heavyweights of the game are yet to register ranking title wins. The Rocket Ronnie O'Sullivan has two tournament victories in the season but they were non-ranking titles in the form of the Hong Kong Masters and the Champion of Champions. The thunder from down under, Neil Robertson as also had non-ranking title success in the form of the World Mixed Doubles with his partner in the event, Mink Nutcharut. The winner of the Northern Ireland Open and UK championship, Mark Allen leads the table for this season where as Scottish Open champion Gary Wilson rises to 5th is the list. To ensure their entry into the Player's Championship, to maintain their world ranking, and to get some momentum for the rest of the season, the snooker greats had to step up. 

The qualifiers for the tournament took place from 25th October to 30th October 2022 in the Morningside Arena of Leicester, where as the games involving the top sixteen ranked players took place in Brentwood at the time of the tournament. Controversy kicked off the tournament as Chinese national Yan Bingtao was suspended from professional snooker by the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA) due to an ongoing match-fixing investigation. 

It was a milestone tournament for the Welsh potting machine Mark Williams who recorded the tournament's highest break, a magical 147 maximum against Neil Robertson in the quarter final's fourth frame. This is his third maximum break of his professional career and he also became the oldest player to make a professional maximum break at the age of 47 years and 270 days. The defending champion Robertson was defeated by Mark Selby by 4 frames to 6 in the semi-final. Selby recorded his first win against the Australian in over two years and it was the first time he reached the final of a ranking event since World Championship in 2021. In the final, Selby met Belgian Luca Brecel who is ranked number eleven in the world. Luca managed 2 century breaks in the final including a break of 122. Selby's highest break was of 90 but he managed seven 50+ breaks that were enough for him to secure a 9-6 victory over the Belgian. Mark Selby's victory made him the very first player to ever win the English Open twice, and just the second individual, after Judd Trump, to be triumphant in a total of four Home Nation tournaments and it has allowed him to improve his ranking and become second in the World Snooker rankings.