Graeme Dott won Group Two of the 2022 BetVictor Championship League Snooker Invitational at the Morningside Arena in Leicester, beating Lu Ning in the Group Final.
Group Two Standings and Scores
Dott suffered heartache on Tuesday evening after winning all six group games only to miss out in the Group One semi-final but there was no such pain for the Scot, who racked up three wins in the group stage against Jack Lisowski, Gary Wilson, and Lu to set up a playoff tie with the heavy scoring Ryan Day.
The group was tight throughout, with nobody breaking away from the pack with Xiao Guodong threatening to take fourth place but just missing out as Dott, Lu, Day and Joe Perry took up the playoff spots. Xiao is set to return in Group Three. Lisowski and Wilson bowed out after finishing 6th and 7th respectively.
When it came to the semi-final, Dott defeated Day 3-2, clinching it in the decider with a break of 49 helping the 2006 World Champion across the line to face Lu in the final.
Dott took the opening two frames before Lu made the third to close the gap, but it was Dott who delivered the break of the match for 97 to win it 3-1 and take the Group Two title
Dott said: “I would’ve taken fifth, to be honest the way it was. I struggled yesterday but played well today. It was great in Group One. It was the first time in a long time I felt like a snooker player. I felt good. I didn’t play great until the second day here but the snooker I played yesterday was really bad. I was just happy to win a match. It was a close match (against Day) – you must win some of those games though, it could go 3-2 either way. I played okay. He is very hard to play. He is a good player and he is very methodical and slow, and it can be quite off putting at times. I managed to get the frames open. I didn’t want it to get too scrappy. I dealt with it okay.”
The 2022 BetVictor Championship League Snooker Invitational returns on Monday 3, January with Group 3 seeing Mark Selby, Mark Williams and Stuart Bingham enter the fold alongside Xiao, Perry, Day, and Lu.
Where to Watch
- Foxtel – Australia
- FreeSports – UK and Ireland
- Nova – Czech Republic & Slovakia
- NTV – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenia, and Uzbekistan
- Sky Network – New Zealand
- SuperSport – Africa
- Sportklub – Croatia & Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo, and Slovenia
- TVP – Poland
- Viaplay – Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania
- Viaplay – Iceland
- Viaplay – Scandinavia
- Zhibo.TV – China
- Matchroom.Live – Table 1 is available exclusively to those outside of the countries listed above. Table 2 will be available live on Matchroom.Live excluding the Nordic and Baltic regions
- The tournament will also be live on betting websites around the world