{"id":545794,"date":"2026-04-23T03:36:34","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T03:36:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/545794\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T03:36:34","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T03:36:34","slug":"ronnie-osullivans-rolling-the-dice-cue-gamble-pays-off-at-world-snooker-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/545794\/","title":{"rendered":"Ronnie O’Sullivan’s ‘rolling the dice’ cue gamble pays off at World Snooker Championship"},"content":{"rendered":"

For some snooker players, changing their cue would be a traumatic experience \u2013 not for Ronnie O’Sulivan.<\/p>\n

The 50-year-old, a seven-time world champion, used a different cue on Wednesday to the one he played with on Tuesday, and both had the same dominant effect.<\/p>\n

His 10-2 victory over Chinese debutant He Guoqiang<\/a> was the joint biggest so far at the 2026 World Championship and kept O’Sullivan on course for a record-breaking eighth Crucible title.<\/p>\n

He led 7-2 after Tuesday’s first session and breaks of 62, 113, 100 on Wednesday, all inside an hour and all with his back-up cue, set up a mouth-watering last-16 tie against four-time winner John Higgins.<\/p>\n

“The tip is more important than the cue – that’s why I brought two cues,” said O’Sullivan, who admitted it had been a risky tactic.<\/p>\n

“I’ve been saving this all year because it had a bit of life in it and I thought ‘if I come here and my main cue is no good…’.<\/p>\n

“The tip wasn’t good yesterday. I did a good job, considering. I thought ‘a bit of a roll of the dice’, it was a gamble. You have to back yourself. I make some crazy decisions in everybody else’s eyes, but they make complete sense to me.<\/p>\n

“I was a bit nervous because I thought ‘you could look a bit silly’.”<\/p>\n

Instead of looking silly, O’Sullivan make two century breaks in three rapid-fire entertaining frames before an enthralled Crucible crowd, which included former Manchester United and England midfielder Paul Scholes.<\/p>\n

It nearly got better too.<\/p>\n

In the penultimate frame of the match, O’Sullivan looked on course for a maximum 147 break, potting nine reds and eight blacks, before opting to go for a blue in a break of 113.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For some snooker players, changing their cue would be a traumatic experience \u2013 not for Ronnie O’Sulivan. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545795,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[59,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-545794","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}