The field at the Tempodrom has been whittled down with the German Masters semi-finals set to take place on Saturday in Berlin.
A day of upsets on Friday resulted in a lot of the marquee names bowing out before the action even reached the single table set-up.
The Tempodrom is famed for its spine-tingling atmosphere and it really comes into its own when the centre table becomes the primary focus ahead of the last four contests.
With the likes of Mark Selby, Mark Williams, Judd Trump, Neil Robertson, and Ding Junhui all losing on day three, Kyren Wilson is arguably the new tournament favourite heading into the German Masters semi-finals.
The Kettering cueist hammered world champion Williams 5-0 to reach this stage in Germany for the second time.
Wilson, the Paul Hunter Classic champion from this season, will face Stephen Maguire with a spot in Sunday’s final worth £80,000 at stake.
Maguire compiled four half-century breaks in seeing off recent Masters champion Trump 5-2.
The Scot reached the final in 2012 when he was narrowly denied by Ronnie O’Sullivan in a dramatic final and is bidding for a first ranking event triumph in almost six years.
Maguire once chimed that it would be a disappointment if he didn’t win the World Championship before the age of 30 but, now 37, he would love to simply get back into the winners’ enclosure again.
What has arguably held the Glaswegian back throughout his career is a lack of a strong temperament, a trait that opponent Wilson boasts in abundance.
That said, there isn’t much to separate them from their head-to-head record with parity shared from the four prior battles.
On the opposite side of the draw, the first German Masters semi-finals clash will produce a finalist that few would have predicted either way.
David Gilbert, following a hard-fought victory over world number one Selby earlier in the day, stormed back from 3-1 down to superbly beat Robertson 5-3 in the last eight.
The 37 year-old will be hoping to erase the painful memories from earlier in the campaign when he let slip a 9-5 advantage in the final of the World Open while chasing a maiden ranking event success.
Gilbert will hardly have a better opportunity to reach another Sunday showdown for glory as he faces the lowly-ranked Duane Jones next.
Jones, 90th in the world, overturned a 3-1 deficit of his own to see off 2014 champion Ding in a sensational shock.
The Welshman, 25, will be experiencing this late stage for the first time in his career and it’ll be interesting to see how he can handle the big occasion.
Jones and Gilbert have only crossed paths twice before with the latter emerging as the winner each time.
The 4 players that lost in the Quarter Finals have a grand total of 58 ranking titles between them. has that sort of carnage ever happened before in a quarter final?
— E JONES (@wildey_1) February 2, 2019
It’s certainly not the German Masters semi-finals line-up that we were expecting but the good thing is that the appreciative crowd in Berlin likely won’t mind too much.
In other venues around the world, a quartet lacking any of the sport’s poster players might be enough to create a barren atmosphere.
But the German crowds tend to give each player deserved support regardless of their ranking or stature, so it still promises to be an entertaining weekend in store.