Stuart Bingham easily emerged from his World Open qualifier on Wednesday with a routine 5-0 victory over Alex Borg in Barnsley.
Bingham restricted his opponent to just seven points, taking all five frames in lightning fashion with the aid of four half century breaks.
The former world champion will be looking to hit form at the right time with his defence of the English Open coming up in the middle of October.
Fellow Englishmen Barry Hawkins and Kyren Wilson were other notable names who managed to make it through to the last 64.
Hawkins, the recent Paul Hunter Classic champion, scored a 108 to complete a 5-1 rout of Jak Jones while Wilson edged a high-quality encounter with Chen Feilong 5-3.
A finalist in 2017, Wilson will be among some of the favourites for the title this year and you can visit sports betting Maine for information on a range of other sports too.
Marco Fu held on by the same margin to deny Brandon Sargeant, with the Hong Kong cueist in need of a decent spell of form given his current provisional end-of-season ranking of a lowly 54.
Meanwhile, there were World Open qualifier victories for the likes former ranking event champions Joe Perry, Liang Wenbo, and Michael Georgiou.
Michael Holt pipped James Wattana in a close battle 5-3 while that scoreline was matched by Barry Pinches after the veteran defeated Robert Milkins.
Chang Bingyu, a young Chinese player at the complete opposite end of his career, fought back from 3-1 and 4-3 behind to upset Tom Ford.
Elsewhere, Englishmen Stuart Carrington, Sam Craigie, Liam Highfield, and Martin O’Donnell safely negotiated their preliminary round hurdles to book trips to Yushan.
Among those set to compete on Thursday are Sunday’s China Championship winner Shaun Murphy, former world number one Mark Selby, and world seniors champion Jimmy White.
The venue stages for the third ranking event of the season in China begin at the end of the month.
