Four players remain in contention to win the lucrative Riyadh Season Snooker Championship invitational in the Saudi Arabian capital city.
It was always going to be a high-quality quartet at this stage of the competition, but this lineup looks particularly special.
The tournament’s reigning champion is joined by the Saudi Arabian Snooker Masters winner, the world champion, and the world number one.
A handsome prize worth £75,000 has already been earned just for getting this far, but the players know that a couple of strong displays and the £250,000 champion’s cheque can be obtained.
Both semi-final clashes will be contested in the afternoon session of play with the best-of-nine final subsequently on the schedule for Friday evening.
Nobody has threatened to claim the jackpot bonus of $1,000,000 for the 167 maximum break – utilising the golden ball that has been introduced for this non-ranking event – but there are still three matches left for that to materialise.
Here’s a look at the two last-four affairs.
Mark Allen vs Neil Robertson
Mark Allen and Neil Robertson have combined to win the last two tournaments that have been staged on Saudi Arabian soil.
The duo reached the penultimate round on Thursday with respective victories over John Higgins and Kyren Wilson.
Based on those performances, Robertson definitely looked the stronger after reeling off breaks of 133, 100, 88, and 76 to whitewash the world number two.
Allen, by contrast, couldn’t muster a single contribution above 50 but still managed to have enough to see off the challenge of Higgins in a 4-2 outing.
Somewhat strangely, Allen and Robertson haven’t crossed paths on the main tour since the Northern Ireland Open of 2022.
Allen prevailed on that occasion but suffers from an inferior head-to-head record overall, with Robertson having won 16 of their 29 games in total.
Still, it’s a tough one to call over the short best-of-seven frame format and much will depend on how quickly each player can get up to speed.
Judd Trump vs Zhao Xintong
The second semi-final will pit Judd Trump and Zhao Xintong against one another, the second time in as many weeks that they have clashed at this stage of a tournament.
Seven days ago, it was Trump who comprehensively emerged from their Champion of Champions tie with a 6-2 triumph.
The Englishman has ditched the new cue that was giving him all sorts of headaches recently, and his reward was a two-ton display to easily beat Mark Williams in the last eight here.
Zhao edged out Shaun Murphy in a high-scoring battle that ended 4-2, with the 28 year-old through to a third semi-final in the same number of weeks.
Both Trump and Zhao have endured relatively slow starts to the 2025/26 campaign but each appear to be building momentum ahead of a busy and important period on the calendar.
Following last week’s win, Trump leads the head-to-head 3-1 and will be keen on landing silverware after a couple of near misses in recent weeks.
Trump remains the favourite in the outright betting market with the best football betting sites providing sign-up offers that snooker fans can also avail of.
2025 Riyadh Season Snooker Championship
Times in UTC/GMT
Round of 12 (bo7)
Ding Junhui 4-0 Ayman Alamri
Shaun Murphy 4-0 Ziyad Alqabbani
Round of 10 (bo7)
John Higgins 4-0 Ding Junhui
Ronnie O’Sullivan 0-4 Shaun Murphy
Quarter-Finals (bo7)
Mark Allen 4-2 John Higgins
Kyren Wilson 0-4 Neil Robertson
Judd Trump 4-0 Mark Williams
Zhao Xintong 4-2 Shaun Murphy
Semi-Finals (bo7)
Mark Allen vs Neil Robertson
(Friday, 2pm)
Judd Trump vs Zhao Xintong
(Friday, not before 3pm)
Final (Bo9)
Winner of SF1 vs Winner of SF2
(Friday, 7pm)
Featured photo credit: WST
