Five of the world’s top six ranked players remain in contention for the 2026 World Women’s Snooker Championship ahead of Sunday’s quarter-finals in Dongguan, China.
With a top prize of £13,000 on offer, the business end of the tournament has the potential for a blockbuster finish, especially with rivals Bai Yulu and Ng On Yee still on opposite sides of the draw and on course for a mouthwatering title decider.
Between them, Bai and Ng have captured six of the seven ranking titles contested on the World Women’s snooker Tour this season, underlining their dominance over the last year.
China’s Bai is seeking a third consecutive world title and continued her strong bid on Saturday with victories against compatriots Muyan Zhang and Wang Meng.
Standing in her way next is Thailand’s Panchaya Channoi, who has reached the quarter-finals of the World Women’s Championship for the first time.
The reigning world under-21 champion has impressed throughout the week and booked her place in the last eight without dropping a frame in her knockout victories against Bai Yaru and Hong Kong China’s Fong Mei Mei.
Channoi will now get another crack at Bai after the pair previously met in the last 16 of last year’s championship.
The other quarter-final in the top half guarantees at least one Thai player a semi-final berth as former champion Mink Nutcharut faces compatriot Narucha Phoemphul.
Nutcharut, the 2022 world champion, has yet to lose a frame in Dongguan and has been one of the standout performers so far.
The 26 year-old followed up a flawless group-stage campaign by comfortably dispatching Sizhe Wang and India’s Anupama Ramachandran in the knockout rounds.
Her opponent Phoemphul has taken a more dramatic route to the quarter-finals, surviving deciding-frame encounters against both Lu Zhao and Tessa Davidson.
England’s Davidson had earlier caused one of the surprises of the tournament by eliminating world number five Rebecca Kenna in the last 32.
Phoemphul, currently the world under-21 number one, is now through to the quarter-finals of the World Championship for the first time and will attempt to continue her breakthrough run against the vastly experienced Nutcharut.
In the bottom half of the draw, 12-time world champion Reanne Evans remains firmly in the hunt for another crown.
The Englishwoman has not surrendered a frame throughout the competition and eased past Yuk Fan Lau and Qingning Huang on Saturday.
Evans is aiming to secure the title for the first time since 2019 and next faces Mongolia’s Narantuya Bayarsaikhan.
Bayarsaikhan has equalled her best performance at the tournament after defeating Singapore’s Charlene Chai and Hong Kong China’s So Man Yan to reach the last eight.
The final quarter-final sees Hong Kong China’s Ng On Yee continue her pursuit of a fourth world title.
Ng endured a tougher path than some of her fellow contenders on Saturday, requiring a deciding frame to edge past Li Bihan before overcoming former world champion Baipat Siripaporn 4-1.
The three-time world champion has now reached the World Championship quarter-finals for the tenth time in her career.
Awaiting her is 17 year-old Liu Zi Ling, one of the emerging stars of the event.
The Chinese teenager delighted the home crowd by beating Katrina Wan and Yaqi Yao to secure a maiden quarter-final appearance at the tournament.
Liu had already caught the eye earlier in the competition with a break of 78 during the group stage, and she now faces the biggest challenge of her young career against Ng.
All four quarter-finals take place on Sunday, with the semi-finals on Monday and the final to be played on Tuesday at the Dongguan Changping Snooker Centre.
Featured photo credit: WWS / Tai Chengzhe
Well Bai Yulu, to me overall the best among the women, lost in the last 8 — having seen her play earlier in this year’s WC, it was not a total surprise, as she was just not playing as well as she normally does — too many missed pots, also questionable shot selection and execution, including safety play (there’s a lot of that in women’s snooker).
I am not familiar with the player who beat her, Panchaya Channoi from Thailand, and did not see her play in this WC — but her results so far were impressive: she did not lose a single game until the QF meeting with Bai Yulu — but this does not always mean much, considering how poor many of the women are.
Obviously all players have runs of poor form, but this was especially bad timing for Bai.
How it will affect her tour card?
>How it will affect her tour card?
Seems this is very often a complicated question — currently there’s an interesting discussion of this in the comments under the lives scores — by default comments are shown newest first (excepting replies), so if further comments appear, just scroll down until you find one by Luke — he and others (in the replies) hash out this issue.
Here are interesting parts of the discussion:
‘Bai is the one getting the tour card whatever happens. Mink will get if either she or Ng/Evans wins the world title.’
‘If Panchaya wins the title, that means Mink out in semis and Bai Yulu stays ahead in the ranking. The only way Bai Yulu losing tour card is Zi Ling or Bayarsaikhan winning against Mink in final.’
https://www.snooker.org/res/index.asp?template=21&event=2748
Mink just lost 3-5 (best of 9) to Panchaya Channoi in the SF.
After watching a lot of this match, it’s clearer to me now that at this point in time, women’s snooker is just a completely different game — down 2-3, Mink had a very good chance to tie at 3-3, but did not even come close to taking advantage of it, whereas it is difficult for me to imagine e.g. the just relegated Milkins failing to do so — or really any male player on the tour.
Then trailing 3-4, when under no stress, Mink hit an absolutely terrible safety, leaving a red over a pocket, which allowed Channoi to score more points, ultimately leaving Mink needing multiple snookers — it got worse from there, until Mink finally conceded.
Women too often miss pots they should make, and just cannot control the cue ball well enough to build breaks — this and their lack of confidence results in a LOT of safety play.
They also lack cue power — in particular, I don’t recall ever seeing a woman effectively break the pack of reds, even when there is a clear opportunity to do that.
>a completely different game
To be fair, I should mention another factor affecting women: the average female player is shorter than the average male — this is especially true of the Asian women — so women have to stretch uncomfortably, or use an extension or a rest, much more often than men — and even men are more likely to miss when stretching or using the rest.
You saw this in the last frame of the Ng On Yee vs Reanne Evans SF (Evans won 5-1), when Ng On Yee was trailing 1-4 and had what appeared to be a fairly straightforward red, which she stretched to reach, but couldn’t, so she used an extension (she still had to stretch), then missed (badly).
This opened the door for Evans to win the match.
Because I’ve mentioned it before: since Ng On Yee trailing 1-4 and behind in the 6th frame (obviously a must-win frame for her), rather than take on a pot where she had to use an extension and still really stretch, perhaps she should have played a professional safety, and waited for a better chance — if she had, the match might still be ongoing.
Finally, it should be mentioned that Panchaya Channoi just won the women’s U-21 WC 3-2, and she did so after falling behind 0-2.
After watching the last part of the U-21 final, she is capable of giving Reanne Evans a good fight tomorrow in the women’s final — she can play.
After a few years of stability when anyone familiar with womens snooker knew who the best 4 players were, and that they’d likely dominate the latter rounds of almost every women’s tournament, this worlds has been a shocker. In a good sense! Panchaya is a punchy player who has one advantage to Bai Yulu which is that she’s a bit of a shotmaker to use a pool term. Even Bai Yulu, the best womens player I’ve ever seen, never impresses me with the idea that she’s much of a shotmaker. Panchaya has a punchy but fairly strong cue action as well. It’s a bit like seeing a women’s Mark Allen. I think she’s good for a game with anyone. I still think that Bai Yulu is the best and she had built up an aura of intimidation and near invincibility over the last couple of seasons, a women’s Stephen Hendry as I’ve often thought of her. She seems to have gone a touch off the boil just lately though, and she seems to be in a lull in form by her standards. I wonder if a couple of seasons of mainly losing on the main tour, in a foreign country, has blunted her game at the moment?
>I wonder if a couple of seasons of mainly losing
Yes — I saw a comment about this — it must be psychologically tough to lose in the first round all the time (or almost all the time) — so as the comment suggested, even if the better women have a tour card, it may be a good idea for them to take breaks and go play when and where there is a higher chance of success — for some positive psychological reinforcement.
Watching some of the final on YouTube, the whole production is substandard, including the streaming quality — it has been that way throughout — it’s a shame, because the quality of the snooker being played is already well below what most are used to seeing from the men, so the poor video production quality detracts further from the whole event.
It is possible to have high production quality on YouTube, e.g. BWF badminton.
Anyway, Panchaya Channoi now leads 5-2, and is only one frame from the title — she had a century break.
I’ve never been impressed with Reanne Evans, and watching her in this final has not changed my opinion.
Well it’s over, and Evans was well beaten 2-6 (best of 11) — I must say she was gracious in defeat, including deciding not to play on when needing snookers with no more reds on the table (in this tournament it was common to see women play on when needing multiple snookers; I think the fact it was best of 5 most of the time contributed to that, i.e. not many frames are available for a comeback).
Rather impressive to win both the U21 and women’s titles in the same year — it will be interesting to see her play against men, especially in an unorthodox event like the Shootout, where Bai Yulu did well in the past.
I heard that she won four games on Monday – three in the Under-21s and her semi-final against Nutcharut. To then make two tons in the final of the main event was quite impressive. But Evans was very poor.
Agree about the production on YouTube. The picture was bad and I couldn’t believe there was no commentary.
>she had a century break
I should correct myself: she had *2* century breaks in the final (100, 107) — I saw a comment saying those were her two highest breaks in the entire tournament (I’ll take his word for it).