Bai Yulu has won her second game in UK Championship qualifying, beating former Crucible quarter-finalist Jamie Jones as she continues her bid to reach the Barbican.
The women’s world champion picked up her first win on the professional tour in her first qualifier, beating Farakh Ajaib 6-4 and has followed it up in style.
The 21-year-old made breaks of 70, 58, 56 and 68 in a 6-4 win over Jones, who is a three-time ranking semi-finalist and played at the Crucible as recently as this year, beating Neil Robertson to get there.
Bai won the Women’s World Championship for the first time in March, earning herself a place on the World Snooker Tour.
She has found it tough going so far, but after playing eventual winner Mark Williams at the Champion of Champions last Tuesday, she has found form in Leicester.
The Chinese star still needs to win two more matches to get to York, so it remains a big ask, starting with Scotland’s Scott Donaldson on Tuesday afternoon.
The winner of that match will play either Jack Lisowski or Rory Thor in the final qualifier to make it to the Barbican.
Bai is already women’s world champion and has won the 2023 Women’s British Open and 2024 Women’s UK Championship, beating 12-time world champ Reanne Evans in both finals.
She impressed as a teenager in IBSF events, but COVID curtailed her progress as travel was limited and she only made her debut on the World Women’s Snooker Tour last year at the Women’s World Championship, where she lost in the final.
Since then she has quickly put her stamp on the women’s tour, where she looks set to win a huge amount of silverware, while she is also now trying to make an impact on the main tour.
Bai’s Women’s World Championship in Dongguan Changping, China was hugely popular in her home country, with viewing records smashed for the tournament.
World Women’s Snooker confirmed: ‘In China, the event attracted cumulative viewing figures of 175.4 million, with a peak audience of 300,000 via the Huya streaming platform. The total accumulated viewing time totalled 104.7 million hours.
‘This was complemented by over 6 million unique viewers recorded by video-sharing platform Douyin.
‘On Western platforms the event also boasted record figures via the official WWS Facebook page, with over 725,000 total views across the week.’
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