Yesterday’s UK Championship quarter-finals both ended almost the same way – 9-2 and 9-3.

Even though most people believed that John Higgins would win, 9-2 was still a somewhat depressing result for Liang Wenbo. However, being an up and coming young star he’ll probably accept the prize money of £16,450 and the ranking points for reaching the quarter-final stage with a smile on his face when his initial disappointment has waned.

Higgins will meet Ronnie O’Sullivan in Saturday’s semi-final. O’Sullivan’s quarter-final was the third match in this tournament where he beat someone 9-3. This time Mark Selby was the victim.

Selby fought hard and wouldn’t give up. He scored a 136 break in the first frame of the evening session and was very close to taking a few more frames that O’Sullivan eventually stole from him. But strong will apparently wasn’t enough against O’Sullivan, who was simply the better player.  

The semi-final is the first time O’Sullivan and Higgins meet in the UK Championship. Their latest meeting in a ranking tournament was in this year’s Grand Prix when Higgins beat O’Sullivan 5-4 in the second round.

Saturday’s match is going to be different though as they’re playing best of 17 frames in an overall bigger and more important tournament. Their latest meeting in a long format match was the quarter-final in the 2007 World Championship, which Higgins won 13-9.

O’Sullivan won the UK Championship in 1993, 1997, 2001 and 2007 while Higgins hasn’t won it quite as many times. His two victories were in 1998 and 2000.