Ali Carter triumphs in Furth!

He's back, up and running again!

Well, I couldn't let what happened last week in Germany go without talking about it here, firstly what a great atmosphere we have there, seems like everything is perfect, the crowd is big and exciting as well as the great players who plays in it. The buzz it moves on TV and internet is amazing, I could say it's easily in the Top 10 events in the Snooker calendar, better than +50% of the other tournaments and WPBSA takes a big part in this merit. And considering Snooker tournaments are massive now, being one of the most popular ones means it's really, really big.

At the table players honored the name of great Paul Hunter making a great show to the audience, and at the end it couldn't be any better with Carter clinching the title with a 4-3 win in the Final versus Shaun Murphy. Coincidence or destiny, it was Carter's first title in more than two years since he won his last, right in Germany. And obviously, after beating Cancer twice in the last two years, he won the tournament that pays tribute to the memory of 3 times Masters Champion winner Paul Hunter, who died for Cancer in 2006.

Stuart Bingham, Mark Selby and Mark Allen suffered early exits and of course won't be happy with their start to the season, meanwhile Judd Trump got to the Quarters but haven't played half of what we saw from him last season. Recent Australian Open winner John Higgins, lost on his first day but had a 1st Round victory over reigning World Champion Bingham that paid his trip.
The semi-finalists Michael Holt and Mark King would be very happy with their results, principally King who reached very close to a big event's final establishing a 3-0 commanding lead over Murphy, but at the end couldn't kill the match as experience in big occasions proved to be Murphy's x-force.

The Paul Hunter Classic is such a big tournament that sometimes we forget it's an European Tour, but in fact Ali Carter has guaranteed his PC Final (Ranking Event) and Champion of Champions (Invitational Event) place, as well as getting close to guarantee his World Grand Prix (Ranking Event) place. It was Carter's sixth career title, and the British twice World Championship Runner-Up pocketed deserved 25 thousand euros for this.
Before this championship Ali Carter was ranked 29th in the World and he will rise a few positions now, I believe that if he keeps playing like this he'll already be back to the Top 16 next season, maybe not this season because he didn't play most of the tournaments last year and his points from 2013/14 season are being retired this season, but there's no wonder he still got the game on him.

See Paul Hunter Classic's results 

Next tournament coming up will be the 6 Reds World Championship in Thailand running from September 7 to 12, and this is gonna be an unmissable championship, as I've said here in my opinion this is the strongest field ever for the 6 Reds World Championship; Follow the action via Ronnie O`Sullivan Brasil on Facebook.