Trump beats Ford as Maguire builds thumping lead

Judd Trump eased through to the World Snooker Championship quarter-finals as he completed a comprehensive 13-7 win over 14th seed Tom Ford.

Trump, 34, came into this tournament as number two in the world with five ranking titles under his belt already this season, but the 2019 world champion wants more.

“The Worlds is special and all the greats have managed to win it multiple times," said Trump before the tournament started. "I don’t know when the prime is in snooker, but I feel I’m somewhere there or thereabouts.

"Unless I win here it’s a failure for me. If I go home from a tournament and I’ve not won, it’s a failure. It’s a horrible feeling losing and anything less than a win is not good enough."

Trump will face world number 44 Jak Jones after the Welshman battled to a 13-9 win over last year's surprise semi-finalist China's Si Jiahui.

"Judd and Ronnie O'Sullivan are two of the best players in the world so it does not get any tougher than that," said 30-year-old Jones.

"Everyone is expecting a Ronnie-Judd semi-final so I've got nothing to lose and I will just try my best and see what happens."

Jones had seen a 6-2 lead trimmed to 9-7 in the second session, but he had enough left in the reserves to finish off Si when they returned on Saturday.

After coming through a match of sometimes dismal quality, Jones accepted he would have to play better against Trump when they meet on Tuesday and Wednesday.

"I feel relieved," said Jones. "It was an absolutely shocking match. Today was a little bit better but I don't know how I won. I don't think either of us were clinical - someone just had to win.

"I won four black-ball games in the first session to be 6-2 up. If I'm winning when I'm not playing well there's a positive in that."

Ten of the 16 seeds have already been eliminated, but Trump has been in superb form while sweeping into the last eight for a 10th time.

He resumed on Saturday with an 11-5 lead against Ford, only needing two more frames for victory.

A break of 76 helped Ford win the opening frame on Saturday, before Trump moved to the brink with a break of 107 - the 979th century of his career.

He missed out on a 980th shortly afterwards, but a 79 was enough to clinch victory.

The last-16 matches are the best of 25 frames, so the first to 13 goes through.

Northern Ireland's Mark Allen, who could end the tournament as world number one, began his match against Scotland's four-time world champion John Higgins and the pair finished the opening session deadlocked at 4-4.

Allen made a break of 119, with Higgins' best effort being a run of 73 in the third frame.

Joe O'Connor beat four-time champion Mark Selby in round one but fell 6-2 behind against 12th seed Kyren Wilson, who impressed with breaks of 50, 105, 71 and 78, with that match continuing on Sunday evening.

Stuart Bingham, the 2015 world champion, nudged 5-3 ahead at the end of an entertaining first session against Jack Lisowski in the match between two unseeded players.

Lisowski, ranked 17th, won the opening two frames of the night with breaks of 82 and 88, before world number 29 Bingham took five on the bounce, having runs of 90 and 89 along the way.

But Lisowski ended the session well with a break of 51 to take the eighth frame. That one resumes on Sunday afternoon and ends on Monday night.

A fired-up Stephen Maguire built a 10-6 lead over 2005 world champion Shaun Murphy.

The pair have been rivals since they were children, with Maguire the leading Scottish youth player and Murphy the top English young player.

Murphy edged two frames on the black and responded with a fist pump, before Maguire did likewise, punching the table and then punching the air as he moved into a four-frame advantage, only needing three more for victory.

That match will be played to a conclusion on Sunday morning from 10:00 BST.

Any meeting between Murphy and Maguire leads to questions about the so-called 'Chalkgate' incident from their match at the 2004 Grand Prix when Maguire forgot his chalk, the first-round tie was delayed and he was docked a frame.

On Monday, Murphy insisted he had not caused the referee to dock a frame from Maguire and said: "It was a massive piece of wrong time, wrong place and bad journalism.

"People still think I had him docked a frame for forgetting his chalk, which isn't the case. The tournament director docked him a frame because he forced the match to start late. It wasn't the referee, it wasn't me, it wasn't anyone else.

"People saw me and the referee talking and assumed I had him docked a frame. I perhaps should have sat in my chair and said nothing - I was guilty of talking to the referee. It looked as if I said A, B and C and led to X, Y and Z, but it's not the case."

Maguire, who won that match 5-2, felt differently and said this week: "We can't resolve it because he always says he never said to the referee. But he did. He knows he did. But I'm over it."