beats

Alfie Burden beat Stuart Bingham 63-8 to win the Snooker Shoot Out and claim his first ranking title in Blackpool.

He turns 49 on Sunday but started the celebrations early by climbing on the table to huge cheers once victory was confirmed at Blackpool Tower Circus.

Burden, who won the World Seniors Championship in May, takes home the £50,000 prize.

“I’ve had a 30-year career and it has been mainly downs – I’ve underperformed – but tonight is a night for me,” Burden told TNT Sports.

“I’d like to thank all my family and friends for all the belief they’ve had in me. This is a special moment and I’m going to cherish it.”

Bingham finished runner-up at the Snooker Shoot Out in 2014 but passed up the opportunity to mount a fightback from 56-7 with three minutes on the clock.

The 2015 World Champion put away a red but was well wide of the mark when going at the blue.

“He looked so cool and calm all the way through. He played brilliantly from the start,” Bingham told TNT Sports.

Snooker Shoot Out is a single-frame game with a maximum length of 10 minutes and players facing a shot clock.

Players have 15 seconds to complete each shot in the first five minutes of the match and 10 seconds during the final five minutes.

Elsewhere on the opening night, 2023 world champion Michael Smith beat Women’s World Matchplay winner Lisa Ashton 3-0.

Ashton, who had the majority of the crowd on her side, won two of the first three legs but Englishman Smith, 35, then put together a run of seven successive legs on his way to securing a spot in the last 64.

“That first set was nerve-wracking,” Smith told BBC Radio 5 Live. “As soon as I walked out, the crowd was on me straight away.

“I expected it but I thought if I go 1-0 down, it was going to get worse and worse.

“I tried to force things that weren’t there, but when I took that first set, it was happy days. I started to settle in then and nearly threw it away in the last set, but we’ll take the win.”

German debutant Arno Merk and Latvia’s Madars Razma also made it through to round two with 3-1 wins against Belgium’s Kim Huybrechts and Dutchman Jamai van den Herik respectively.

A total of 128 players are competing in the World Championship, up from 96 last year, for an increased first prize of £1m.

The first round is scheduled to conclude on Friday, 19 December, with the final taking place on Saturday, 3 January 2026.