Judd Trump beats Stephen Maguire 6-4 in high-quality UK Championship opener

All bar one of the 10 frames these fluent entertainers shared featured a significant contribution from one of them as the first Triple Crown event of the campaign began with a bang.

Maguire fought hard after a slow start and threatened to take the match the distance, but Trump held firm to progress to the next round and a meeting with Si Jiahui, a 6-0 winner against Ryan Day.

Trump won this title for a second time last year but between those two wins had suffered some serious disappointments, including a shock defeat to veteran Nigel Bond.

With his new cue experiment shelved for now and no titles so far this season, many shrewd observers felt this was a dangerous opener against a big talent in Maguire, whose own record in York is strong.

Trump though got off to an ideal start, going 2-0 up with a second-frame century, and that was absolutely necessary as Maguire gave as good as he got in what was a high-quality encounter.

The Scot registered a century of his own in frame five and levelled the match at 3-3 with a run of 82, but losing a scrappy seventh frame followed by a tight eighth proved decisive, the latter after a re-spotted black.

He threw one more punch with a break of 86 to get back within one, but Trump dominated the next and will advance to play Si in the second round proper.

Si was thoroughly dominant against Day, who failed to score in four of the six frames and could muster only 55 points in total, a pot success rate of under 50% nowhere near enough to trouble his young opponent.

"It was a tough game, there was a lot of good stuff, there was a lot of misses. It was a classic UK Championship game really. I knew he had been back to form this year and he was always going to be tough to beat,” said Trump.

"At the moment I’m just missing that one percent of confidence under the utmost pressure. You need to have that belief, it isn’t quite there at the moment. When you beat players like Stephen, it helps and the form is coming back.

"I feel a lot better with this cue. I’ve been trying my absolute hardest but sometimes you know it isn’t going to be your day. I felt I had to change to give myself a chance. There are so many snooker tournaments these days that you don’t have much time to tinker. I have some time off after this event and I hope I’ll then find the right equipment for the rest of the season."

In the evening session, John Higgins beat Ben Woollaston 6-0, the latter avoiding a whitewash having been 5-0 down but ultimately no match for Higgins, more at ease in York it seems than he was in Saudi Arabia recently.

And Shaun Murphy beat Lyu Haotian by the same scoreline to cap a day where all four favourites progressed.