Chinese snooker players to be banned for match-fixing
The biggest match-fixing scandal in snooker is set to lead to lengthy bans for some of the ten Chinese players who have appeared before a disciplinary commission.
Insiders say that an announcement of the sanctions is imminent and multiyear bans for some players — who have all been suspended since being charged in January — are expected. Snooker has imposed hefty bans for fixing before, including 12 years for Stephen Lee in 2012 and eight years for Quinten Hann in 2006.
Those charged in the latest scandal included the 2021 UK Championship winner Zhao Xintong, 26, who remained in Britain for last month’s disciplinary hearings while the other nine returned to China.
One of the younger players involved in the scandal told investigators that he had been targeted with threats by Liang Wenbo, a 36-year-old senior player with a court conviction for violence, who the youngster says ordered him to deliberately lose a match in September’s British Open.
Some details of the outcome of the disciplinary hearings appeared on the official Chinese social media account of snooker’s world governing body, the WPBSA, this month before being deleted. Officials say it was a draft document that was erroneously posted but it is understood to have carried some accurate details.
The post stated that Zhao accepted that he participated in two fixed matches and bet on snooker in contravention of the rules.
Another leading player, Yan Bingtao, the 23-year-old who won the Masters in 2021, is reported to have accepted that he took part in four fixed matches and bet on snooker.
Allegations established against Liang include “participating in match-fixing, encouraging other players to fix matches, obstructing the WPBSA’s investigation, severely intimidating the player(s) involved and deleting cell phone information in the hopes of destroying evidence”, said the post.
China is a key market for snooker and before the scandal broke there were about 25 Chinese players on the world tour, a fifth of the total, and another six or so on the secondary Q Tour. Many of them have been based in Sheffield and attached to two academies there, Victoria Snooker Academy and the Ding Junhui Snooker Academy, often living together in shared flats.
One 20-year-old player, Chang Bingyu, alleged that Liang threatened him and ordered him to deliberately lose a match in September’s British Open, which he did out of fear of reprisals.
Liang, the 2016 English Open winner, was banned last year by the WPBSA after he pleaded guilty to a “sustained assault” on a woman in Sheffield city centre — he was caught on CCTV punching and kicking her, continuing even when a passer-by tried to intervene.
In a now deleted post on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, Chang alleged he had been scared into fixing the score to lose his British Open match against Jamie Jones 4-1.
He wrote: “On the morning of the start of the game, Liang Wenbo called me in a threatening tone, saying he was [betting on] my game against Jamie Jones. I was afraid that he had bet so much money. If I didn’t agree, he would make trouble for me, so I had no choice but to agree. I was very scared.”
In a response on Chinese social media Liang denied that he had ever been involved in match-fixing, said that he would challenge the claims legally and also suggested that he would blow the whistle on other corrupt practices.
