O'Sullivan ahead in world snooker final

Sheffield - Ronnie O'Sullivan holds a three frame advantage at the half-way stage in the world snooker final, leading by 10 frames to 7 over Ali Carter.

In the contest to become the 2012 world professional snooker champion three-times champion Ronnie O'Sullivan holds a 10-7 lead over his fellow Englishman Ali Carter at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield. The match is refereed by Michaela Tabb. After both players came through relatively comfortable semi-final matches, it was O'Sullivan who started the strongest in winning the first two frames of the best-of-thirty five frame match, as World Snooker reported. In the second game, O'Sullivan compiled a century break, knocking in a quick fire 117. Carter responded with his highest break of the contest so far, a run of 84 to clinch the fifth frame. The match proceeded for 3-3 b3fore O'Sullivan hit a purple patch, running out a break of 92 to win the seventh frame 108 point to nil, and then compiling an impressive 141 break to end the first session 5-3 ahead. In the second session, as the BBC noted, the pace of play slowed down and the emphasis was more upon safety play and tactics rather than break building. In this session O'Sullivan and Carter each made two breaks of over 50: O'Sullivan with 68 and 62, and Carter 56 and 59. O'Sullivan took this session 5-4 to lead 10-7 overnight. The frame scores stand (Carter first): 37-77 (56), 1-121 (117), 85-0 (84), 58-24, 42-86 (52), 55-2, 0-108 (92), 0-141 (141), 84-8 (56), 21-70, 14-69 (68), 62-30, 7-73, 13-60, 83-1 (59), 34-74 (62), 52-3 The match continues over two more sessions on Monday May 7. The winner will be the first player to win 18 frames. The prize money is £250,000 (approximately $404,000) for the champion and £125,000 (around $202,000) for the runner-up.