2010 Power Snooker Masters Trophy


The 2010 Power Snooker was a cue sports tournament based on the Power Snooker variation. The inaugural tournament took place on the 30 October 2010 at The O2, London, United Kingdom. Ronnie O'Sullivan defeated Ding Junhui 572–258 on a points system in the final.

Venue, entrants and prize money

Power Snooker's inaugural tournament was a one-day event hosted at The O2 in London, held on 30 October 2010. Two thousand spectators watched the eight hours of tournament play in the indigO2 sub-venue. The players in the inaugural tournament competed for a £35,000 first prize.
O'Sullivan was the first player to be confirmed as participating in the inaugural tournament, which was announced during the official launch. It was stated during the launch that the inaugural tournament would feature the four top ranked players in the world, alongside four wild card entrants. The other seven entrants were confirmed on 24 September, matching the players who were mooted by the organisers during the launch as possible entrants. The tournament draw took place on 12 October, with O'Sullivan facing Brecel in the opening game.

Draw

Play occurred over two sessions in a knock-out format. The first round of eight games took place in an afternoon session, producing four semi-finalists. The semi-finals, third place play off and final then took place in an evening session.

Match referees

The tournament was refereed by two female professional cue-sport referees, Michaela Tabb from Scotland and Patricia Murphy from Ireland. Tabb was head-referee at most Matchroom Sport pool events, and the first woman to referee a world ranking match and, in 2009, a World Snooker Championship final; while Murphy began refereeing professional snooker matches at the 2005 UK Championships.
Tabb said on the eve of the tournament that "Power Snooker is an entirely new game with a totally new set of rules and will provide many exciting challenges to both the referees and the players. The game will be played at a faster pace than the traditional game, it's going to be very exciting to watch", while Murphy said "It'll be great to see how the audience react and join in with the action".

Broadcast

The 2010 tournament was broadcast live in the United Kingdom on ITV4 for the whole eight hours of play. Talksport provided radio coverage. In addition to ITV4, the tournament was broadcast to 25 other countries in Europe, the Middle East, the Far East, China, Latin America and Oceana.