Kyren Wilson has revealed that he still 'picks the brains' of seven-time world champion Ronnie O'Sullivan - as he prepares to potentially face him at the 2025 UK Championship.
Wilson, who won the 2024 World Championship, is seeded at number three for the first round, which gets underway on Saturday afternoon from The York Barbican.
The Kettering-born cueist takes on qualifier Elliott Slessor for a place in the last 16, where the winner takes on either 2024 UK finalist Barry Hawkins or David Lilley.
A potential O'Sullivan match-up is then on the cards for the quarter-final, with 'The Rocket' set to play his first competitive tournament on UK soil since the World Championship in April.
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Wilson kicked off his campaign by winning the Shanghai Masters in China, collecting £210,000 as a winners' cheque.
In a season where every tournament has had a different winner on the World Snooker Tour, Wilson has since made two ranking event quarter-finals.
Speaking to SPORTbible through Dream Vegas, Wilson admits that he is feeling confident heading into the UK Championship in York - which hasn't always been the case this season.
"Practice has been good," he explains. "I feel like my equipment is in the right position, which it hasn't been throughout pretty much all of this season.
"I've gone into events where I've picked up a cue the day before this season, kept it under wraps and no-one's known, thankfully.
"And I still managed to reach the quarter-finals in Belfast and lose to the eventual winner 6-5 on the black, Zhao Xintong, the world champion.
"So you can see that I can kind of pick up any cue and play to a good level. But you need to be completely settled in your mind to obviously go that little bit further and win events."
The 33-year-old is well aware that, given the unpredictability of tournaments this season, any number of players can be a threat on their day - and thinks that even up to 16 players could have a chance of winning the UK Championship.
"It just shows you the strength on the tour," he says. "It is unpredictable winners, then also winners like the legends of our game.
"People like Mark Williams, that, by his own admission, he's going blind. I'd love to have his eyes and go blind and still win tournaments!
"It's been phenomenal. It's a great watch. I think it's really interesting to watch a tournament and think that I couldn't put my finger on who is going to win. You might have slight favourites, but you wouldn't be surprised if 10 to 16 players could potentially win this event."
The aforementioned Williams and John Higgins - part of snooker's iconic 'Class of '92' - have both had solid starts to the season, with Higgins reaching two ranking quarter-finals, a semi-final and a final.
The other member, O'Sullivan, has played a part-time schedule this season, but appears to be much more content with where his game is at compared to recent years.
He hit two 147 breaks in the same match against Chris Wakelin in the Saudi Arabia Snooker Masters, and reached the final before losing 10-9 to Neil Robertson.
Back in 2017, O'Sullivan described Wilson as 'the man for the present and the future' after beating him 9-2 in the English Open final, adding: "He will undoubtedly be a world champion ... I'm just trying to hold on to him."
'The Rocket' then defeated Wilson 18-8 to win the World Championship in 2020, and again told him afterwards that he could win the tournament 'a few times'.
Earlier this month, he named Wilson as his favourite current player in an interview with TNT Sports.
Wilson spoke about the importance of the 2020 final to his future career, and revealed that he is regularly in contact with O'Sullivan, who turns 50 during the UK Championship, off the table.
"It was wonderful, wonderful to hear such a lovely comment from such a great player," he says.
"You know, it would have been quite easy at that moment, with how comfortably he beat me in that final, to say, 'Listen, he's got no chance, that was easy, blah blah blah'.
"But yeah, hopefully I'd shown a bit of fight and shown what I was capable of doing. And from that moment, it's taught me a lot. It's made me a lot stronger, a lot wiser. I know what to do more off the table.
"To play him in big matches now, and I text him quite often, it's nice to always pick his brains to try and learn."
Topics: Spotlight, Ronnie OSullivan, Snooker
Ryan Smart