Masters Champion Remains Banned From Snooker Event After Major Scandal
A former Masters champion remains banned from professional snooker over his involvement in a match-fixing scandal.
China's Yan Bingtao defeated John Higgins 10-8 in the 2021 final to become the youngest player since Ronnie O'Sullivan in 1995 to win the Masters.
At just 20 years old, Yan was quickly tipped to become China's first-ever world champion, with his stylish cue action and tactical play earning plenty of admirers.
The Chinese star also took home a winners' cheque of £250,000, and told BBC Sport: "I am very excited [to win].
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"I have imagined how I would celebrate, but I am very calm, even though in the last few frames I was not playing very well but I did not give up."
Two months later, Yan rose to his highest world ranking of 10.
In the following season, he reached the final of the German Masters and the semi-final of the Northern Ireland Open, and appeared in four further ranking quarter-finals.
One of those was at the 2022 World Championship, with Yan defeating Chris Wakelin and Mark Selby before losing 13-11 to Mark Williams.
Just seven months later, however, Yan was provisionally suspended from the World Snooker Tour over match-fixing allegations.
In June 2023, nine Chinese players were given varying suspensions from the tour after being found guilty of match-fixing.
For his part, Yan pleaded guilty to a charge of fixing a match that he played in August 2016, a second charge of fixing three snooker matches that he played in between March 2022 and September 2022, and betting on snooker matches between September 2019 and December 2022.
He was given a five-year suspension from the World Snooker Tour, which was backdated to the date of his initial suspension in November 2022, and ordered to pay £7,500 in costs.
He therefore cannot return to the tour until 2028 at the earliest, as he would have to go through Q-School in order to regain his tour card.
As part of the scandal, a total of 10 players were given suspensions - with current reigning world champion Zhao Xintong the only player not to be convicted of match-fixing.
He instead accepted a lesser charge of being party to another party fixing two matches (being aware of a match being fixed) and betting on matches.
Zhao therefore received the shortest ban of the 10 players, and was eligible to return to the World Snooker Tour in 2024.
He returned on the amateur Q Tour and topped the Order of Merit, which would have been enough to win himself a tour card.
But the Chinese star progressed through qualifying for the World Championship, before then going on to win the entire tournament to become the first amateur world champion in the sport's history.
In the process, he earned enough ranking points to automatically secure a tour card for the 2025/26 season.
Topics: Snooker
Ryan Smart