Incredibly rare scoring error costs snooker player frame in World Championship qualifying

Women's world champion Bai Yulu lost a frame in the first round of World Snooker Championship qualifying following a rare scoring error.

Bai, the current women's world number one, secured a 10-7 win over Daniel Womersley to become the first female player to win a World Championship qualifier in nine years.

The 22-year-old was 7-4 up when her opponent had four points incorrectly added to his score, putting him 66 points to 34 ahead.

Womersley missed an attempted snooker escape but wrongly received four additional points instead of Bai.

When she later returned to the table, Bai had an opportunity to clear the table but, being 32 points behind with just 25 remaining, officially needed two snookers to stay in the frame.

Had the scores been counted correctly, however, she would only have been 24 points behind with 25 remaining, and therefore could have attempted to clear up for the frame win.

The initial error was not corrected and Womersley went on to win the frame to reduce the deficit to 7-5, but Bai restored her advantage to make it 8-5 and ultimately secured the win by 10 frames to seven.

But while the mistake did not affect the final result, Bai would have lost out on at least £5,000 in prize money - and potentially more, depending on her progress through the tournament - had she lost.

The Chinese player takes on Michael Holt in round two - of four - of qualifying on Wednesday as she looks to become the first female player to reach the final stage of a Triple Crown event.

She won three qualifying matches ahead of the 2024 UK Championship before losing 6-1 to Jack Lisowski in the final round.

Bai has won eight titles on the Women's World Snooker Tour since her debut in 2023, including the last two World Championships.

Speaking to Chinese state media earlier this month ahead of her campaign in Sheffield, she explained that she has ambitions to break into the top 64 of the world rankings.

"No female player has achieved this yet; it is a big challenge, but I like challenges," she stated (via South China Morning Post).

"Throughout all my practicing, what I have always wanted to do is let more people, or more girls, see snooker, become interested, and want to try it.

"There isn't much I can do personally, except try my best to maintain good form and achieve good results in competitions to increase exposure, so more people want to understand the sport."