Selby avenges defeat against Williams

Mark Selby gained a measure of revenge for his defeat to Mark Williams in last month's German Masters final as he knocked the Welshman out of the Partycasino.com Players Tour Championship Grand Finals in Dublin last night.

The 4-3 victory for Selby sets up a semi-final tomorrow against Martin Gould, the Pinner potter who went close to beating Neil Robertson at the World Championship last year.

Selby looked to be going out at the Helix venue when Williams, leading 3-2, moved in front in the sixth frame.

But the man from Leicester dug in to force a decider and soon forged a 45-0 lead.

Williams came back to 45-42 and laid a snooker behind the black, but Selby escaped and after prising 20 points in fouls from his opponent he cleared the table with a run of 39.

Gould won 4-2 against Nottingham's Michael Holt, making breaks of 96 and 100 in the closing two frames.

Gould, 29, has never previously reached a televised ranking event semi-final but came to prominence at the Crucible last year when he blew an 11-5 lead to lose 13-12 in the second round against eventual champion Robertson.

"I've only watched the first two sessions of that Robertson match on DVD and I refuse to watch the third session," Gould said today. "In fact I will probably go home and snap the DVD so I never watch it."

But the Robertson match was not an entirely miserable experience, with Gould stressing: "I just took all the positives from it and I didn't look at any negatives."

Shaun Murphy will face Matthew Stevens in the other semi-final, with the final to be played in the evening.

Stephen Lee had one foot in the semi-finals before Murphy produced a brilliant fightback to deny him.

Lee held a 3-1 lead which was trimmed to 3-2 by a 116 break from Murphy, but Lee was then 64-1 ahead in the sixth frame.

He ran out of position though, and Murphy cleared up with a run of 68 to force a decider, in which he made breaks of 39 and 62 to earn a 4-3 victory.

Murphy said on worldsnooker.com: "That's one of the best victories ever given the fact that it's such a short match, that I was 3-1 down then 60-odd down and in a lot of trouble.

"At 3-1 down a little lad came up to me and said 'Come on Shaun'. I thought 'I'm trying my best', but then I made a hundred in the next frame so maybe that helped."

Murphy beat Stevens in the 2005 World Championship final, since when Stevens' career has gone through a period of decline which he appears to have at last arrested.

The Welshman was thrilled to be back in a major semi-final after extending his run in Dublin with a 4-0 victory over Scotland's Marcus Campbell.

The 33-year-old Carmarthen cueman is a former Masters and UK Championship winner but since dropping out of the world's top 16 players in 2008 he has rarely been seen in the closing stages of ranking events.

Stevens said: "It's nice to be competing at the top level again but I've been to lots of semi-finals and finals before so I know what to expect."