On February 4, the 2022 Snooker Invitational Edition of the Champions League ended the contest for the winners' group, and in the end Higgins performed well, with two games in the semi-finals and the final 3-2, and finally won the championship for the third time after 2018. The Chinese legion has as many as 3 players to play, unfortunately Liang Wenbo, Yan Bingtao, Zhao Xintong three performance is not good, only Yan Bingtao and Liang Wenbo ranked in the top four, but in the semi-finals are 2-3 losses, respectively, defeated Higgins and Bingham, missed the final. The most regrettable is Zhao Xintong, who only needs to win in the last game of the round robin against Donaldson, who is at the bottom of the ranking, but he regrets to lose and is eventually eliminated.
Since its establishment in 2008, the Champions League has gone through 14 years of history, although it is a small invitational tournament, but because of its unique format, it has attracted many famous players, including Trump, Selby, Robertson, Higgins and others, are regulars. On the championship list, Trump previously topped the list with three titles, and this time, with Higgins in the winners' bracket, it is expected to equalize the record number of titles. In addition, in the past 15 years of the Champions League, Higgins has played for as many as 13 years, is a veritable "labor model", and the results are quite outstanding.
In this season's invitational version of the Champions League, after the competition of the first seven groups, a total of 7 winners were born, namely Liang Wenbo, Dort, Zhao Xintong, Donaldson, Bingham Bingtao and Higgins. The Chinese team can have three people to advance to the winner group, which is also the best result in the past, coupled with the relatively outstanding results of Zhao Xintong and Yan Bingtao this season, and the big brother Liang Wenbo is sitting, so that Chinese fans have relatively high expectations for the results of the Champions League. However, after the first day of competition, the record of the three Chinese legions was 1 win and 2 losses, which was not well ranked, while Bingham and Higgins performed well, showing the stability and toughness of the top 16 seeds in the world ranking.
In the second day of the competition, Yan Bingtao began to exert his strength, and in the remaining three games, he staged a sweeping scene in a row, all of which won 3-0, defeating Donaldson, Dort and Higgins successively, and locked in a top four place with a record of 4 wins and 2 losses. Zhao Xintong won 3-1 against Liang Wenbo, but in the next two games, he lost 1-3 to Dortmund and 2-3 to Donaldson, and finally won 2 wins and 4 losses with Liang Wenbo, because there were fewer wins, unfortunately ranked fifth, and was eliminated. In the semi-finals, Bingham played against Liang Wenbo and Yan Bingtao against Higgins. Unfortunately, originally looking forward to another final China derby, in the end, Yan Bingtao and Liang Wenbo both lost 2-3 and missed the final.
It is worth noting that in the second semi-final, Liang Wenbo was awarded the first set because of his lateness, and then he once fell behind 0-2, chasing two consecutive sets, but in the end the decider was won by Bingham with 65 points. From the last game of the round robin to the semi-finals, Yan Bingtao played against Higgins consecutively, but failed to replicate the 3-0 victory, although the first set of the semi-final played a hundred singles and scored 135 points, but he lost three consecutive sets in a good situation of 2-0 lead, and finally was completed by Higgins 3-2. With Higgins winning, it was his third individual victory, after two previous titles in 2017 and 2018. In addition, this is also the fifth time this season that Higgins has reached the final of the competition, and finally broke the spell and won the championship.