Snooker – World Championship Review:Graeme Dott completed a 10-5 victory against Peter Ebdon in a repeat of the 2006 final to book his place in the second round of the World Championshiop at the Crucible in Sheffield.
Dott (32) beat Ebdon to the title four years ago and outfought the same opponent to reach the second round.
The result means Ebdon (39) drops out of the top 16 for the first time since 1994.
Ding Junhui made short work of wrapping up victory over Stuart Pettman as he breezed into the second round with a 10-1 winning margin.
The 23-year-old is still getting to grips with the English language but had no trouble expressing himself on the table.
Qualifier Pettman grumbled: "I was absolutely shocking throughout the whole game. It's so disappointing to get here and put in a performance like that."
Ding added: "I don't know what happened to him. He was leaving many balls and leaving me easy ones, I just played like practice."
Neil Robertson avoided a sticky end to his World Championship campaign but admitted knocking out Fergal O’Brien was as tough as extracting chewing gum from a carpet.
The 28-year-old Australian made a maximum 147 break inside 15 minutes at the recent China Open, but a Crucible record for the slowest frame almost fell as he and O’Brien became entrenched in a tense battle for the crunch 13th frame in their Crucible opener.
Robertson finally took it after an hour and nine minutes - six minutes short of the record set by Stephen Maguire and Mark King last year - to gain an 8-5 lead.
And that effectively finished off 38-year-old O’Brien, who was not flattered by the final scoreline of 10-5.
“I said to someone after the match that it felt like trying to get a piece of chewing gum out of a carpet,” Robertson explained. “It was a really, really tough match and I’m relieved to get through.”
Shaun Murphy, who won the 2005 title as a qualifier, was well on the way to a second-round meeting with Ding.
The Englishman made breaks of 108, 90 and 88 and opened up an 8-1 lead over Northern Ireland's Gerard Greene in a match which concludes today.