Snooker Irish MastersIreland's Ken Doherty survived a nerve-racking nine-frame match with Anthony Hamilton last night in the Irish Masters at the Citywest Hotel.

Meanwhile, after losing to Drew Henry in the first round of the Embassy World Championship last April, Mark King declared himself fed up with snooker and said he had played his last match.

Yesterday, he was probably left feeling quite glad he had changed his mind, after beating Scotland's Graeme Dott 6-2 to reach the semi-finals of the Citywest Irish Masters.

King is now guaranteed a minimum €18,000 whatever happens over the weekend and might well have earned another €7,500 yesterday by making a total clearance of 137, a break which made him the new front runner for the highest-break prize.

The Englishman would have been unlikely to earn such sums from whatever other occupation he might have turned to, although his hourly earnings rate did take something of a dip yesterday as it took a marathon two and a half hours for him to establish a commanding 4-0 lead.

King's highlights in those early frames included a break of 95 in the first, and the capture of the second frame after requiring two snookers.

Dott won the first two frames after the interval to get back into the match at 2-4, but King halted the comeback with his total clearance, then won the eighth frame on the pink.

"I've been working with my dad on break-building recently," he explained afterwards.

"We sat down and decided that was the thing I really needed to improve on. I'm mentally right now as well, whereas in the past I used to squander matches when things weren't going right," he added.

King is now through to his first ranking-event semi-final since October 2001.

IRISH MASTERS QUARTER-FINALS: Mark King (Eng) bt Graeme Dott (Sco) 6-2: (103-8, 70-62, 70-40, 60-5, 0-109, 43-81, 137-0, 63-47).