Is former world number one Judd Trump facing a deciding frame problem?
Judd Trump’s deciding frame losses have stacked up in recent times on the World Snooker Tour.
Former world champion Judd Trump is preparing for this week’s 2026 Champion of Champions invitational where he will face Jak Jones in the opening round on Tuesday afternoon at the Mattioli Arena.
No-one has featured in more Champion of Champions finals than Trump, although he would love to become a multiple-time winner of the title, adding to the crown he claimed in 2021.
It has been a topsy-turvy season, so far, for the 37-year-old Englishman; by no means has it been bad, though, having won the Shanghai Masters invitational title for his second time in August.
Since then, Trump has reached the semi-finals of the British and Shenzhen Opens, and the quarter-finals of the Wuhan and English Opens, although he travels to Leicester not in the greatest form after losing his first match at the Northern Ireland Open and second round in the International Championship.
In the latter of those events - held in Nanjing, China - Trump was ousted 6-5 by eventual semi-finalist and former European Masters champion Fan Zhengyi. A couple of weeks before that in Belfast, Martin O’Donnell pipped him 4-3.
Those final frame defeats continue a running theme for Trump and his relationship with deciders on the professional snooker circuit in recent times.
Trump did shade Anthony McGill at the English Open in September and Shaun Murphy at the Tour Championship in April after being taken the distance by his opponents, but those are his only deciding frame victories out of the last 16 (not counting the short-formatted Championship League) he has been involved in.
This streak is a bit perplexing as before those 16, he'd won seven deciding frames in-a-row, including his famous title triumph at the inaugural Saudi Arabia Snooker Masters in 2024 where he compiled a legendary counter clearance to win on the final black and collect the £500,000 top prize.
Trump squeezed past John Higgins, 6-5 (his seventh consecutive deciding frame win) in the last 16 of the 2024 UK Championship - before going on to lift the trophy in York just a few days later - but after that, he lost his next ten deciding frame assignments on the Tour.
Two of those were in ranking event finals at the 2025 Players Championship and 2025 Northern Ireland Open, and another two were in the semi-finals of the Riyadh Season Championship and Masters.
The 31-time ranking event winner stopped the rot with that aforementioned narrow victory over Murphy near the end of last season, but he is back on a three-match deciding frame losing streak, and looked uncomfortable during the closing stages of his defeat to Fan in the Far East.