2024 Riyadh Season Snooker Championship Finals Day Preview and match schedule

Both semi-finals (best of seven frames) take place in the afternoon session, with the final (best of nine frames) scheduled for the evening, where the last professional snooker trophy of 2024 will be lifted.

Who is playing today on Friday 20th December at the Riyadh Season Snooker Championship. What are the matches?

Mark Williams v Luca Brecel (13:00GMT start)

The opening semi-final pitches together the number six and seven seeds, who between them eliminated the world’s top two ranked players in the previous round on Thursday..

Mark Williams is aiming for another big payday in 2024, just weeks after winning his maiden Champion of Champions crown.

The three-time World Champion - who won his first Tour Championship title back in the spring - produced a classy and decisive break of 68 in the deciding frame to oust world number one Judd Trump in the quarter-finals. It was some payback for Williams who was denied the Saudi Arabia Masters title and £500,000 by Trump who memorably cleared up in the deciding frame of the final to win on the final black.

2023 World Champion Luca Brecel had endured a pretty rotten season until the last couple of weeks, since when there have been green shoots of recovery.

The Belgian reached his first ranking event quarter-final of the season last week at the Scottish Open, and over the past few days in the Middle East he has defeated Zhang Anda (4-0) and reigning World Champion Kyren Wilson (4-3).

Brecel seems to thrive in this competition having been the runner-up in the first edition back in March.

In terms of previous head-to-head meetings in professional competition, Williams leads the overall count 5-2. However, Brecel has won their two most recent encounters, both of which arrived in 2023; the first of those came in the second round at the Crucible en route to Brecel's World Championship triumph.

Followed by: Ronnie O’Sullivan v Mark Allen

Defending champion and number one seed Ronnie O’Sullivan rocketed into the last four with a speedy 4-0 whitewash of Ding Junhui during Thursday’s evening season in Riyadh.

Despite having not won a match on the professional circuit in over six weeks, O’Sullivan looked in brilliant form as he compiled back-to-back century breaks in the final two frames.

It has been a frustrating 2024/25 campaign for O’Sullivan, so far. He has not featured in several events, but in the ones he has played in, he has yet to make a final. His semi-final opponent on Friday, Mark Allen, will also be aiming to appear in his first final of the season.

Northern Ireland’s Allen - who began the term as the world number one for the first time in his career when he took over from O’Sullivan at the top of the standings - is into his fifth semi-final of the season; this is his fourth in just over a month. However, he is on a semi-finals losing streak.

O’Sullivan and Allen first played each other on snooker’s top tier back in 2009. On that occasion - which occurred at the Crucible and World Championship - Allen got the won.

Since then, though, O’Sullivan has established a 7-4 winning record over Allen in all pro competition. Somewhat surprisingly, this will be their first encounter in over two-and-a-half years; their last meeting was in the last 16 of the 2022 World Championship which O’Sullivan comfortably won 13-4. Several days later, O’Sullivan won his modern-era record-equalling seventh world title.

The Final: Williams/Brecel v O’Sullivan/Allen

The final of the 2024 Riyadh Season Snooker Championship is scheduled to take place from around 19:00GMT. The title decider is the first to five frames, with a mid-session interval after the fourth frame.

It’s possible that we could have a repeat of the first staging of this tournament (when it was known as the World Masters of Snooker), but the two Marks will have something to say about that.

For full details on the 2024 Riyadh Season Snooker Championship, please visit our tournament information centre here.