 Ralf Souquet |
Ralf Souquet closed in on his third final appearance with an 11-8 quarter-final victory against Liu Cheng-chuan of Chinese Taipei.
The German, 37, who won the competition in 1996 and was runner-up in 2001, now faces another player from Chinese Taipei in the last four - Fu Che-wei.
It looked an easy task for Souquet as he won the first six racks but then let Liu back into the competition by losing the next four to make it 6-4. But The Kaiser recovered to then move 8-4 in front and maintained his advantage throughout the rest of the match to seal his semi-final spot.
Souquet admitted he was delighted to be doing so well in the competition after losing in the group stages in Kaohsiung in 2005.
He said: "It's a great feeling to be back playing in a good event, it's a very important tournament and makes me very happy.
"The highlights were the beginning of the match and I didn't make a mistake until I was leading 6-0, but unfortunately I missed a four-ball which kept him alive.
"He won the next couple of games and came up with a break where I couldn't run out and he took advantage of that. I made a couple of errors after that and the score was 6-4, I went up 8-4 and he closed it to 8-6 so I just wanted to keep a two-rack advantage until the end of the match."
