Carter stakes claim with second final - 13/10/2011

Semi Final 1: Ali Carter 3-2 Mark Williams
69-27 (Carter 47), 41-66, 63-45 (Carter 34, Williams 45), 1-131 (Williams 115), 84-0 (Carter 31, 41)

ALI CARTER, making his second PartyPoker.com Premier League Snooker appearance of the season, outlasted Mark Williams to take their semi-final tie on a final frame shoot-out and progress into the final of event six in front of a sell-out crowd of 600 at the Biddulph Leisure Centre in Stoke.

The win gives Carter a guaranteed three points with the promise of more to come in the final and follows his four-point haul from event four in Doncaster.

“It’s nice to get to two finals and hopefully I can win it tonight. It was a bit scrappy as both of us struggled to get the hang of the nap but the shoot out was interesting. When the clock goes down to 15 seconds it becomes very nerve-wracking,” said Carter.

Breaks of 47 and 34 won the Essex man the first and third frames but Williams, who won the second, levelled the match with an excellent break of 115 which puts him in line for the evening’s high break prize of £1,000.

That forced the match into a decider, which was played under Sky’s ‘Shoot Out’ rule with a decreasing shot clock and a maximum duration of ten minutes. Carter prevailed with runs of 31 and 41 to secure the final spot, where he will face either Jimmy White or Ding Junhui.