Liang Wenbo is a Chinese professional snooker player.
38 Facts About Liang Wenbo
2.
Liang Wenbo turned professional in 2005 and has won one ranking title, at the inaugural English Open in 2016.
3.
Liang Wenbo has reached one Triple Crown final at the 2015 UK Championship, where he lost to Neil Robertson.
4.
Liang Wenbo made three consecutive Masters appearances between 2016 and 2018, but lost in the first round each time, to John Higgins, Ronnie O'Sullivan, and Judd Trump respectively.
5.
Liang Wenbo has made three maximum breaks in professional competition and achieved a career high of 11th in the snooker world rankings.
6.
Liang Wenbo will remain suspended until the disciplinary process concludes.
7.
Liang Wenbo built on the positive start to his snooker career, winning an individual silver medal and a team gold medal at the 2006 Asian Games.
8.
Liang Wenbo finished a mediocre 104th out of 168 competitors, having only accumulated 2150 points.
9.
Liang Wenbo received a wildcard nomination to the Main Tour despite not qualifying directly; this was because he won the 2005 IBSF World Under-21 Championship, and because not all of the players that were eligible for the Main Tour took their places.
10.
Liang Wenbo ended his debut season on the professional tour ranked 78th, a position that would not guarantee a place in the following season's tour; however, he had finished inside the top 8 of the one year ranking list, which qualified him for a place on the main tour for the next season.
11.
However, at the Grand Prix, Liang Wenbo came top of his qualifying group, above more experienced players such as Gerard Greene and Barry Pinches.
12.
Liang Wenbo had more luck at the next tournament, the Northern Ireland Trophy, where he won through the qualifying rounds, beating Fraser Patrick, Joe Delaney and Rory McLeod on the way.
13.
Liang Wenbo fell at the first hurdle at his other home tournament, the China Open, losing in the first qualifying round to Steve Mifsud, who at the end of this season was ranked 54 places below Liang.
14.
At the World Championship, Liang Wenbo was the third Chinese player to qualify for the main draw, defeating Ben Woollaston, Rod Lawler, David Gilbert and Ian McCulloch in the qualifying rounds.
15.
Liang Wenbo faced Northern Ireland's Joe Swail in the last 16 of the tournament.
16.
Liang Wenbo missed the final yellow but snookered Swail, leaving the cue ball in the jaws of the pocket.
17.
Liang Wenbo followed up with a safety shot but Swail snookered him behind the blue; Liang Wenbo failed to hit the yellow ball so Swail had the white replaced.
18.
At the time, Swail nodded his assent to the referee, but he complained in a post-match interview that Liang Wenbo had behaved unprofessionally by not pointing out the referee's error.
19.
Commentators countered that Swail should have queried the placement of the ball before Liang Wenbo took his shot, and that, given the tension of the situation, Liang Wenbo could be forgiven for not thinking clearly.
20.
Liang Wenbo's run to the quarter-finals of the World Championship gained him 5000 ranking points, boosting his final ranking to number 40 in the world.
21.
Liang Wenbo began the new season by qualifying for the last 48 of the Northern Ireland Trophy.
22.
Liang Wenbo reached the main draw of the Grand Prix by winning two qualifying matches, but then succumbed to Ronnie O'Sullivan in the first round of the main draw.
23.
In December 2011, Liang Wenbo joined Romford-based snooker Academy and management team Grove Leisure.
24.
Liang Wenbo played in eleven of the twelve minor-ranking PTC events throughout the season, with a best finish in Event 10, where he lost in the quarter-finals to Dominic Dale.
25.
Liang Wenbo reached the last 16 in two other events to finish 38th in the PTC Order of Merit, outside of the top 24 who qualified for the Finals.
26.
Liang Wenbo subsequently won the decider with a 72 break and played defending champion Higgins again in the first round.
27.
Liang Wenbo lost in qualifying for both the Wuxi Classic and the Shanghai Masters to Rod Lawler.
28.
Liang Wenbo failed to qualify for the next two events, but won two matches to enter the main draw of both the Welsh Open and the China Open.
29.
Liang Wenbo had a very consistent season in the Players Tour Championship series as he advanced to, but not past, the last 16 in five of the ten events.
30.
Liang Wenbo did not drop a single frame in seeing off Cao Xinlong and Gerard Greene at the Welsh Open, but was then the victim of a whitewash by John Higgins in the third round.
31.
Liang Wenbo became the second player from mainland China to win a ranking event and thanked O'Sullivan for his help.
32.
On 2 April 2022, the day after Liang Wenbo's sentencing, the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association suspended him from professional competition with immediate effect, making him ineligible to compete in the World Championship qualifiers, which began on 4 April.
33.
The WPBSA held a disciplinary hearing on 26 May 2022, where Liang Wenbo accepted he had breached WPBSA Members' Rules and his contract with World Snooker Limited by engaging in behaviour unbecoming of a sportsperson and by bringing the sport into disrepute.
34.
Liang Wenbo returned to competition at the 2022 British Open qualifiers.
35.
The WPBSA later disclosed that Liang Wenbo had been suspended amid a match-fixing investigation.
36.
Nine other Chinese players were subsequently suspended as part of the same investigation, one of whom, Chang Binyu, alleged on Weibo that Liang Wenbo had threatened him before his match against Jamie Jones at the 2022 British Open, ordering him to lose the match by a specific scoreline.
37.
Liang Wenbo is married to Chen Xuejiao; they have one child.
38.
In 2020, prior to the World Grand Prix, Liang Wenbo had pledged to donate any money he would receive at the tournament to the Huizhou Red Cross in response to the coronavirus outbreak in China.