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China’s Ding Junhui remains on course to win the UK Championship for a fourth time as he took a commanding 6-2 lead against Northern Ireland’s Mark Allen in the first session of the final.
Ding made successive century breaks of 126 and 135 in frames four and five to take control at York Barbican.
He took an edgy sixth, then made a third century with a break of 102.
Allen, a beaten UK finalist in both 2011 and 2018, won the last frame of the session with a break of 79.
However, Ding, who will secure a place in January’s Masters if he wins, only needs four more frames for the victory.
The 36-year-old is a former world number one but has not won a ranking tournament since his UK Championship success in 2019, with his ranking dropping to 38th before this competition started.
However, there have been signs of Ding – who had to advance through two qualifying rounds just to get to York – coming back to his best with a 6-0 thrashing of seven-time world champion Ronnie O’Sullivan in the quarter-finals.
Allen embarked on a fitness regime in the summer that saw him lose five stone in four months, then winning the Northern Ireland Open and reaching the final of the British Open last month.
He had fought back from 5-3 down to win a final-ball thriller 6-5 against Jack Lisowski in the semi-final on Saturday night, but Allen made a nervous start to the final, missing a short red with Ding compiling a break of 52 to take the opener.
A run of 70 doubled Ding’s lead but, in a scrappy opening, Allen took the third frame – the second of the match to last more than 30 minutes.
Ding injected some quality into the match with two century breaks either side of the mid-session interval.
A missed blue from Allen with only three balls left proved costly in the sixth frame, with Ding taking it on the black, before he moved 6-1 ahead with a fine break of 102.
Allen made his highest break of the match in the eighth frame, but still has a big job to turn this match around when it resumes at 19:00 GMT for the evening session.
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By Michael Emons
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