Ronnie O'Sullivan remains cautious about his chances of progressing further at the Halo World Championship, but an emphatic 13-4 defeat of Pang Junxu put him into a 23rd Crucible quarter-final.
With a longer term plan to rebuild his game over the next two years, O'Sullivan is keeping his expectations low in Sheffield, and insists his game is yet to click on the table. But his fans can take heart from the facts: in his first two matches he has made six centuries and 14 more breaks over 50, winning 23 frames and conceding just eight. He may face a tougher test next against Si Jiahui, who won 6-4 when they met at the same stage of the Saudi Arabia Snooker Masters in September.
"When I am playing well, as soon as I get a chance, before I even pot the first red I think it's probably 'game over'," said O'Sullivan tonight. "And then I'm in such a rhythm, give me half a chance in the next and I can reel four or five frames off. The mindset between that and where I am now - it feels hard for me to approach the game just trying to pot one ball at a time. On the practice table you can try to fix things but out there you can't really do that. So you have to just refocus, forget the bad shots, move forward and try to pot the next ball."
O'Sullivan extends his own record for the most quarter-final appearances - ahead of John Higgins and Stephen Hendry who have 19 apiece - and has won 13 of the previous 22. He is now just seven days and three wins away from a possible eighth world crown which would put him one ahead of Hendry. The 49-year-old has not won a tournament for 13 months and had not even played competitively since January before arriving in Sheffield, but with two wins now under his belt his presence will be felt by the other seven remaining players.
Tonight's result means that O'Sullivan and fellow 'Class of 92' members Higgins and Mark Williams are all in the quarter-finals at the Crucible for the fifth time - this previously occurred in 1998, 1999, 2011 and 2022.
World number five O'Sullivan led 12-4 after the first two sessions, having compiled breaks of 58, 91, 50, 63, 68, 52, 79, 80, 105, 135 and 62, and needed just one frame tonight to wrap up the result with a run of 95.
He added: "The more table time I get, the more of a chance I have to try to get my game to where I need it to be. Whatever happens here doesn't make a difference to how I approach the next two years. If I play my game then it is irrelevant who is sitting in the other chair. I always back myself that if I am somewhere near my best then I'm confident of beating anyone. But when I am not playing well, then I have to rely on my opponent making mistakes. It can click into gear at any time, but I am a realist and I know my own patterns of where I am and where I need to be."
The Essex cueman's best-of-25 contest with China's Si gets underway at 2.30pm on Tuesday, with further sessions on Wednesday at 10am and 7pm.