Mark Williams explains why he will not follow Ronnie O'Sullivan's lucrative plan beyond snooker - 'You can't win'

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Seven-time world champion Ronnie O'Sullivan has suggested he has one eye on pursuing a lucrative playing career beyond snooker on a smaller table in China, but three-time Crucible winner Mark Williams is adamant he will not be following the same pathway as his fellow 'Class of '92' member.

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Williams played a few frames of Chinese pool with O'Sullivan's fellow seven-time world champion Stephen Hendry at his snooker club in Tredegar, but does not have the ambition to take up the sport on a permanent basis.

O'Sullivan made his competitive debut in the Huacai Billiards World Open, a lucrative Heyball event last month at the Deqing International Conference Center.

He enjoyed wins over Ivan Kakovskiy (15-9) and Suung Kim (15-12), but found specialist pool potter Zheng Xiaohuai, a multiple Heyball champion, too strong in a 17-6 defeat at the last-32 stage of the lucrative £1.18m tournament.

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Heyball pool is played on a smaller sized snooker table using standard eight-ball pool balls, with pocket sizes more closely resembling snooker pockets than the wider pool variety.

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"You know, it's such a very different sport," said O'Sullivan. "It's like asking Roger Federer to try and play one of the top Chinese table tennis players and expecting him to win.

"It's a very different game, but I'm enjoying it. It is just something new, something fresh. So, yeah, it's good.

"You can't play snooker and try to play pool. Impossible. If I decide to play pool full-time, I can never play snooker again.

"You can't do both. You can only be very good at one. At the moment, it's just like a little bit of, 'let me come here and see what it is like.'"

China's Liu Junyan, the winner of the event, earned a whopping 5m yuan, which is around £550,000 - more than the £500,000 Wu Yize picked up as China's second world champion at the Crucible last month - and the runner-up collected 1.5m yuan (£166,480).

"I don't play it," said Williams on Hendry's YouTube channel. "I played a couple of times in China, but you can't compete with them. Too good.

"You can't beat them, can you?

"I haven't played for a couple of years now. I enjoy it, but I don't play any comps. They're too good.

"Unless you play every day, you can't compete with them.

"So, you're just going out there, and you know you can't win."

Williams intends to continue playing snooker for the rest of his career.

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He told TNT Sports: "I have already made up my mind, when I drop off the tour, I will keep playing in the amateurs, and travel around with my boy [13-year-old son Joel] if he’s still playing. "

The Welshman is set to get his season up and running later this month when he competes at the Shanghai Masters, taking place between July 27 and August 2, live on TNT Sports and HBO Max.

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