Majestic Allen's Manchester Victory - Players Championship 2016

Mark Allen has won the Players Championship 2016, beating Ricky Walden 10-6 in the final at Event City, Manchester. It was Allen's first ranking title victory in the UK.

Read on for the full report...

Since winning back-to-back World Open titles in 2012 and 2013, Antrim's Mark Allen has done little of note on the pro snooker tour. He proved all his doubters wrong in Manchester, performing superbly throughout to lift his third ranking event trophy.

After a top victory against the in-form Shaun Murphy in the semifinals, he faced surprise finalist Ricky Walden who was also looking for his first UK ranking title.

Chester's Walden started the brightest, going 3-1 up with two runs of 85. After the mid-session interval, the Northern Irishman reeled off five frames with breaks of 51, 80, 68 and 64 to take a commanding 6-3 lead in to the evening session.

When they resumed Walden got off to a great start, winning three of the first four frames with the help of runs of 62 and 92 to only trail 7-6 in this best-of-19 final.

From then on it was all Allen as the 30-year-old kept Walden at bay, winning a closer 14^th frame before producing breaks of 61 and 67 to finish the match a comfortable 10-6 winner.

As well as the £100,000 top prize, Allen crucially moves himself up to 6^th in the world rankings, potentially giving him a much easier draw for the World Snooker Championship. As it stands, he's currently seeded in the same quarter as Shaun Murphy (3), Marco Fu (14) and Barry Hawkins (11).

With just the China Open to go before then (starts this week), Allen is in a great position to further climb the rankings and potentially go better than his 2009 semifinal appearance at the Crucible.

For all the results, scores and video replays from the Players Championship (PTC) Finals, head to snooker.org