Martin Gould came from behind in the final to beat the defending champion and heavy favourite Ronnie O'Sullivan 286-258 at the Power Snooker Masters in Manchester. It is Gould's first pro title and comes shortly after joining the top 16 for the first time.

Power Snooker Masters 2011

Event City, Manchester - November 19-20

DRAW & RESULTS - OFFICIAL SITE

THE FINAL

Martin Gould had looked strong in beating Judd Trump in the first round of this year's Power Snooker event but no one expected the Pinner Potter who entered the tournament as one of the long shots to beat the defending champion and crowd favourite Ronnie O'Sullivan in the final.

Ronnie had raced to a 234-98 lead with only 15 minutes to play but a few uncharacteristically misses from the rocket gave Martin chances in both the 3rd and importantly the 4th rack. In the 5th Martin build up a slim lead and played a series of good safety shots with two minutes left to fall over the line with a 286-258 win over the three-times World Champion to take the £25,000 first prize.

Martin was clearly pleased with his efforts this weekend. The title is the first win for the player from West London since returning to the to the main tour in the 07-08 season and has progressed leaps and bounds since then, steadily climbing up the rankings to reach the top 16 for the first time recently and also reached the finals of the PTC Grand Finals earlier in the year. "The money doesn't matter to me, just the trophy" sums it up from Gould and Peter Lines will definitely have a tough task to beat him in the first round of the UK Championship next month.

About the event it self, some might have called it an improvement over last year's inaugural tournament at the o2 arena but this year's showing was littered with problems that the first staging didn't have. For one the band that played the music (and unfortunately sang) during the players walk-on's were cringe worthy and didn't add anything, plus the presenting team (minus Dennis Taylor) repeatedly made gaffs, got player's names wrong (Martin Trump anyone?) and generally werent as clued up as the usual team we see from Sky and the BBC.

The format even with the interesting changes of the cueball (was nice to see the spin that the players put on it) and the naff 200 points for consecutive frames rule being scrapped didn't add anything to the game and many of the matches were boring towards the end as one player had an unassailable lead. Crowd were as expected their usual self and repeatedly called out whilst the player was on the shot but their generally seemed to be less abuse from them towards the players compared to the London crowd which was a positive.

If Power Snooker comes back in 2012 then the format should be tweaked again to make less of the conclusions boring and in my honest opinion I would like to see the cloth be the same baize used in all snooker events which would stop the players from massively over or under hitting on the current snot-green pool style cloth that is currently being used, but I suppose it is there to sell on to clubs and people to play the game themselves.

Regardless of the event, it was still a great win for Martin Gould and onwards to real snooker at the German Masters qualifiers starting on Tuesday at the World Snooker Academy in Sheffield.

Martin Gould - Power Snooker Masters 2011 Champion