Hossein Vafaei of Iran has booked his place in round two after knocking out China's Ding Junhui 10-6 and Mark Williams beat Jimmy Robertson 10-5 with an impressive performance at the ongoing Snooker World Championship in the UK on Monday.

World No. 23 Vafaei trailed 5-4 overnight but reeled off the first four frames in just 43 minutes with runs of 117, 122, 68 and 57 to go 8-5 up. The 16th seed Ding pulled one back with a break of 77, but Vafaei bounced back with an 89 for 9-6. Ding had two scoring chances in frame 16 but could muster only 10 points, and Vafaei's run of 45 ended the tie, marking the 28-year-old first win at the Crucible.

Three-time UK Champion Ding said after the match, "Overall this season has been very good. The past two seasons I was not there. Sometimes I have good season, then I disappear for a few seasons and come back again so I will try to be more consistent."

Meanwhile, Allen, who arrived in Sheffield off the back of his best ever season on the World Snooker Tour, having won three ranking titles at the Northern Ireland Open, UK Championship and World Grand Prix, defeated Fan Zhengyi 10-5 to set up a second round showdown with 2015 Crucible king Stuart Bingham.

Earlier, teenager Wu Yize lost to Australian Neil Robertson, and qualifier Pang Junxu was held off by Ronnie O'Sullivan 10-7 who was in hunt for a record eighth World Championship title. As such, four out of five Chinese snooker players have dumped out of the championship in the opening round, with 20-year-old Si Jiahui's clash against former world champion Shaun Murphy set for Wednesday.

Meanwhile, top-level snooker tournaments will return to China for the first time in four years with three events to be staged this year, according to the World Snooker Tour.

The three tournaments, with a combined prize fund in excess of 2.48 million US dollars, will be the Shanghai Masters invitational on September 11 to 17, the Wuhan Open on October 9 to 15, and the International Championship in a city still to be confirmed from November 5 to 12.