Stephen Maguire earns crack at record £700k prize fund despite Welsh Open final heartbreak

After defeat in his first ranking event final for five years Stephen Maguire might've felt down. But he has plenty of reason to be cheerful, 700,000 of them in fact.

The Glasgow star's surprise run to the showpiece saw him eventually defeated by four-time world champion Mark Selby in the final, earning him £45,000 in prize money - some way shy of the £100,000 cheque Selby took back to Leicester. However the final came with a much bigger bonus, as it boosted On Fire 18 places up the Johnstone's Paint One-Year Rankings, earning him a spot at snooker's World Grand Prix in Hong Kong which gets underway on March 4.

Standing in his way at the first round is Masters winner Shaun Murphy, and the two players have history dating back to a feud 20 years ago where Maguire was docked a frame for forgetting to bring his chalk to the table. And a whopping prize fund totalling £700,000 is up for grabs, up from just £380,000 last year, with the winner earning £180,000 of that.

In the world rankings Maguire is up from 29th to 26th, meaning he will remain an outsider for the event - which is set to feature all of the sport's top stars, including No.1 seed Judd Trump who has been limiting his competition time before the world championships and Welsh winner Selby. Ronnie O'Sullivan is also due to take part, but after pulling out of warm-up event the Rocket is continuing to keep fans waiting before they get to see him back in action.