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Iran’s first professional snooker player, Hossein Vafaei is a three-time ranking event semi-finalist who broke into the world’s top 32 for the first time in 2019.
A former world under-21 and world amateur champion, Vafaei joined the World Snooker Tour in 2012 but it was not until the 2015/16 season that he was able to compete on a regular basis following a successful visa application.
He reached he last four of a ranking event for the first time at the 2017 China Open where he defeated world number two Judd Trump before losing out to Mark Williams. Two years later he equalled this performance at both the Welsh Open and China Championship, losing narrowly to Williams again 6-5 in a deciding frame in Guangzhou.
Vafaei has twice reached the final qualifying round of the World Championship (2017 and 2018) and in qualifying for the 2019 China Open compiled his tournament-high break of 146.