The date of the opening day of this season’s China Open has been changed, it has been announced.

World Snooker say the Beijing tournament will now take place on Monday, April 2 rather than Sunday, April 1 as was originally scheduled.

The change means that the season’s penultimate ranking event before the World Championship is now a seven-day competition rather than lasting eight days.

There will be no change to the number of frames being played in any round, instead the semi-finals, which will best-of 19 frames, will be played on two tables as opposed to one.

The qualifying stages for the China Open – which for the first time will have total prize money of £1million – have begun today (Saturday) with matches taking place until Tuesday.