Dylan Emery and Xu Si topped their groups at the BetVictor Championship League ranking event to become the last two players into the second round.
Phase two gets underway on Friday, with 32 players remaining in the hunt for the title. The second stage runs from July 18-22, with the final chapter on July 23.
Welshman Emery, who is back on tour this season after a year in the amateur ranks, produced a strong finish to top Group 27 ahead of Aaron Hill. He drew his first match 2-2 with Sahil Nayyar then beat Gary Thomson 3-0 with a top break of 126. That left Emery needing to beat Hill in the last game of the day, and he stormed to a 3-0 success.
In Group 29, China's Xu continued his perfect start to the season having won his qualifying matches for the Wuhan Open and British Open last month. He opened with a 3-0 win over Michal Szubarczyk, making a break of 107 in frame three. He then beat Liam Highfield 3-1 with runs of 92, 90 and 84, and in his last match Xu came from 2-0 down to draw 2-2 with Fan Zhengyi, who had the consolation of making his second 147 in the second frame.
Zhang Anda, Stephen Maguire, Yuan Sijun and Thepchaiya Un-Nooh contest a star-studded Group B on Friday. On the other table, Onyee Ng becomes the first woman to appear in the last 32 of a ranking event and in Group A she'll be up against Joe O'Connor, Elliot Slessor and Haydon Pinhey.
