The Christmas holidays have come early for Mark Allen, the 23-year-old going out of the UK Championship last night after suffering the heartbreak of a deciding frame defeat to Stephen Lee.

Allen will today return home to Antrim for Christmas, taking a break from the game before turning his attention to next month’s Masters at Wembley Arena.

Allen got off to a sluggish start yesterday at the Telford International Centre and trailed 4-1 in the early stages.

But he rallied and eventually reeled his opponent back to 7-7.

Lee won the next to move tantalisingly close to victory, but Allen held his nerve to peg it back to |8-8 and set up that late night deciding frame in which the Wiltshire cueman secured victory.

Northern Ireland international Gerard Greene is also out of the £750,000 tournament, going down 9-5 to defending champion and former World champion Shaun Murphy on Saturday night.

Stephen Hendry won an absorbing battle with fellow snooker great Steve Davis to reach round two — but admitted he was finding the game ‘torture’.

The 40-year-old Scot finished with a century — his third of the match — as he clinched a 9-6 victory over the 52-year-old Essex cueman.

When Davis came through qualifying to set up the clash with Hendry it was perhaps the most eagerly anticipated of the first-round matches.

Yet Davis could not score heavily enough and that was his downfall, even though he kept pace with Hendry for much of the contest.

It was anyone's match at 6-6, however runs of 37, 40, 41 and 112 from Hendry ensured he will go on to tackle Mark Selby in the next round.

Hendry had made centuries in the first and final frames of the early-afternoon session, 115 to start with and then a 130 clearance to black, and during those big breaks he looked a fearsome player.

However, like Davis, he missed far more balls than he would have in his heyday, which should give Selby some encouragement.

Hendry said: “I won, it's as simple as that. Snooker is torture at the moment. It's very frustrating.

“In the last frame I potted a long red and made a good break — that's what you're supposed to do, do it in one visit. It was a great atmosphere, it shows we are still popular, which is nice.”

Davis was on Friday co-opted onto the board of the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association, along with his long-time manager Barry Hearn, who should soon be confirmed as the WPBSA's new chairman.

The six-time world champion will almost certainly make a greater contribution to the game away from the table over the next couple of years than on it.

Nevertheless Davis said: “I was competitive, I felt like a player. I got a couple of kicks at bad times which didn't help.

“At times he looked vulnerable, but he did make three centuries, he's still a fantastic positional player among the balls.

“It wasn't the greatest match, but at 6-6 I had a chance. He played some good frames and some ropey ones, it was a strange match.”

For a while it seemed that Jamie Cope would be waiting for the winner of Hendry's match, however Mark Selby staged a brilliant fightback.

The 26-year-old Leicester potter was 8-4 down and staring at a dismal defeat to fellow Englishman Cope, but he reeled off five successive frames to take the match, with breaks of 67, 101, 57, 115 and a closing 73.

Peter Ebdon reeled off five frames in a row to sink Judd Trump 9-4, in another all-English battle, making breaks of 80 and 84 along the way.

Welshman Ryan Day went out of the tournament after a heavy 9-3 defeat to China's Liang Wenbo, but he almost had the consolation of a maximum 147 break, eventually missing the brown.