Neil Robertson doffed his cap towards after the Welshman managed to bank him an extra £150,000. Before he went on to win the whole competition himself, Selby overcame 2023 winner

While the Leicester native has many fans, nobody was cheering for him as much as Robertson. Selby's triumph over Brecel meant Robertson scooped up the £150,000 bonus for the highest earning player in the Home Nations Series events.

The lucrative bonus is handed to the player who has won more money than anybody else over the course of the Welsh Open, Scottish Open, English Open and Northern Irish Open. When Selby's triumph over Brecel confirmed the prize was his, the Australian made sure he expressed his gratefulness to this year's Welsh Open winner.

Robertson took to Twitter and wrote: "Mark Selby" accompanied with a love heart, hands and smiley face emoji. Had Brecel overcome Selby and beaten Stephen Maguire in Llandudno, the Belgian would have scooped up the £150,000 bonus as well as the £100,000 prize money.

However, his semi-final exit meant he won neither, while Robertson reaped the rewards of Selby's brilliance. Robertson put himself in prime position for the award by winning the English Open in September. He withstood a dangerous comeback from Wu Yize to win the title and the £100,000 prize money.

He could not repeat his heroics in the other home nations events only reaching the quarter-final of the Northern Ireland Open and the last 32 of the Scottish and Welsh Opens. Former snooker star Neal Foulds admitted Robertson was fortunate to come away with the £150,000 bonus. He told Eurosport: "He's kind of won it by default in a way.

"I mean, he's obviously picked up more money than anyone else, but the amount of people that were queueing up to take it off him, and none of them did. It's happened like that a couple of times now. So congratulations to him. He's the rightful winner."

Brecel's inability to overcome Selby has led to some other negative consequences for the Belgian. The defeat left him outside the top 32, resulting in him not qualifying for the World Grand Prix in Hong Kong between March 4th and March 9th.

He admitted that his decision to miss a variety of events this year left him with too much to do. Brecel said: "I'm a bit disappointed. Obviously, I wanted to go to Hong Kong for the Grand Prix.

"But maybe it's a bit of karma for not entering all the tournaments this year. I think I maybe skipped five or six tournaments."