Hamilton held the upper hand throughout the contest and held on to book a last eight date with Peter Ebdon with a 13-9 win.

Williams said: ‘‘I just can’t seem to get any form going at all. At the moment I enjoy practising more than playing matches. At least I play a bit better in practice.

‘‘The next time I pick my cue up will be in the league in Scotland somewhere but I might not even go into that to be honest. I think I’m just going to get drunk for a couple of weeks after this defeat.

‘‘I’m going away next month and I’ve got a new car coming which will ease the pain a bit.’’

Hamilton’s victory avenged his narrow loss to the same player in the final of the China Open in Shanghai earlier this year.

Hamilton, who led 8-5 in that match before losing 9-8, said: ‘‘It makes up for the final. If I’d lost today I would have had to retire!

‘‘Mark is the sort of player you don’t want when you’ve got a big lead. He starts to open his shoulders a bit and he started to cue quite well in the end, which got me a bit twitchy.

‘‘I think that I am back to the form of a couple of years ago. I haven’t seen the scoresheet but I think I scored heavily in the match.

‘‘I must have made a frame-winning break in every frame I won, which is good. This is my game. If I can score heavily someone’s going to have to play really well to beat me.

‘‘But my safety game was also pretty good as well, so that’s a pretty good combination.’’

Meanwhile Graeme Dott believes defending champion Ronnie O’Sullivan is the only man capable of halting John Higgins’ charge towards the title.

The world number 14 slumped to a heavy 13-2 defeat to Higgins yesterday and described the Scot’s performance as ‘‘the best I’ve ever seen’’.

The ‘Wizard of Wishaw’ was in top form and almost capped a superb display with a maximum 147 clearance.

He manoeuvred the cue ball around expertly in the second frame of the session before misjudging a shot on the 14th black.

However, he still managed to register five century breaks during the match to take his tournament total to eight.

‘‘That’s the best I’ve ever seen,’’ said Dott. ‘‘Even watching snooker on television, I’ve never seen anybody play as well as that, as consistent as that.

‘‘There are only two frames I can think of where I threw the frame away and one of them was the eighth.

‘‘He was absolutely incredible. I think there is really only one man that has a chance of beating him and that’s Ronnie.

‘‘It’s really a two-horse race, I don’t care what anybody else says.

‘‘Nobody can compete with that the only person who has a chance is Ronnie.

‘‘I’ve never seen anything like that, it was unbelievable. I know a lot of people will say that he wasn’t put under any pressure, but I never got the chance to put him under any pressure.

‘‘Every safety I was tight on the cushion. And given a chance I knew he was going to clear up.’’

Higgins plays Welshman Matthew Stevens in the last eight and the winner of that match will face either Ebdon or Hamilton.

O’Sullivan is in the other side of the draw and must beat Stephen Lee to set up a last-four clash with the winner of the Stephen Hendry/Ken Doherty encounter.