MARK SELBY feels he has been given a second chance in this year’s Betway UK Championship.

The world number one swept aside Dechawat Poomjaeng 6-1 to reach the quarter-finals at the York Barbican - and said he had been inspired by the feeling he shouldn’t be in the tournament at all.

Selby used all of his nine lives to beat Jamie Jones in the last 32, squeezing through 6-5 in a game he didn’t deserve to win.

But far from allowing his poor form in that clash to get him down, the 32-year-old, the winner in the Minster city in 2012, has used it as a motivator.

He said: “I just felt like, after the last game, I had a get out of jail free card. I was on a hiding to nothing in that match thinking I should be sat at home and not in the tournament.

“When I got a chance I thought I just needed to pick my speed up a bit and just get on with it a lot more. I think it showed in my performance.”

Selby swept into an insurmountable advantage against his Thai opponent with some devastating scoring in the first five frames.

Beginning with a break of 82, Selby then fired off efforts of 58, 106, 86 and 98 as victory looked a formality.

Poomjaeng had potted only six balls in the first four frames and scored just 13 points, 12 of which had come in his highest break.

But he had been 5-0 behind in his match with Mark Joyce barely 12 hours earlier before producing an improbable comeback to go through in a final frame shootout.

Poomjaeng harboured hopes of doing the same again and finally got off the mark in the sixth frame.

The feeling, though, was fleeting.

Selby finished off a scrappy seventh frame in clinical style - a faultless pink taking the white round the cushions to land perfectly on the black.

Asked whether he had been given a second life, and whether the pressure had been off, the Leicester potter added: “Yes, because Jamie’s played great and deserved to be 6-2 or 6-3 - if you look at it by the scoring - and I still managed to come through and here I am sat here in the quarter-finals when I probably should be at home.

“It definitely felt like that (no pressure) going out there because I should have lost against Jamie and there I was going out there to play the last 16 game and I could just go out there and play my own game.”

Selby has now reached the last eight of the UK, the game’s second biggest event, for the third time in four years but believes there is much still to do if he is to lift the trophy once again.

“A little bit - more when you get to the semi-finals and the one-table set up,” he said after pondering whether he now had the sniff of victory.

“Then you think about it more as you are in the home stretch and you are getting into it more, and seem to focus a lot more, because you are close to the finish line.

“There is still a long way to go. There are still another three matches if I was to win the tournament.”