World number 43 Matthew Stevens held his nerve against Mark Selby to earn a dramatic 6-5 victory over the three-time UK Championship winner in the last 16 at the York Barbican.
Welshman Stevens, the 2003 champion, led the world number six 3-1.
Selby took the next three but Stevens managed to level at 4-4 and 5-5 and won a tense 46-minute decider in the early hours of Friday morning.
Stevens now faces 2004 champion Stephen Maguire, who beat Michael White 6-4.
White’s fellow Welshman Stevens has not been beyond the second round of a ranking event this season and last reached the quarter-finals of the event in 2012.
But he outplayed Selby for much of the match and showed great composure to win two tense, tactical frames to close out victory.
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Gutsy Maguire battles past White
World number 14 Maguire was making his 16th consecutive appearance in the last 16 and aiming for a ninth quarter-final in the past 12 years, but was outplayed early on.
Two-time ranking event winner White, a former world number 15, has dropped to 62 in the rankings.
But the 28-year-old seemed buoyed by his thrilling final-frame win over Mark Davis in the last round, as two centuries and breaks of 66 and 91 saw him lead the Scot 4-2.
Maguire, 38, won a tense seventh frame and a break of 56 levelled the scores.
A disastrous first shot by White on a re-spotted black gifted frame nine to Maguire, who rounded off the win with a stylish 116 clearance – his highest break of the match.
“Winning the frame on the re-spotted black was huge. When he was 4-2 up he should have killed me off,” Maguire said.
“But it was a nice century to wrap it up and I am through so that’s the main thing. I can’t improve if I am driving up the motorway.”
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