Ronnie O'Sullivan was once the teenage sensation embarrassing seasoned campaigners, but saw the tables turned on him as 17-year-old Yan Bingtao knocked him out of the International Championship with a spectacular 6-1 victory in China.

Five-time world champion O'Sullivan was in fine form after winning the English Open last week, but failed to pot a ball in the final four frames of his first-round defeat.

World No.53 Yan did not give his illustrious opponent a sniff, recording breaks 68, 89, 91, 52 and 73 as O'Sullivan watched the majority of the closing frames from the chair.

"Yan played fantastically well. Maybe only Stephen Hendry and John Higgins have played that well against me before," said O'Sullivan.

"I didn't do that much wrong apart from missing a couple of balls."

He added: "If Yan plays like that he'll be very difficult to beat in this tournament. If he can play like that consistently he'll win a lot of tournaments."

Like Yan, O'Sullivan was a prodigious talent in his adolescence, winning his first prize-money aged 11 with a £450 cheque for winning an amateur tournament.

He went on to make his television debut in the Thames Snooker Classic aged 14, in which he made a break of 75 in the quarter-finals.