It’s amazing how fate can lend a hand sometimes.

Take former world champion Peter Ebdon, for example, and how he met his second wife Nora.

Ebdon had just dropped out of the world’s top 16, was down in the dumps and didn’t really want to travel to Wels to play in the Austrian Open in May.

The 40-year-old explained: “I was going through a difficult period and didn’t know when it would end.

“My then manager Keith Warren told me the organisers were expecting me to play and that my name had been advertised, so I went and played terribly but beat Barry Hawkins 3-1.”

Ebdon, who was defeated 4-2 in the quarter-finals by Neil Robertson, then decided to go to the players’ party.

“I don’t normally go to them but I couldn’t find the venue after looking for 20 minutes, and was within two seconds of going back to my hotel room when I bum-ped into Dominic Dale and his manager, who couldn’t find the venue either.

“We decided to look together and eventually found it after another 20 minutes and it was there that I met Nora, who is from Budapest and was there on her birthday, and the rest, as they say, is history.

“I suppose it was fate or a series of random occurrences, but I quickly realised that she was special and we got married in July in Budapest.

“And what was already a superb day was made an extraordinary day because my four children (Ruby May, Ethan, Tristan and Clarissa) were there.”

Ebdon’s first marriage to Deborah – the family moved to Dubai in 2005 – had ended after 16 years in 2009.

His second marriage in July was in such close proximity to the qualifying for the Roewe Shanghai Masters in Sheffield that he did not want to deceive anyone into thinking that he was playing well.

Perhaps bearing in mind the past furore over things like illegal betting patterns, Ebdon took the extraordinary step of announcing that he was expecting to lose his qualifier due to a lack of time at the practice table.

He said at the time: “I would like to make it known that I consider that I will not be in a position to play to the best of my ability in my Shanghai Masters qualifying match in Sheffield.

“This is down to personal circumstances, including the fact that I am getting remarried in Hungary this weekend.

“Since playing in a recent tournament in Thailand I have not been able to practise, and by the time the qualifiers come around I will not have played for ten days or more.

“I know just how bad I can be when I don’t feel properly prepared as I am the type of player who needs to practise hard in order to play to a reasonable standard.

“As always, I will be doing my utmost to win what is a very important match for me but in truth, my levels of expectation will not be very high.”

As it happened, Ebdon defeated Michael White 5-1 to qualify, going on to beat Robertson 5-4 before losing to Mark King 5-3.

Now back in the world’s top 16 after reaching the semi-finals of the World Open in September, Ebdon is delighted to be coming to Bradford for the World Seniors’ Championship at the Cedar Court Hotel from November 5-7.

He said: “It is great that Joe Johnson has invited me and I am really looking forward to it.”