Career
He won the English Amateur Championship in 1988, enabling him to turn professional in 1989. He is coached by Stephen Feeney.
After a largely unsuccessful start to his career, he hit good form for a while in the 2000s. He defeated Jimmy White 10–8 in the 2004 World Championship, in a match which overran and had to be completed after other matches, then led Stephen Hendry 11–9 before losing 12–13 and has lost in the first round twice more – the 13-year gap between his first two Crucible appearances (1991–2004) is an all-time record. In his first appearance at the Crucible, in 1991 he lost 3–10 to Terry Griffiths. His best ranking tournament run to date, was in the 2003 UK Championship, where he reached the quarter-finals with victories over Marco Fu, Graeme Dott and Stephen Lee, before Stephen Hendry ended his run.
At one point he was established in the world's top 32, and provisionally 14 at one point – advancing 82–56–36–21 in the rankings over a strong sequence of seasons up to 2003/2004. However, he dropped out of the top 32 two years later, and then won only one knock-out match in 2006/2007, dropping to number #56. He attributed this loss of form to attempting to change his cue action. However, he won an invitational event that featured many top players, the 2007 Paul Hunter Classic that August, beating Neil Robertson and Ken Doherty en route. He also showed a return to form in the 2008 China Open by reaching the last 16, beating the defending champion, Graeme Dott 5–1 in the process, before going down by the same scoreline to Nigel Bond, who also beat him 7–10 in the final qualifying round of the 2008 World Championship. The 2008/2009 season was less successful for him however.
After reaching the final of Event 2 of the Players Tour Championship where he lost 3–4 to Mark Selby he went one better in Event 4 beating Mark Williams 4–1 and Ronnie O'Sullivan 4–3 in the semi-final and final respectively to record the best win of his career to date.
In the 2011/2012 season Pinches narrowly missed out on a maximum 147 break at Event 2 of the Players Tour Championship in Gloucester, making it to the final black. He would later finish the season ranked world number 64, grabbing the final spot on offer through the world rankings to play in the 2012/2013 season. He fell 23 places in the rankings during the season – the most of anyone on the snooker tour.
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