With a 6-2 victory against Hossein Vafaei in York, Ronnie O’Sullivan advanced to his seventh UK Championship final, saying he is driven by the chance to “ruin the careers” of his main opponents.

Thirty years after taking home the championship for the first time in 1993 as a 17-year-old, O’Sullivan will take against Ding Junhui on Sunday in an attempt to achieve an unprecedented eighth title and prevent the Chinese player from amassing his own collection of trophies.

“I’m just hanging around so people don’t get as good as a career as me,” joked O’Sullivan, who exploited a series of costly errors from his Iranian opponent to seal by far his most comfortable victory of a gruelling week.

“If I could stop [Mark] Selby winning a few, and Judd [Trump] winning a few, and Ding and [Neil] Robertson winning a few, just ruin their careers a little bit, that would be great. Sometimes that’s just a nice motivation to play.”

The 47-year-old O’Sullivan had painstakingly navigated through back-to-back final-frame deciders against Zhou Yuelong and Robert Milkins. Although he appeared more composed during their semifinal match, Vafaei’s lackluster play—errors in five of the opponent’s six won frames—contributed to O’Sullivan’s dominance.

Vafaei ran aground on a break of 30 in the opener and O’Sullivan swept up with a break of 54 before a 113 in the second frame put him firmly in command. Vafaei showed a glimmer of fight as his eighth century of the tournament started the charge back level, but O’Sullivan took an error-strewn fifth and restored his two-frame lead after Vafaei missed a shockingly easy red to the middle.

O’Sullivan jawed a shot to the same pocket in the next, but a missed black off its spot brought more pain for Vafaei and when he missed the same colour to the top pocket in the eighth frame, the Iranian’s hopes of reaching a first major career final were over.

“I feel as fresh as a daisy,” added a revitalised O’Sullivan. “These tournaments are not a problem. I can do it quite comfortably. I’m still happy to have got this far, it’s great and I have enjoyed my week”

Ding overcame Judd Trump 6-4 in the evening semi-final to seal his final place in York for the second consecutive year. He lost to 10-7 to Mark Allen in last year’s showpiece after leading 6-1 at one stage. Sunday’s clash will see a repeat of last year’s UK quarter-final, when Ding dealt out a rare 6-0 whitewash to O’Sullivan.

In the semi-final, Trump had started well with two centuries in the first eight frames but he could not shake off the dogged Ding, with the pair locked together at 4-4 before Ding nudged through a tense ninth to put himself one frame from victory.