Mark Allen once again fell foul of the Northern Ireland Open curse but admitted he was at a loss to what caused his latest early exit in Belfast.

Allen left his last ranking event with the International Championship title in his luggage but suffered a first-round loss at the hands of Niu Zhuang in the Waterfront Arena.

That ensured his disappointing home tournament form continued, making the quarter-finals of the inaugural edition in 2016 before suffering a second-round exit 12 months ago.

And the Masters champion admitted the pressure once again affected him, vowing to come back with a new mentality in mind.

“It’s disappointing, it’s just not really happening for me out there and I wasn’t able to play the way I have done for the rest of the season," he said.

“Hopefully in years to come I’ll be able to handle that much better but it is very disappointing to go out so early when I’m in such good shape.

“Most of that expectation comes from myself, I want to win for the wrong reasons – I want to do it for the Northern Ireland fans who have come out and supported me for all those years.

“Maybe I need to be selfish and try and win for myself, but it is hard when you know you’re going to go out there and get so much support.

“It’s something I’m going to have to cope with in the future – I can’t quite put my finger on what it is but I’m finding it difficult to go out there and perform the way I can.

“But I’d rather be in that position than not have a tournament because the fans deserve that – so it’s disappointing to have gone out early.”

Allen went behind early before an excellent break of 122 put Zhuang two frames ahead.

The Northern Irishman responded with an effort of 88 but that was to be as good as it got, losing the next two frames to suffer a humbling 4-1 defeat.

Attentions now turn to the UK Championship in York later this month, the last of the Triple Crown events to be played in 2018.

“It’s a match I want to forget really quickly, there are so many positives to take out of the past few weeks and that’s just one bad match on home soil, I don’t deal with the pressure too well,” he added.

“Now I’ll have a few days off, then get back to the practice table and get ready for the UK Championships because I want to go there and win.”

Watch the Northern Ireland Open live on Eurosport and Eurosport Player with analysis from Ronnie O’Sullivan, Jimmy White and Neal Foulds