He began with a 3–5 defeat to Jamie Cope in the Wuxi Classic, but then beat Ken Doherty 5–3 and Cao Yupeng 5–4 to reach the quarter-finals of the Australian Goldfields Open where he lost 2–5 to Mark Davis.&lt;ref name="2012/13"&gt;&lt;/ref&gt; Gould then won his first professional title carrying ranking points at the minor-ranking Second PTC event of the season. He beat Stephen Maguire 4–3 in the final and credited his work with new coach Stephen Feeney as a major reason for his success. He couldn't translate this form in to the main ranking tournaments though, as he lost in the first round of the next three events and lost his qualifying match in another three to drop out of the top 16. At the Snooker Shoot-Out, the event where each match is played over one frame lasting 10-minute under shot clock rules, Gould won the title by beating Mark Allen in the final. The £32,000 cheque he received is the biggest of his career to date. Despite following this up with first round defeats in the World Open and PTC Finals, Gould had won Group 5 of the Championship League to qualify for the Winners Group. There he won three of his six matches to progress to the semi-finals where he beat Ding Junhui 3–0, before seeing off Ali Carter 3–2 to win the tournament with a century break in the deciding frame. Gould's season ended when he lost 5–10 to Shaun Murphy in the first round of the World Championship to finish the year ranked world number 25, a drop of 11 places from the start season.