While snooker news is a little thin on the ground at the moment during this rarest of months off, over the weekend there was an interesting bit of news from World Snooker concerning the revised EBSA Order of Merit, which this season will be taken from the ‘main’ European Tour events, rather than separate ‘amateur cup’ events. You can view the details in full over at World Snooker here.
A couple of people have asked me what I think of the system and in truth I think it will be easier to make a judgement once a few events have been staged and we have an initial order of merit to look at. On paper though, perhaps the section that caught my eye the most was:
“Where a Player is seeded through to a later round of qualifying and they win their first ‘seeded match’ they will receive not only the 10 points for that match but also the 10 points per round for each of the rounds that they were seeded through.“
Is it a sensible way to ensure that players who receive a bye do not lose out in any way in terms of the EBSA list or is it unfair to award points to players for matches that they have not actually won? My gut feeling is that it seems sensible enough and as good a way as any to deal with the situation, but I would be interested to hear what you think.
More generally, the provision that effectively means that seeded losers are to receive no points is something that on balance I do agree with, primarily because it reflects the reality of the modern professional circuit and the main tour rankings, whereby seeded losers such as Barry Hawkins received no points from the Australian Goldfields Open following his last 32 defeat.
Thoughts?
