A few days ago, fellow blogger Snookerbacker flagged up his ‘ten to follow’ across the course of the ongoing 2014/15 season, which you can read here.
In the interests of bloggers solidarity…or something, I decided to chip in with my ten to keep an eye on next season and today ahead of the start of the Wuxi Classic tomorrow (usual links on the right), I thought I would expand upon that and detail my choices here…
A brief update here to let readers know that I have now finally updated all of the existing player profiles here at PSB to the end of the 2013/14 season, as well as added new profile pages for all of the rookie professionals joining the main tour for the start of the 2014/15 campaign.
As ever early in the season, there are a few players that I do not have information or photos of, so any assistance with those would be appreciated.
If you are a player and you would like me to change anything, then please feel free to contact me at prosnookerblog@gmail.com, or by leaving a comment on this or another page on the site itself.
A couple of lines of important news today from World Snooker, who have confirmed that last week’s Asian U-21 champion Thanawat Tirapongpaiboon will be awarded a two-year tour card from the 2014/15 season following his victory, while Iran’s Hossein Vafaei Ayouri will also be awarded an extended tour card for the season.
Click below for more, or here to view my updated look at who will make up the main tour field for this season…
For those of us who like to keep an eye on all things rankings related, during each season there are usually a number of themes to follow just from a look at the various ranking lists.
For example a couple of seasons ago, it was only a matter of time before Judd Trump became number one, given the relative lack of points that he was defending compared to those above him, while last season it was the likes of Neil Robertson and Ding Junhui who were well placed to climb to the top of the list due to lesser performances two years previously.
This year has of course seen a change to a prize-money based ranking list, but the premise of a two-year rolling system remains the same and so below I take a look at a few themes that I will be following as the season progresses.
To assist, @joanneballantyn has also helped to put together the usual ‘money to defend’ lists (available here), which show which points will be coming off at each cut-off point.
Click below for more…
A little over three years ago, the UK Championship final was contested between John Higgins and Mark Williams, two of snooker’s ‘golden generation’ in a repeat of the final a decade previously. At the time, I was moved to consider what was a clear trend, of the average age of snooker players at the top of the game increasing compared to previous years.
Last season, we saw the likes of Gerard Greene and Mike Dunn achieve career-best runs in ranking tournaments, while Rod Lawler, Dominic Dale, Alan McManus and Fergal O’Brien all recorded notable achievements now into their forties.
That being the case, I decided to revisit my previous analysis, with the tour having undergone a series of significant changes in recent seasons to see whether the trend has continued…
Within the last 30 minutes, World Snooker has issued a statement announcing the two-time world finalist Ali Carter has sadly been diagnosed with a form of lung cancer.
The full statement follows below, confirming that Ali will undergo an ‘intensive form of chemotherapy’ and of course will not be competing in the Wuxi Classic qualifiers this weekend.
It goes without saying that I, and I am sure all snooker fans, wish him all the best with his recovery and look forward to seeing him back on the tour as soon as possible.
While there might have been more eye-catching stories today with the WPBSA announcing that Stephen Lee’s latest appeal has been dismissed, while the first Q School event of this season came to a conclusion, the news that caught my eye was the announcement of various bits of tour information for 2014/15 from World Snooker.
With confirmation of which prize money will be dropping off at which seedings revisions, as well as a few other interesting snippets of information, the news also means that I am now able to bring you the first latest projected seedings list, not only of the new season, but of the money list era…
Five years ago following John Higgins’ victory at the 2009 World Championship at the Crucible, following a similar feature prepared by the BBC, I wrote a blog, predicting how the top eight of the world rankings would look in 2014.
Having been reminded of the article earlier during this year’s World Championship, now exactly five years on I take a look back at accurate my predictions were, all well as attempting to predict how the top eight will look in another five years in 2019…