PartyPoker.com Premier League Snooker 2008: Tournament Preview

matt2745 Leave a comment

Tomorrow night marks the start of the 2008 PartyPoker.com Premier League and what promises to be another hotly contested series of matches culminating in the semi-finals and final in early December.

The Players

The field this year is headed by world number one and reigning World Champion Ronnie O’Sullivan, who has won the Premier League for the last four years. With his quick, aggressive game being perfectly suited to the shot clock conditions he will be favourite to win the title again and at this point it is hard to see anyone stopping him.

Leading the chasing pack however will be both finalists from the 2007 World Championship final, John Higgins and Premier League debutant Mark Selby. Despite a disappointing end to last season losing to Mark King at the Crucible, Selby had a memorable year, capturing his first ranking event title in Wales as well as winning the Wembley Masters in January. It will be interesting to see how a player who in the past hasn’t been the quickest out there, adapts to the 25 second shot clock in the League. He has said that he has made some changes to his cue action in an effort to improve his game, and no doubt his chances during this event so we will have to wait and see. John Higgins meanwhile is a player who at times last season appeared to struggle with the quick pace, but still did enough to reach the final. Now he will be used to the rule from the off he will be hoping to hit the ground running and go one step further this year.

Also back again for another year are the duo with 13 world titles between them, Stephen Hendry and Steve Davis. Hendry, a six-time winner of the event, will be looking to reach the play-offs once again and show the form that enabled him to beat O’Sullivan in the league phase last year. Davis meanwhile will be sure to entertain the crowd with his quips and having spent the summer working on his cue action it will be interesting to see how competitive he is. Either way he will enjoy every minute of it.

Finally the league is completed by Chinese star Ding Junhui and last season’s World semi-finalist, Joe Perry. Ding will be hoping for a better season this time around having seen his career stall somewhat following his 2007 Masters defeat to O’Sullivan. He certainly knows how to cope with the shot clock, having scored a record-breaking 495 points without reply against Stephen Hendry in last season’s competition, so it would be no surprise to see him make the play-offs for the second season in a row.

Perry meanwhile is another debutant in the Premier League and he certainly made it the hard way, qualifying by winning the inaugural Championship League final in May. Also reaching the semi-finals of the World Championship that month, Perry finished the season in the best form of his life and started well this time round, narrowly losing to O’Sullivan in the first ranking event of the season. It will be interesting to see therefore whether he can carry this form over to the conditions posed by the Premier League or whether he will take some time to adapt.

Overall it should be a close league with virtually every player having a realistic shot at qualifying for the semi-finals. Again though, O’Sullivan is undoubtedly the man to beat in the end and in these conditions it is hard to see anybody doing so.

Venue and ticket information

For a full schedule of the matches please click here to visit view my ticket information page. More information on the tournament can also be found via the Matchroom sport website.

If you get a chance to attend an evening at a Premier League event then be sure to take it, I have attended the Grimsby round for the past two years and have found it to be great fun. The atmosphere is relaxed, the live TV action is broadcast on the monitors in the arena and MC John McDonald does a great job during the intervals. I will be going to the Sheffield leg this time around and hopefully it will be just as good.

A preview of tomorrow night’s matches will be posted tomorrow.

More on snooker 'hotshots'

matt2745 Leave a comment

Further to my post earlier in the week where I questioned the mention of a “Hotshots” scheme, the players involved have now been confirmed on the BBC website. They are Mark Selby, Mark Allen, Jamie Cope, Daniel Wells and of course Michael Georgiou as we already knew.

It will be interesting to see what this will entail and how exactly the scheme will be promoted as so far (as David Hendon has noted), the announcement appears to have been pretty low key, being made solely through the BBC.

UK Championship: Tickets Now Available

matt2745 Leave a comment

As announced on the WSA website today, tickets for the final stages of the UK Championship in Telford this year are now on sale.

For tickets for the event that runs from December 13th to the 21st, please call 01952 561 700.

Also I have created a ticket information page on the blog where I can provide information on how to get tickets for live snooker events. Hopefully this will be of use to some people and if there are any events that you would like me to add, please do tell me.

Higgins v White Exhibition Footage

matt2745 2 Comments

Last night in Telford snooker legends Jimmy White and Alex Higgins faced each other in an exhibition match as reported in the on the Shropshire Star website.

Within the article is a video news report containing footage from the evening and an interview with Jimmy. In it, he talks both about his own recent form and an upcoming tour of the south coast that he will be starting with Higgins in January 2009. The match for what it is worth ended 2-2, though from the brief highlights on the video it is clear that the evening was all about the entertainment as you would expect from these two.

Wattana Wins Thai Trophy

matt2745 Leave a comment

Now here is a blast from the past, former world number three and Thai national hero James Wattana (or Ratchapol Pu-Ob-Orm as he is properly known), yesterday won the Thailand National Championship for the first time in his career. In what is his first appearance in the competition in over 20 years he beat Issara Kachaiwong, himself a former player on the main tour, 5-1 in the final to secure his first tournament victory since the 1995 Thailand Open.

His reward (other than a nice shiny trophy and some prize money), is that he will be representing Thailand at the 2008 IBSF World Snooker Championship in Austria next month which is sure to mean a lot to him. It’s nice to see that although he is rapidly approaching 40, James can still play the game to a high standard and that he is having some success on the table despite losing his place on the main tour.

For a full match report including a nice photo of James with the trophy, please click here

Pot Black Axe Confirmed

matt2745 Leave a comment

Following the omission of the tournament from the calendar on the recently re-launched World Snooker website, it has been confirmed by Dave Hendon of Snooker Scene in his blog that Pot Black will not take place this year.

It is a shame in some ways that the event last won by Ireland’s Ken Doherty has been discontinued after just three years. When Doherty won the event, despite it not being a major ranking event or a tournament run over a long distance, the victory clearly meant a lot to him. Given that many of the older players now will have grown up watching the event when they were youngsters it is easy to see why it would be such a thrill to have their names on the trophy now.

In addition the tournament was also a chance for the players to play in a relaxed environment and be able to express themselves a bit more. From the TV interviews that have been given during the event over the last few years it is clear that those taking part enjoyed themselves as I’m sure did those attending in the audience.

Hopefully the tournament can return once again in the future in some form or another.

Heads up: Belgian Open 2008

matt2745 1 Comment

Details have emerged regarding the 2008 Belgium Open, an invitational tournament featuring some of the best players in the world that will be staged from the 19th to the 21st of September.

Official Press Release:

 

Belgian Open Snooker Live on Your Computer Screen!

For the first time in the history of snooker, a non-televised national snooker event will be broadcast live on the internet in what promises to be the beginning of a new era for the game.

CueSport TV, the world’s first online dedicated cuesport channel has teamed up with Connect Management and MaXimumbreak Snooker to broadcast the Belgium Open live from 19th – 21st September at the Tennis Centre in Duffel. The world’s best snooker players including John Higgins, Mark Selby, Steven Maguire, Shaun Murphy, Ken Doherty, Matthew Stevens, Jimmy Michie and Tony Drago and others will compete for the 20,000 Euro prize pot.

Neil Cummins, Managing Director of MaXimumbreak.com commented ‘The future of snooker coaching and development is most definitely with the internet and this is a unique opportunity to watch the world’s best snooker players competing in an event that snooker players would otherwise not be able to see so we are naturally delighted to be involved’.

Full coverage of the event is available for just £8.00 (€10.00, $15.00). The pay-per-view tickets are sold online via the CueSport TV portal.

Cuesport TV, which was officially launched in February 2008 has 10,000 unique viewers per month with viewers from 110 countries worldwide. Together, MaXimumbreak, Cuesport TV and Connect Management aim to bring many more snooker events to viewers on a global scale including the Austrian Open in October.

About MaXimumbreak Snooker

Founded in 2003, MaXimumbreak Snooker is an online snooker resource aimed at developing
the game of snooker globally and improving snooker ability.

Cue Sport players are invited to be able to find a snooker coach in a professional snooker coaching database and to hire professional snooker players for exhibition matches and corporate events. A wealth of snooker coaching information is freely available at www.maximumbreak.com.

About CueSport TV

CueSport TV is the world’s only multi-discipline Cue Sports TV channel that offer’s coverage of pool, snooker and billiards through a 24/7 free-to-air schedule and video on demand.

The unique nature of the system means that a viewers Internet connection speed is detected on first visit. This allows the TV platform to serve a video file that is suitable for the connection, with CueSport TV you will not experience buffering or loading and most connection speeds can watch on full screen.

About Connect Management

Connect Management provides consultancy to elite athletes and businessmen. The highly competitive nature of elite sport means that the careers of sports people are usually restricted to the short term, therefore, Connect advises on tax and investment related issues.

Connect is responsible for the management of leading UK snooker players, Jimmy Michie, Tom Ford and Mark King, all of whom will be competing in the Belgium Open.

Ticket Info

If you want to go one better and attend the matches in person however, tickets can be purchased from here and a full seating chart is also available on the relevant Connect Management page here.

Pocket Money

matt2745 Leave a comment

Here is an interesting piece on one of this season’s tour debutants Michael Georgiou as reported in the Metro last week. Georgiou, the winner of the prestigious World Under 21 Championship last season, is quoted on the financial struggle that faces players at his level, a situation not helped by defeat in his first two matches of the season. This is particularly significant due to the lack of prize money available in the early qualifying rounds, meaning it is crucial from both a financial and a ranking point of view that players can a win matches and run deep into a tournament.

It must be pointed out however that as is suggested by WSA’s Ivan Hirschowitz within the article, the rewards at the top of the game are significant. This is demonstrated by Ronnie O’Sullivan taking £250,000 for winning the World Championship last season and an overall prize fund that is almost £200,000 up on last year. If players like Georgiou can work hard during these early years and succeed therefore then hopefully they will be well rewarded in the end.

“Hotshot ambassadors”

Aside from the financial situation though, the part of the article that I found to be the most intriguing is that referring to Georgiou as being “one of five young hotshot ambassadors” in a campaign to improve the image of snooker.

It must be said that this is the first I have heard of this so if anyone has any information on it and who the other four players are then drop me an email or leave a comment under this article. It sounds like a revamped version of the Young Players of Distinction Scheme that helped the likes of Shaun Murphy and Stephen Maguire at the start of their careers though anything more official on this would be great.