Following on from my post yesterday concerning rumoured changes to the World Snooker ranking system, I can now confirm that having seen the letter sent to the players last week by WPBSA Chairman Jason Ferguson, those changes are indeed correct…
As is stated within the letter:
- “Players joining the Tour in 2010/2011 season have to be awarded Starter Points for 2009/2010 and the 2008/2009 season equal to No 8 from the respective 1 year points list eg 2009/2010 Starter Points – 5040 and 2008/2009 Starter points – 5850.
- Players retaining their place on the Tour in 2010/2011 season who had Starter Points in the 2008/2009 season will retain these Starter Points – 5850.
- Starter Points will be deducted throughout the season for the relevant events at the respective seeding cut off points, calculated as follows:
2009/2010 2008/2009
Total Number of Starter Points per season 5040 5850
divided by the number of events in the season 6 8
which equals the amount to be deducted per event 840 points 6 x 731 points/2 x 732 points
Therefore by the first seeding cut off date following EPTC2, 2193 points will be deducted from all players with Starter Points, being 731 points for each of the Northern Ireland 2008, Shanghai Masters 2008 and Grand Prix 2008.”
As a result of those changes, I have now updated my provisional rankings page, allocating starter points in the manner described above.
You can see that the changes have had a big effect in places with Tony Drago for example climbing almost 20 places up to 46th place, while newcomers such as Alfie Burden who have started the season impressively are now right in contention for a top 64 place come the first revision. Without these starter points Alfie would have had to wait until the end of the season to stand a chance of progressing, when the older tour players had their points from 2008/9 removed.
To assist, I have also updated my Points to defend page, which gives you an idea of why the likes of Ryan Day are now on the slide.
If you spot any errors with either page (quite possible as after three hours the numbers tend to blur into one!), then please let me know and I shall amend the list tomorrow evening.
Hopefully that makes the situation clearer.