Click for the latest provisional seedings…
Today sees the final day of the EPTC6 event take place as the 24 players through to the finals stage in March will be confirmed. Click below for more and a link to the latest order of merit…
Click here to view the latest PTC Order or Merit over at WWWSnooker.
Click here to view the results from the EPTC6 event so far.
As you will see from the list above, the two outstanding performers during the PTC so far this season are both through to the last 16 as Mark Selby and Shaun Murphy have yet to be seriously troubled. Other consistent performers such as Ricky Walden, Matthew Stevens and Peter Ebdon are also through while the returning John Higgins continues to impress on the continent.
One man through to the final day who has not has a good campaign so far however is Michael Holt. The man from Nottingham today defeated Stephen Maguire, Joe Swail and Liam Highfield to give his hopes of remaining inside the top 48 after the UK Championship a significant boost. He next plays Jamie Cope who has recovered from two poor events to further consolidate his place in the top 16.
Also a word to Reanne Evans who came as close to her first victory on the main tour as she has been so far, ironically pushing world number 1 Neil Robertson all the way before going down 4-3. Hopefully this will give the ladies number 1 a confidence boost heading into the second half of the season.
Tomorrow should be an interesting day anyway and the questions remains will we see a 12th different winner from 12 events so far this season over in Prague? With Mark Selby, Shaun Murphy and John Higgins all in the running I suspect not, but the Players Tour Championship has not been predictable so far this season so there is no reason for it to start now!
What tomorrow will also confirm is who the top eight players on the Order of Merit outside of the top 64 in the rankings are, at present at least as the rankings will change between now and May. As a guide however, I make the top eight currently as being:
Matt Couch – £6,100
Liu Chuang – £4,900
Andrew Pagett – £4,800
Michael White – £4,000
Ben Woollaston – £3,600
Paul Davison – £3,600
Xiao Guodong – £3,000
Igor Figueiredo – £2,800
And of those scraping inside the top 64 at the moment, all comfortably have enough pounds from the PTC to be sure of retaining their tour spots other than Rod Lawler who has made little impact on the series this season.