During the 2011 World Championship it was confirmed that this year there would be changes to the Premier League competition that had operated under the same format for the past six years now. A couple of days ago more information came to light about those changes…
To read about the changes in full, please click here.
In short however, the changes to the format can be summarised as follows:
- There will now be ten players involved as opposed to the previous seven.
- Each week will now see a four-man mini-tournament staged with points awarded for frames won.
- Each player will compete in four events, each event comprising two semi-finals and a final. The maximum amount of points that can be won in one evening therefore is six, three from the semi-final and three from the final.
- Each match will be played over the best of five frames with no dead frames played.
- The first four frames will run a 20 second shot clock as opposed to the previous 25.
- The miss rule has also been altered so that a player now has three attempts to make contact with the intended ball else their opponent will be handed ball in hand.
- Should a match reach 2-2, the decider will be played under Shootout rules, aka a ten minute match with a 20 second shot clock for the first five minutes and 15 seconds for the last five. As in the Shootout, all fouls during the decider will result in ball in hand being awarded to their opponent and with each shot a player must either pot a ball or hit a cushion with the cue ball.
- There will no longer be a prize of £1,000 per frame on offer for the players, instead there is a high break prize of £1,000 for each night of the league and also during the play-offs. There is however £25,000 available for a maximum.
- The format of the play-offs will remain unchanged with the semi-finals being staged over the best of nine frames with the final over the best of 13.
So what is the verdict?
Following the surprise success of the Shootout I would advise caution against pre-judging the event, although on paper I cannot say that I find the changes to be particularly appealing.
That said, I do think that the Premier League did need freshening up as the old format had been in place for six years now and as a viewer I do feel that it had lost something of its sparkle, particularly during the league phase leading into the play-offs.
Ultimately for me however, I have never truly viewed the competition as a snooker event so am not particularly outraged to see them experiment with a few things. I do not actually mean that in the negative way that it probably comes across as, but the Premier League is all about providing a one-off night of entertainment for snooker fans who do not otherwise have the opportunity to watch the top players in the world in the flesh and so if they are to make such changes, I would much rather see them here than at a ranking event.
It is interesting to see the usage of a modified miss-rule, incorporating one of the proposed options recently made to the players by the governing body in their consultation letter. Whether they are experimenting with this as a trial run with a view to introducing it in other tournaments in the future remains to be seen but I suspect that there will be a few with an eye on how successful the rule turns out to be in practice.
It will also be interesting to see the venues that will be used for 2011 because as stated above, the Premier League is important as it gives fans across the country an opportunity to watch some of the world’s best snooker players put on a show and no doubt that will continue to be the case this time around. I have heard rumours that there will be something of a shake-up compared to the last couple of seasons but nothing confirmed yet.
As far as the entry list is concerned, the ten players involved will be:
- Ronnie O’Sullivan (defending champion)
- John Higgins (World champion)
- Ding Junhui (Masters champion)
- Mark Williams (German Masters champion)
- Ali Carter (Shanghai Masters champion)
- Judd Trump (China Open champion)
- Neil Robertson (World Open champion)
- Shaun Murphy (PTC Finals champion)
- Matthew Stevens (Championship League winner)
- Jimmy White (World Seniors champion)
As Barry Hearn has stated previously, the event will now be brought under the World Snooker umbrella and so as a result there will be a strict qualification criteria in place as opposed to the previous invitational system used by Matchroom Sport.
My first reaction to this was that I would rather have seen the places decided by ranking position but upon reflection we already have the Masters decided by that method so it is not all bad to see something a different system in place such as this. The obvious drawback however is that a place could not be found for Mark Selby who after all is the world number three at the moment.
So that’s my view right now. What do you make of it?