Tuesday sees the start of the 2015 Champion of Champions event and following Mark Allen’s victory at the Bulgarian Open yesterday, we now know who the 16 players competing at the Ricoh Arena will be.
Click below for my look at the draw and thoughts on the tournament generally…
As well as being a remarkable achievement in its own right, Ali Carter’s victory at the recent Paul Hunter Classic, also secured him a place in the Champion of Champions event for the third successive year.
Click below for a look at who will be joining him with just five counting events still to be played…
UPDATE: An interesting snippet out today from last year’s winner Ronnie O’Sullivan, who has indicated on Twitter that he will not be taking up his place in this year’s tournament:
Heard a rumour going around that I'm playing The Champions Of champions. Not true
— Ronnie O'Sullivan (@ronnieo147) September 8, 2015
Original article follows…
Last weekend saw Ali Carter claim an emotional victory at the 2015 Paul Hunter Classic and yesterday I caught up with the man himself to take a look back at the weekend and discuss the different challenges that he has faced since his return to the baize during the past 12 months…
Ali Carter has this evening defeated Shaun Murphy 4-3 to win the 2015 Paul Hunter Classic, a popular victory for a player who has of course gone through so much in recent seasons.
His reward is a cheque for £18,750, in addition to places at the upcoming Champion of Champions and Players Championship events, not to mention the nice new Waterford Crystal trophy that he is pictured with above.
Click below for the World Snooker story on his triumph, on this occasion I would like to take a little more time before posting my own reflections on the tournament…
Day three in Bendigo saw both the conclusion of the last 32 of the ongoing Australian Goldfields Open, as well as the start of the last 16 as Judd Trump and Stephen Maguire became the first two players to make it through to the quarter-finals.
Continue reading for my day three summary of the action in Bendigo…
Today saw five days of qualifying for the final stages of the Australian Goldfields Open played to a conclusion at the K2 in Crawley, with a mix of seeded qualifiers and lower ranked players making it through to Bendigo.
While the wait goes on for information as to the various seeding cut-offs and other ranking information for the 2015/16 season, the action is now very much underway with the qualifiers for the Australian Goldfields Open this week in Crawley.
As was the case last year, it is interesting then to take a look at the current world ranking list and try to pick out a few potential stories that may well develop during the next months.
After all, already a year ago it was possible to see that Ding Junhui would have an excellent chance of claiming the world number one ranking (which he did in December), while players such as Stephen Maguire and Nigel Bond would have work to do in order to stay inside the top 16 and top 64 respectively…
