The snooker tour resumes tomorrow with the start of this year’s Haining Open, an event won last season by Stuart Bingham who now has an impressive four Asian Tour titles to his name.
Although Stuart will not be returning to defend his title in 2015, the tournament remains one that is deceptively important for many players, more so than ever in 2015 as eight Players Championship places and two main tour cards could effectively be up for grabs this week…
As the nights draw in and the clocks go back, it is also that time of the year when I take a close look at the battle for tour places from the start of the 2016/17 season. As regular readers will be well aware, to fully understand how each of the current tour players are currently placed, it is necessary to analyse a number of different ranking lists and orders of merit.
With two of the biggest money events to come in the International Championship and UK Championship tournaments, today I take my first player-by-player look at the current state of play and flag up some of the surprise names with work to do if they are to remain on tour for another season…
As those amongst snooker’s ‘Twitterati’ will no doubt be aware, there has been some debate in recent days on social media as to whether the size of snooker’s main tour should be cut from its current field of 125 players (plus three invitational tour cards), to just 64 as suggested by 2005 world champion Shaun Murphy in his own blog post here.
With a few days now before the Ruhr Open gets underway at the weekend, today I offer a few of my own thoughts on the topic and suggest why personally at least, I am glad that the tour will be remaining as it is…
The conclusion of this year’s World Championship will mark not only the end of another long season, but also the end of an era in snooker as On Q Promotions will cease to act as a snooker management company.
With founder Paul Mount, his daughter Sarah and the rest of the team at the South West Snooker Academy in Gloucester having helped me a great deal and more importantly, having played a real part in the sport over the past six years, I could not let their exit go unnoticed and so I caught up with Paul to look back at their time involved with snooker…
As another year ends, it’s time to look back at 2014 here at PSB in traditional fashion (except last year when I didn’t have time…), with the Pro Snooker Awards, as I consider categories such as player of the year, surprise of the year and much more.
Click below for part one…
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That would appear to be the question, as World Snooker chose the recent Lisbon Open event at which to trial a new system of ‘polishing’ the balls prior to matches, in an attempt to reduce the amount of kicks and bad bounces in the game.
As is ever the case in snooker, feedback was varied, with some praising the conditions and others arguing against the test, particularly at an event carrying ranking points.
Click below for more of the back story and a round-up of the best reactions from professionals on Twitter…
Though Mark Selby’s World Championship victory may remain fresh in the memory, already amateur snooker has moved on at least with the start of the 2014 Q School, while the professionals will be back in action before the end of the month with the first qualifiers of the 2014/15 season in Gloucester.
Click below then for a few of my final thoughts on the events of the Crucible and talking points to have arisen from it…
As the dust settles on Mark Selby’s memorable World Championship victory at the Crucible Theatre, it’s time to look back on the best of my photos from this year’s tournament, including those of the venue, backstage and the people involved in the action…