What an exciting week it is for the group of teenagers about to embark on life on the professional circuit for the first time.
Last season’s PIOS produced a crop of young talents who are joining the main tour this season.
Jack Lisowski (19, fittingly, on Friday when the first Players Tour event kicks off) topped the secondary tour rankings.
He’ll be joined by Liam Highfield (19), Anthony McGill (19) and Kyren Wilson (18) as well as Welsh nominee Jak Jones (16).
Adam Wicheard, who is 24, will also be making his debut having come through the English qualifying route.
Adam has more reason to appreciate his chance than most having suffered a personal trauma four years ago when a tumour was found on his spine.
Surgery left him confined to hospital for six months and unable to walk for four. Indeed, he didn’t know at that point whether he’d ever walk again.
Back then, the idea of playing snooker again must have seemed remote so it’s particularly heartening to see him among the 96 players starting out this season.
Lisowski has also come back from illness having been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphona, a form of cancer, two years ago.
Jack is now fit and healthy and obviously looking forward to the pro ranks. Snooker Scene will be following him all season in our ‘On the Tour With’ feature.
These rookies must make staying on the circuit their main priority. They start at a disadvantage with no points from last season to their name (although there will surely be some form of starter points) but at least there are far more counting events now – 14 more in fact – than during last year.
Much will depend on their approach. If they go into the season thinking a load of the old stagers on the tour will be pushovers then they are about to be proved wrong.
The standard is high in the qualifiers and there are several stubborn sorts who aren’t going to let some young, attacking player see a ball if they can possibly help it.
Snooker desperately needs some fresh blood. It’s about time the old order was given a wake-up call and we started seeing a few new faces on our TV screens.
The dream for all the newcomers will be to play on television. The qualifying system is labyrinthine and loaded with pitfalls but, then again, it always has been.
If they are good enough, both in terms of talent and, just as importantly, mental attitude, they will make it eventually.
I hope the new players enjoy the season and it would be great for the game to see a few getting through to the final rounds of major events.
Over to you, lads...
16 comments:
Hi Dave,
Is there any idea how the ranking points will work in the PTC events?
Is it just 2000 points for the winner or are more points shared between the rest of the field?
Thanks.
Winner 2,000
RU 1,600
SF 1,280
QF 1,000
L16 760
L32 560
L64 360
Maybe slightly off-topic but last year's PIOS has been mentioned at the beginning of this thread so I would like to ask Dave H. if there will be a PIOS tour this seasons and/or how exactly the places in the Q School are to be allocated? Do we at least know how Q School will work at the end of season?
There's no PIOS but amateurs can enter the PTC and there are eight tour places available from that at the end of the season
The Cue School, as I understand it, will consist of around four tournaments, which will provide 12 more players for the tour
As for how you enter it, I don't know - that's one for World Snooker
How come there is no Irish and no Oceanian player amongst the new players this season? According to the tour qualifying criteria they each have one slot!
Another poser. The 8 qualifiers from the ptc will have accrued some ranking points, whereas Q school and other qualifiers will have none.
Will ptc players keep their points, thereby making it a more preferable path to the main tour?
For that matter, if an amateur does well in the first batch of ptc events, it is possible that he may have more points than some bottom ranked pros when the first upgrade occurs, after the world open.
Will that amateur then become a tour player for the next module?
KILDARE CUEMAN
Ranking points are only available to the 96 main tour players competing so no amateur will receive points.
It's interesting that:
1) We know the ranking points for the PTC tournaments; 2,000p for victory and so on.
2) But we still DON'T know the ranking points for the other tournaments! Therefore, the players don't quite know what they're competing for! Let's say, this season, the WC is worth 100,000 points! Then 2,000 points is NOTHING!
Then again, the tariffs may have been lowered, maybe the ordinary ranking tournaments are only worth 3,000 points this season?
Of course, I don't believe in this myself, but my point is: You don't know exactly how much the 2,000 points are worth until you have seen the rest of the points schedule!
It may be a wise move by Hendry to wait and see...
Kildare Cueman - End of season
Q-School would be almost irrelevant if you had constant
promotion/relegation every 3 months
The ranking system is complex enough as it is !
Sparky - At 2,000 pts the PTC's are undervalued.
In PTC - You have to win 7 matches & 28 frames for 2000 PTS.
At the World Champs - 5 matches (usually) & 74 frames for 10,000 pts - which I can't see changing - though other events might get their tariffs tinkered with.
You could make the case that the
PTC's should carry a 2500 or 3000 point tariff - It would also put more pressure on the main tour players to enter more of them.
Obviously - this could be reviewed depending on participation levels in 2010/2011 as a whole - whether that tariff should change in future seasons.
It's amazing how no matter what decision is taken someone always knows better - or rather thinks that they do
I don't believe the ptc events are undervalued. There is a far greater scope for shock results. Best of 5 with no crowd, no tv and smallish money.
The ptc tour is an interesting innovation and a million times better than what went before, but I think the ranking tariffs are about right.
3000 for the final event winner is ok too. Although it is considerably less than other rankers, anybody involved will already have picked up many points.
I think if its 10,000 points for the wc winner, then 7,000 and 5000 would be about right for the UK rest of the ranking events.
China, Germany and the Welsh should all be the same as well. I cannot for the life of me figure out why winning in Beijing is deemed to be more difficult than winning in Cardiff.
Does anyone know what the format for the PTCs will be? Because, if It's something like a best of 5 or 7 sprint then I think the ranking points are right.
For promotion - I am guessing the amateurs will have their own ranking points list separate from the Main Tour one, so the 8 players will come from that.
If you had a weird situation where lots of amateurs picked up more points than the pros, then surely World Snooker could just use a wildcard for, let's say, the ninth-ranked amateur?
Oceania - it wouldn't surprise me if the winner declined his place. I know Glen Wilkinson has won a few times in the past few years and has never chosen to enter the
Main Tour.
Dave H: You said "There's no PIOS but amateurs can enter the PTC and there are eight tour places available from that at the end of the season", but as I understand it the 8 places from PTC are for Main Tour players only, are they not? So based of WHAT will amateurs be allowed to enter Q School, if they are allowed to enter at all?
You'll have to direct that query to World Snooker. It's a new system and not entirely clear.
John F
there will be a separate PTC Ranking list that consists of PTC Events only based on price money with
£10,000=10,000 points to the winner
£5,000 to the runner up
£2,500 to semi finalist
£1,500 to Quarter finalists
£1,000 to Last 16
£600 to last 32
£200 to last 64
that all players taking part is eligible to win.
then theres Ranking Points to go along with other ranking tournaments that consists of 2,000 to the winner that only the 96 main tour players can win..
I strongly believe ranking points should reflect the commercial worth of the event so off last year's ranking system the PTC is currently overvalued. Let's be honest for a moment, the PTC is a good innovation but its not meant for the top players, it's primarily for the journeyman, but carrying 2000 points for the winner then maybe the top 16 can't afford not to enter on those tariffs. The PTC was a good idea to lettle middle-rankers earn some money, but if the top 16 end up entering anyway then all you've got is a backdoor ranking tournament that is not televised and the top players soaking up what little bit of money there is. The winner's tariff should be set at 1000 points tops. What's the point in attracting the game's biggest names to an event that isn't televised, doesn't allow audiences, and offering prize money that is pocket money to the top players but necessary income to players further down the rankings? Maybe there is some mileage in that for the European events where they will play a promotional role too, but do we really need Ronnie and Ding toiling away at Sheffield where no-one will be able to watch them play?
So the PTC, in short a good idea, but needs some tweaking.
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