Where can I find out about how the real-life pro circuit works?

[ianpwilliams]

I'm looking to find out if there is a fixed snooker circuit of tournaments that the professionals play, along with what the tournaments are, which ones are world ranking tournaments and how the world ranking system works. If possible I could also do with knowing how many frames are played in each round of each tournament. I could also possibly do with a list of the current world rankings, maybe as far down to 100 or so. Does anyone know where I should start looking to find out all this information?

[GOMH71]

Everyhting you require is on:

www.worldsnooker.com

www.globalsnookercentre.co.uk

Hope this helps...

[ianpwilliams]

Yeah it does thanks, that world snooker website is really useful for looking at 2007 calendar and tournament structures. The only thing I can't work out from that is the qualifying tournament structure. For example the Shanghai Masters Qualifying Round 1 starts with 32 players, and 16 new players join each round from round 2 onwards. I'm guessing that these players would be chosen based on their world ranking (which is why the better players show up in later rounds), but I don't know the specifics of how they work. And I'm not sure how the ranking system itself works.

I'm not sure where I'm supposed to be looking on the globalsnookercentre one, there seems to be a lot of dead links, and I'm getting lost on it.

[GOMH71]

It is pretty simple really.

Ranking 81-96 play 65-80. The winners play 49-64. Those winners play 33-48. These then meet 17-32. With the winners meeting the Top 16. The draw is random per round but is done before a ball is struck. IE Ranking 96 knows who he may play all the way to his Top 16 encounter...

Do not even bother asking about the Grand prix just yet !!!

[ianpwilliams]

Ok that helps, although obviously all (or most) qualifying tournaments are different formats. I notice that some of them even seem to have knockout stages right down to a final, but if only the finalist qualifies for the tournament itself then it's going to be a pretty short tournament :P Do you know how they tend to work?

I'm still having trouble finding info on the ranking and points system too, although I suppose I could improvise when it came to that.

[Alex0paul]

The Grand Prix, Northern Ireland Trophy and Welsh Open officially start at the last 48 stage whereas Shanghai Masters, UK Championships, China Open and the World Championships start at the Last 32 stage.
The higher ranked player up untill the last 16 will always get less points than then the lower ranked player if he loses, ie John Parrott v Xiao Guodong and Parrott lost he would get 325 whereas if Guodong lost he would have had 650 because he had already played matches to get that far else it wouldn't be fair.

Hope that makes sense.

[jon]

I notice that some of them even seem to have knockout stages right down to a final, but if only the finalist qualifies for the tournament itself then it's going to be a pretty short tournament :P

I assume you mean the Masters? That is not a ranking event, but an invitational. It features the top 16 in the rankings plus the winner of the qualifying event (open to all outside the top 16) and one other wildcard invitation.

[Robert602]

The Masters is the only professional tournament with a qualifying event like that (down to a final, one man qualifies), and that's invitational (ie, non-ranking).

All of the ranking events bar the Grand Prix are as GOHM describes with a few occasional complications for wildcards. The world championship is also a bit more involved as it's open to people outside the tour via a series of pre-qualifiers.

It should also be noted that where GOHM says 81-96 play 65-80 etc that he's referring to seedings, not strictly the same as rankings (although that low down they almost always are). Defending champion is always seeded first, world champion next, and from then it's on ranking. Occasionally this forces players to play an extra qualifier, ie McCulloch ranked 16 but seeded 17th for most tournaments while Shaun Murphy (ranked 21) was world champion.

As for information on where the ranking list comes from, have a look at the GSC ranking list (http://www.globalsnookercentre.co.uk...rov-ranks.htm). As it says it's not strictly the official list but it does use the same system as the official ranks and presents more details than the worldsnooker page.

There's a standard model for awarding ranking points that all tournaments except the Grand Prix are based on. The World championship carries double points, the UK carries 1.5x, all others are exactly as below:

Winner: 5000
Final: 4000
Semi Final: 3200
Quarter Final: 2500
Last 16: 1900
Last 32: 1400 (700)
Last 48: 1150 (575)
Last 64: 900 (450)
Last 80: 650 (325)
Last 96: 200

Where the numbers in brackets are the points awarded to seeded players losing their first match. The points are not cumulative.

Hope some of that helps. It's not easy to explain the entire pro tour in a single post but if you read around worldsnooker and GSC and still have questions we'll do our best to answer.

Just out of interest, what's all this for, or are you just curious?

[MrRottweiler]

As much as I love Snooker i've never known any of this!

[ianpwilliams]

So do all the tournaments on this webpage

http://www.worldsnooker.com/calendar.htm

give ranking points, even including pot black?

I was asking about all this because I would like to have a realistic set of tournaments to play on one or more of my snooker computer games, because none of them really support them properly...and also because it's interesting :P

[Robert602]

The Saga Masters and Pot Black are non-ranking, all of the others on that page represent a complete list of the season's main tour ranking events.

[ianpwilliams]

Ok great, thanks for the help everyone, very interesting and useful