Main Tour snooker starts again next Monday.

Today Worldsnooker looked at the race to the Coral Cup events:

Friday 3 Jan 2020 04:41PM

The race to qualify for the first Coral Series event of the season will conclude during the final stages of the BetVictor European Masters and BetVictor German Masters.

Only the top 32 players on the one-year ranking list at the end of the Berlin event – come February 2^nd – will qualify for the Coral World Grand Prix, which starts on February 3^rd in Cheltenham.

The qualifying rounds have already been played for the BetVictor European Masters (results here) and BetVictor German Masters (results here) so any player now outside the top 32 who has not qualified for either event is out of the running.

Ben Woollaston currently clings on to 32^nd spot but having failed to qualify for either event he’ll need other results to go his way to keep his place for Cheltenham.

He has a gap of just £2,500 over 35^th-placed Scott Donaldson who has made it to both Dornbirn and Berlin, so if Donaldson wins two matches in either event to reach the quarter-finals he’ll go ahead of Woollaston.

Places from 25^th to 38^th as it stands (including money won the in the qualifiers):

	Player	Money	Qualified for Austria?	Qualified for Germany?
25	Matthew Selt	£51,750	No	Yes
26	Matthew Stevens	£50,750	No	No
27	Li Hang	£50,500	No	No
28	Zhao Xintong	£50,250	Yes	Yes
29	Michael Holt	£50,000	Yes	No
30	Zhou Yuelong	£49,250	Yes	No
31	Xiao Guodong	£49,000	Yes	No
32	Ben Woollaston	£46,250	No	No
33	Hossein Vafaei	£46,000	No	No
34	Ricky Walden	£44,750	No	No
35	Scott Donaldson	£43,750	Yes	Yes
36	Anthony McGill	£43,000	No	Yes
37	Mark Joyce	£41,250	No	No
38	Luca Brecel	£40,500	Yes	Yes

There are a further four players  – Robbie Williams, Jak Jones, Tian Pengfei, Robert Milkins – who have qualified for both events so they each have two chances to jump up the list and earn a spot in the first event of the lucrative Coral Series.

With top prizes of £80,000 up for grabs in both Dornbirn and Berlin, every player still in either event has a chance.

The subsequent two Coral Series events are:

Coral Players Championship, Southport Waterfront, February 24 to March 1. Top 16 on the one-year list after the BetVictor Shoot Out will qualify.

Coral Tour Championship, Llandudno, March 17-22. Top eight on the one-year list after the BetVictor Gibraltar Open will qualify.

Ronnie is safe for the first event of the series … but he will need a good run in it and/or in the Welsh Open 2020 if he is to defended his Players Championship title, and even more so if he wants to get a chance to defend his Tour Championship title. He’s currently 17th on the onne year list, but having entered neither of the two Europrean events, he’s almost certain to find himself lower on the one year list at the start of the Grand Prix. Last year he lost in the first round to Marco Fu…