2021 Championship League Snooker – Players and Group 1 fixtures

The Championship League Snooker returns to its traditional format and it all starts on January, 4, 2021. You will find all the information you need about the tournament by following this link to the “Tournament Page”.

This is the list of players involved in the tournament: John Higgins, Stuart Bingham, Mark Williams, Thepchaiya Un-Nooh, Gary Wilson, Zhou Yuelong, Graeme Dott, Kyren Wilson, David Gilbert, Scott Donaldson, Mark Selby, Neil Robertson, Barry Hawkins, Judd Trump, Yan Bingtao, Jack Lisowski, Ronnie O’Sullivan, Joe Perry, Ali Carter, Matthew Selt, Kurt Maflin, Michael Holt.

There are still three unallocated spots, one in Group 6, two in Group 7.

The complete line-up and the fixtures are known for Group 1 and you will find them here.

Ronnie will enter the tournament in Group 5, along with Joe Perry and Ali Cater. That group, and the next, are played just before the 2021 Welsh Open. I’m fairly certain that Ronnie will use the opportunity to get good practice ahead of the 2021 Welsh Open and the 2021 Players Championship that immediately follows. The Players Championship is for the top 16 in the one-year list. Ronnie is currently a comfortable fifth in that list. With only the 2021 German Masters, the 2021 Shoot Out and the 2021 Welsh Open counting towards rankings for the Players Championship, he can’t miss out.

One thought on “2021 Championship League Snooker – Players and Group 1 fixtures”

OK so the listed players are 22 out of the top 27, with Murphy, Maguire, Ding, Allen and McGill missing. It’s not difficult to speculate why they might not want to play in it. I assume when the time comes they will just keep going down the ranking list to invite players as required. There will be withdrawals and maybe the odd failed covid test.

Despite the problematic format, this competition is quite a lot more substantial than the other CL formats that we have seen since June. They get to play 6 best-of-5 matches in 2 days with a good chance of continuing to semi-finals, and further groups. That gives them a decent amount of snooker, and some money.

Of course, like the Masters, Players’ Championship and Tour Championship, this only involves the top players. The others don’t have that much left in 2020-21. It doesn’t seem like the season is three-quarters over, but for nearly 100 players it is.

Lewis says:

December 23, 2020 at 8:15 pm

OK so the listed players are 22 out of the top 27, with Murphy, Maguire, Ding, Allen and McGill missing. It’s not difficult to speculate why they might not want to play in it. I assume when the time comes they will just keep going down the ranking list to invite players as required. There will be withdrawals and maybe the odd failed covid test.

Despite the problematic format, this competition is quite a lot more substantial than the other CL formats that we have seen since June. They get to play 6 best-of-5 matches in 2 days with a good chance of continuing to semi-finals, and further groups. That gives them a decent amount of snooker, and some money.

Of course, like the Masters, Players’ Championship and Tour Championship, this only involves the top players. The others don’t have that much left in 2020-21. It doesn’t seem like the season is three-quarters over, but for nearly 100 players it is.