WST has shared the following WPBSA information regarding this season Q-Tour:
WPBSA Q Tour 2021/22 – Dates and Entry Information
The WPBSA has today confirmed the provisional dates and venues for the 2021/22 WPBSA Q Tour.
Announced last month, WPBSA Q Tour will become the premier qualifying circuit to the World Snooker Tour with two professional places to be won across the season.
There will be four regular Q Tour tournaments held from November 2021 to March 2022, with the top ranked player at the end of the season guaranteed to earn a two-year tour card. There will also be a play-off tournament run with 16 players, with the winner also to earn their professional card.
The Dates
The provisional dates for this season’s Q Tour are:
- 19-21 November 2021 – Castle Snooker Club, Brighton
- 10-12 December 2021 – Terry Griffiths Matchroom, Llanelli
- 28-30 January 2022 – The Winchester, Leicester
- 18-20 March 2022 – Northern Snooker Centre, Leeds
Each weekend will see 64 players in action, to include a maximum of 48 who have qualified directly for the main draw due to their positions on the 2021 Q School Order of Merit.
The remaining 16 players will come from an open qualifier to be held on the Friday to complete the field.
The Players
The top 40 highest-ranked players not already on tour and the next highest ranked eight junior players (Under-21), not already qualified from the 2021 Q School Order of Merit, will be eligible to compete in this season’s Q Tour tournaments. These players are:
Top 40: Sanderson Lam, Michael Georgiou, Si Jiahui, Soheil Vahedi, Michael White, David Lilley, Ross Muir, John Astley, Bai Langning, James Cahill, Dylan Emery, Mark Lloyd, Simon Blackwell, Haydon Pinhey, Billy Castle, Kuldesh Johal, Rod Lawler, Leo Fernandez, Robbie McGuigan, Daniel Womersley, Ryan Davies, Oliver Brown, Michael Collumb, Luke Pinches, Joshua Thomond, Ross Vallance, Saqib Nasir, Niel Vincent, Luo Honghao, Ross Bulman, Paul Davison, Sydney Wilson, Ben Fortey, Alex Millington, Dylan Mitchell, Sean Harvey, Ben Mertens, Brian Cini, Paul Davies and Tony Knowles
Juniors: Hayden Staniland (50), Jenson Kendrick (55), Florian Nuessle (57), Hamim Hussain (58), Liam Pullen (65), Julien Leclercq (70), Callum Beresford (71) and Liam Graham (72).
These players will be contacted directly by email with entry instructions. Each player will be required to pay a block entry fee of £200.00 by 12:00pm on 15 October and will be guaranteed a place in the last 64 of each tournament.
Following this date, subject to the number of players who have accepted and paid for their Q Tour place, we will contact top up players as required until we have 48 confirmed players for each event. These players will have until 12:00pm 19 October to claim their place.
Open entry for all Friday qualifying tournaments will be opened to all players from no later than 20 October. We aim to accommodate all players who wish to enter, however, we do reserve the right to limit entries for each qualifier subject to the number of tables available at the club and time available.
All entries are to be made via WPBSA SnookerScores.
Event entry deadlines are as follows:
- Q Tour 1 (Brighton) – 5 November 2021
- Q Tour 2 (Llanelli) – 26 November 2021
- Q Tour 3 (Leicester) – 14 January 2022
- Q Tour 4 (Leeds) – 4 March 2022
The entry fee for each tournament will be £50.00, with a total prize fund of £12,000 per tournament to be won.
Jason Ferguson, WPBSA Chairman said: “We are today excited to confirm the four excellent venues that will host this season’s WPBSA Q Tour.
“Each of these facilities are proven venues used to hosting significant competitions and we look forward to delivering these high-quality tournaments for the best amateur players in the world, who have the ambition to test their skills on the World Snooker Tour next season.”
At least it’s a “restart” for the Q-Tour (previously Challenge Tour) and that’s good news.
Luo Honghao was playing in the Haining Open, a CBSA event, earlier this week, with the aim to “rebuild his confidence” (according to his coach Roger Leighton). I’m not sure that he will want to come back to the UK for those Q-Tour events.
There are a few young players in those lists who don’t live in the UK , and some are still at school. It may be difficult for them to commit to all four events.
I hope that there will be some sort of streaming for these events.
Ronnie O'Sullivan 
Whether Luo Honghao wants to come back or not, it’s questionable whether he can get a working VISA. He might be able to get some money from the CBSA to support him. Bai and Si are here at the moment, and are in a decent position to extend their VISAs if they don’t return home. I’m not even convinced that Luo should come back to the UK this season – working with Roger Leighton is probably the best thing he can be doing. Roger is a brilliant technical coach.
He Guoqiang was a promising junior, but suffered a personal setback and disappeared from the scene. He’s a previous ISBF U18 Champion, ISBF (senior) runner-up, and got a 147 in the ISBF U21 championship in 2018. I expected him to become a professional at some point and I am pleased to see him return and win the Haining Open, formerly a pro-am tournament that Mark Selby has won twice.
As for streaming the Q Tour matches, I doubt it! Most likely they will be played in clubs without referees. All we will get to see is the results. Even the play-offs will most likely be a very marginal event. Nevertheless it’s good to have some amateur snooker, and the format is probably fairer than Q School, at least for British players if they can afford to play in all these events.
I agree about Luo. He needs to rebuild and consolidated both his confidence and his technique. He’s better being “at home” to do that.
Jason manages to get referees, and streaming when not conflicting with a tour event, for his seniors. Why not here?
You can see from the clubs involved and from the sums of money, there isn’t the capacity to do that. WST will only have streaming when there is revenue back, usually from Rigour or betting sites.