Whilst the 2023 Players Championship continues.WST has released some more information about the next tournaments.
Fans Welcome For WST Classic Final Day
A limited number of tickets are on sale for the final day of the new WST Classic, at the Morningside Arena in Leicester on Wednesday March 22nd.
The world ranking event will run from March 16th to 22nd, with a field of 128 players and total prize money of £427,000. Star names in the field will include:
World Champion Ronnie O’Sullivan
Leicester’s local favourite Mark Selby
Player of the Season Mark Allen
Judd Trump, Neil Robertson, Shaun Murphy, John Higgins, Kyren Wilson, Mark Williams – and many more.The full draw and format will be announced soon.
The final day will include the quarter-finals at 10am, semi-finals at 2.30pm and final at 7pm. All matches will be best of seven frames, up until the semi-finals which are best of nine, and the final which is best of 11.
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Details of how to watch the event online will be announced soon.
Frankly the schedule on the final day is bonkers. The finalists might possibly play 27 frames on that day, with a minimum of 15 frames. For that to happen the winner of the event needs to whitewash their opponent in every match from the QFs on… Losing just 2 frames all day would have them playing as many frames as in a Home Nations Final going to a decider. I know that in the PTCs, the possibility existed of them playing as much as 28 frames on the last day but I don’t think that the pressure of playing in this event – basically the “last chance saloon” for many before the World Championship – compares to the (often too) relaxed approach to playing in a PTC.
WST has also (finally) published the draw and format for the 2023 6-reds World Championship in Thailand.
And the format is here in the form of a PDF document
We also have some news about Ronnie’s cue, ferule and tip
Ronnie O'Sullivan 
Seems kinda strange that Jordan Brown is a higher seed than Stuart Bingham at the 6-red…
It is indeed extremely interesting that there are invited players in the 6-Reds. This is exactly the sort of thing that should be happening in tournaments, particularly overseas. It’s great to have top players, but also vital to have local players, and young players. Some of theose players have done well in regional 6-Reds tournaments.
They incorrectly listed Zhou Yuelong as ‘ENG’ (unless he’s defected, unknown to me), and for consistency it should be ‘Zhang Anda’ and ‘Ma Hailong’.
According to Phil Mudd on twitter, the original list of players included K Wilson, J Lisowski, A McGill , M Selby, B Hawkins, M Allen, A Carter and
S Murphy. Not sure how reliable this information is and it’s not clear if they chose to withdraw or if there was a change in policy. The first option is more likely.
I read they pulled out. Preparing for the Tour, I suppose. Or for the WST if they still need to qualify for the Tour, I suppose.
Yes, playing 3 matches is also quite a lot of stress in just one day. It’s also the case that 4 players will have had a late finish on the Tuesday night. The schedule is to allow 120 matches to be played in 6 days using only the 4 tables (i.e 5 matches on each table). With only one show table, they should ensure that the semi-final on the main table is contested by two players who didn’t play on the main table in the Q-final, but we all know they won’t do this.
I’m disappointed that I can’t go and watch the early rounds. Ideally I’d like the choice of 128 players, rather than just 8. Nevertheless, I will still go. But it does mean that there are some players who won’t have seen a live audience in a main venue all season, apart from the Shoot-Out.
Anyway good news at all.
First: Ronnie’s tip might be okay from now, then: Ronnie has entered the WST Classic and the 6 reds format and might be Ronnie’s all round robin matches will be on tv (and Europort).
Ronnie will have a busy next few days: Monday, Tuesday (maybe Monday to Thursday): Championship League:
Next weekend: echibition in Hungary with Mark Allen (anyway our sports channel will show highlights few days later, will try to upload it).
Then the 6 reds and sounds like the 6 reds wsch is important for Ronnie.
I will never understand why the 6 reds are so important for Ronnie. Maybe because he loves the Asian places and thus Thailand, maybe it is good money, maybe he said this was the important event for him, because he did not think he could qualify for the Players and did not want to sound too disappointed about it, but otherwise I have no idea, maybe good for practice, as one has to pot balls and cue like at normal tournaments, but still.
Maybe it’s because it’s the first time.
Thank you, maybe that is the reason, as I did not see that much enthusiasm from others. Nice bug exo, but it must pay well. 🙂