Before I start to express my anger at both WST and Matchroom here is the report shared by WST on day1 at the 2023 Ranking Championship League Snooker
Carty And Wells Progress In Leicester
Ashley Carty and Daniel Wells got their respective seasons off to perfect starts by topping their groups to make stage two of the BetVictor Championship League in Leicester.
Rotherham’s Carty was forced to take a year out from the World Snooker Tour, after he lost his professional status at the conclusion of the 2021/22 season. However, he regained his tour card thanks to winning the Q Tour Playoff earlier this year. The 27-year-old prevailed by the narrowest of margins over amateur Sean McAllister this evening.
Carty opened his day up with 2-2 draws against Craig Steadman and McAllister. The final match saw Carty crucially whitewash Adam Duffy 3-0. Despite having beaten Duffy 3-1 himself earlier in the day, McAllister could only register a 2-2 draw with Steadman in his last match. That meant that Carty progressed from group 3 on frame difference.
In group 30, Wells had a far more straightforward route through. The Welshman competed last season as an amateur, but his performances earned him a two-year tour card thanks to his position on the one-year list. He made the most of that today, scoring 3-0 wins over David Grace and Andrew Higginson, as well as a 3-1 defeat of 2006 World Champion Graeme Dott.
The action continues on Tuesday with Hossein Vafaei headlining group 11 and Chris Wakelin competing in group 21.
You will find the detailed results on snooker.org
Before I start ranting … congratulations to Daniel Wells and Ashley Carty.
The snooker.org team did an heroic job yesterday trying to serve the fans that were badly let down by the “professional” governing body and by Matchroom.
No live scores were available. The “much improved” live score system, promised by WST didn’t work at all. You are not even directed to a live scores system at all, you are directed to a page that sends you back to the WST “main page”. How and why WST suppressed the old working system without even making sure the new one was ready, if it actually exists at all, is beyond my understanding and utterly unprofessional.
Matchroom was marginally better. At least the streaming on Matchroom.live worked after some delay and that allowed snooker.org to save the day. But all day long, despite Neil Robertson and Liam Highfield defections, the composition of Group 3 wasn’t edited by on the Championship League Snooker page and results weren’t updated until this morning.
As a result I have no real confidence about today’s actual line-up.
Also, there is a “live scores” link on Championship League’s event page … that sends you the the no more existing page of the old WST scoring system
And finally, despite this being the ranking version of the CLS, the “panels” in the room say “invitational”. Maybe it’s to promote the invitational version … but it’s confusing to say the least.
Anyway… live goes on.
BUT … I’m not sure for how long the sport we love will go on. A number of snooker players, some high profile players, have turned to pool this summer, nine ball pool, ultimate pool … and today this appeared on social media
Stephen Maguire will go all the way to China to play “Joy”, Chinese pool.
Don’t tell me snooker is in a good place. It’s clearly NOT the case and snooker is not the priority of their majority shareholder.
Anyway, here is the program for today
Ronnie O'Sullivan 
agreed here, snooker is not going anywhere. meanwhile, ultimate pool and 9ball are attracting more and more players and fans. snooker needs Ronnie and Ronnie IS bigger than snooker, whoever suggests otherwise at this point has no idea
Nice rant!
(Still trying to get a feel for the place, trying to find the switches, if any. If it doesn’t work, please erase the tags. Thank you!)
It so happens I think the “ownership” of (global) snooker changed from the ticket buyers once it was mainly and increasingly funded by ad buyers. Onlookers, fans, snooker lovers ever since played second fiddle, at best. Or so it appears to me.
And that’s basically why there was a low priority for the “scoring system”. It wasn’t just that the new system obviously wasn’t – and still isn’t – ready: They haven’t even managed to create a fall-back page for the old system to inform onlookers that that system was discontinued. So, I’ve been checking that site a dozen times until I, finally, gave up on “livescores.worldsnookerdata….” (not providing a live link here).
And yes, I agree that the sports goes where most of the attention (that new currency of the new economy) goes, and snooker may well be in trouble if advertisers decide snooker isn’t delivering. If you look at the ugly bottom of that Maguire poster, you should have a sense of the goings-on.
The Joy Series in China is not affiliated with the CBSA (who run their own Pool events). As such, Stephen Maguire can enjoy competing with the likes of Yu Delu, who got £20000 by winning an event in June 2021. It’s quite likely Liang Wenbo and Li Hang could be playing in this series at some point. If Pool organisers pay snooker players appearance fees, there will indeed be defectors. It’s a very effective strategy for Pool to damage snooker, with a view to taking market share. A number of Pool events were organised to fill in gaps in the WST schedule – indeed some were outlined before the WST schedule was made public, suggesting some inside knowledge.
Perhaps the lack of focus by WST is the reason why they started the season with this event rather than the Mixed Doubles. What we seem to have now in snooker is some kind of ‘Pre-Season’ akin to football, where teams play friendly matches to warm up for the serious stuff.
Then those bans are a complete travesty, at least for the main culprits. 😡
I don’t think so. Liang and Li are still out of all CBSA and WPBSA events. That these organizations can only regulate their own affairs, that they cannot autocratically rule the lives of even seriously misbehaving individuals, even outside their respective organization, is a good thing. That is particularly so if the CBSA bans were arrived at – as far as my information goes – without a hearing and without an opportunity for the defendants actually to defend themselves.
And a great big Thank You to Lewis, who I found to be pretty much the only source of information on snooker in China available to me.
Even Joy Series in China is not affiliated with the CBSA, Personally do not think those supsended will attempt Joy Series, as the case of Yu Delu was too cocky…
I wonder there is unofficial regulations supressing the supsended joining tour events. No news now after Yu won the event 2021.
If supsended do so – assuming it is still “legal” now, the ban should be at least enhanced by General Administration of Sport of China in the future… (Considering the regulations of filming stars and artist industry.)
Personally feel completely amazed even Xingpai/Starchan also not that “Enthusiastic” in snooker of China, compared to pools/chinese 8balls……
I’m glad you’ve reported this because I was thinking precisely the same.
Day one of a great new season it was billed despite the Championship League being the softest of launches into what is to come.
The truth is it was an utter fiasco with as you say, delays, software issues and defections.
In a recent podcast I heard scepticism as to why a handful of Top16 players pulled out but I’m sure they have made the right choice.
Neil Robertson has now pulled out and despite Ronnie O’Sullivan entered into the event he’s sure to pull out also along with others.
Yesterday was a shambles, fiasco and the dampest ever of squibs and nobody has come out of this well. The broadcasters who were trying to paper over the monstrous cracks which were widening as the day went on but failed to fool anyone.
Whether Ronnie or other top players will pull out remains to be seen. Some might treat it as a good match practice day.