The 2024 WSF Championship is currently underway in Golem, Albania. In fact it has been underway for several days. There were 211 players in the draw, spread over 43 groups. Two players from each group were due to progress to the knock-out stage. The last group matches were played earlier today. The knock-out stage starts this evening. You will, as always, find all the detailed information on snooker.org.

This is a mammoth tournament and it yields only one tour card but it has a much more international field than the Q-school, probably because it’s organised differently. Most players will reside at the hotel where the tournament happens, it’s a more compact tournament, with 13 tables in operation, and everyone entering was guaranteed to play minimum three matches.

I won’t even try to give you a summary of what happened earlier this week. It’s impossible. There were probably around 500 matches played… instead here come some “personal interest” inspired thoughts

There were only four female players in the draw: On Yee Ng and So Man Yan from Hong Kong, Narantuya Bayarsaikhan from Mongolia, and Corina Maracine from Romania. From those four, only Narantuya Bayarsaikhan qualified. She came second in a group dominated by Barry Pinches. Unfortunately she has withdrawn from the knockout stage and… well I find that quite puzzling. Why??? On Yee won two of her four matches in a group dominated by Paul Deaville, one of the favourites in this tournament. She came third in her group of five. So Man Yan won only one match. She’s a capable player, tactically sound but she doesn’t score heavily enough when at the table. Corina won nothing and that came as no surprise to me. She’s a nice girl and was a regular in the PTCs but I can’t remember her winning a match ever. I always wondered why she actually entered but then maybe she just loves to be there, to be part of it and to meet the other players. Why not, if she can afford it?

I was pleased to see Luo Honghao in the draw. He was the inaugural WSF champion. He dropped off the main tour and later found himself in some difficulties with the Chinese authorities. I wondered if we would see him ever again. He didn’t qualify though. This morning he was first in his group, but he lost his last match today, by 3-0, and that meant that he finished third in his group. It’s a shame.

I was also pleased to see Wang Yuchen in the draw. When I went to Yixing in 2012 for the APTC Event 2, he was one of the young Chinese players involved. He was 14 years old at the time and quite different from the other Chinese “snooker kids”. He was well educated and fluent in English, a one off in that group in fact. He was playing for China at the time but he had told me that his father is from Hong Kong and insisted that he should get a good formal education in addition to his snooker training. He’s now playing for Hong Kong. He won his group.

You can watch a lot of the action on Youtube, on the WPBSA channel.