The always excellent David Caulfied has shared his views about the debate on events structures and what a good ranking system should “do”
Snooker’s tournament structure debate is about more than flat draws
There are genuine problems with the current tournament structure on the World Snooker Tour, but calls for flat draws and a smaller tour risk addressing the wrong issue.
Former professional Peter Devlin probably didn’t expect his recent criticism of snooker’s tournament structure to generate quite so much attention.
“I didn’t ask for this or expect it when I posted this post while I was on the toilet,” the 30 year-old, who is also a talented rapper, joked on Facebook afterward.
Devlin argued this week that the current tiered system is unfair to those lower down the rankings, pointing to the example of Liam Davies winning 17 matches this season and earning £38,900 compared with Ronnie O’Sullivan winning five ranking-event matches and collecting £48,000.
“Having to win three or four matches to get to the big names, then lose to them, and they earn more points than you is crazy in my book,” Devlin wrote.
He also questioned the logic of qualifying being used as evidence that players are match-sharp and ready for the main event when, in some cases, the two stages are separated by several weeks or even months.
His comments were backed by ranking event winners Gary Wilson and Alfie Burden, while former world champion Shaun Murphy agreed that a flat draw was the fairest option.
Burden, who first turned professional in 1994 but has spent most of his career in the lower section of the rankings, was particularly critical of the lack of exposure for up-and-coming talents.
“The current state of the tournament structure is simply an absolute shambles and disgracefully unfair to the majority of the tour,” last year’s Shoot Out champion said.
“For new pros and young players in the game now, playing in soulless qualifying venues for every tournament is no way to develop young players and give them the experience they require to develop.”
For a young professional trying to establish a career, reaching a major venue can be as valuable as the result itself.
Playing in front of a crowd, dealing with television conditions, and experiencing the atmosphere of the sport’s biggest events are all part of becoming an accomplished professional.
But does that necessarily make a flat draw fairer?
A flat draw is equal in the sense that everyone begins at the same point. A tiered draw, on the other hand, rewards players who have performed well enough to establish themselves higher up the rankings.
Why should the world number one and the player ranked 100th automatically receive exactly the same starting position?
Rankings are supposed to mean something, and there is nothing particularly unusual about higher-ranked players receiving benefits from having established themselves near the top of the sport.
The biggest tournaments also need venues that can accommodate their schedules, broadcasters need predictable programming, and promoters need to sell tickets.
There is an obvious attraction in guaranteeing that the sport’s biggest names will appear at the main venue rather than potentially requiring several rounds before they enter the competition.
That doesn’t mean the current system is beyond criticism. It simply means that removing the tiered structure would create a different set of problems.
It’s worth remembering that the World Snooker Tour not long ago almost wholly adopted a flat-draw system for a decade-long span, and there were plenty of problems and criticisms associated with it.
The draw structure isn’t really the biggest problem here. The ranking system is.
The prize-money-based rankings have created huge differences in how significantly an individual tournament can affect a player’s position.
The 2027 world champion is set to receive a record £625,000 payday compared with £312,500 for this season’s UK Championship winner and £100,000 for Ali Carter’s recent E nglish Open triumph.
Jak Jones, meanwhile, earned £33,000 for triumphing at the season-opening Championship League.
The difference in prize money is of course understandable as the World Championship represents the biggest tournament in snooker, while the Championship League – played behind closed doors – is an entirely different proposition.
But why should the amount of money attached to an event automatically decide how valuable winning it is for the rankings?
That’s the problem with using prize money as the ranking system. A player’s ranking should tell us how well and how consistently he has actually performed.
Neil Robertson came within one match victory of returning to the world number one position last month, but can anyone really say that he has genuinely come anywhere near to being the best player across the last two-year period?
Prize money is affected by commercial considerations, event budgets, and how much a promoter is willing to put into a tournament.
It’s for these reasons that a lot of the Chinese tournaments have grown in importance (never mind the ill-fated Saudi Arabia Masters), with events on the likes of the Home Nations Series deemed less vital as a result of the limited prize funds on offer.
A points-based system, more like the one used in tennis, would offer a much cleaner way of doing it.
The biggest events could carry the most points, with other tournaments given their own set value depending on where they sit in the calendar.
The World Championship could still be vastly more important than a lower-tier event without needing its prize fund to determine exactly how much it counts towards the rankings.
It could also help the very players who are currently complaining about the qualifying system.
If a player lower down the list starts putting together good results, those wins should move him or her up the rankings in a more meaningful way under a well-implemented points system.
Climb high enough and the rewards are obvious – start entering tournaments later, face fewer qualifiers, and get more opportunities to play at the big venues.
In that sense, the answer to a player being stuck in qualifying doesn’t necessarily have to be eliminating qualifying.
It could be providing a better escape out of it.
There is another peculiarity in the current system that makes things even more complicated – the Players Series.
The World Grand Prix, Players Championship, and Tour Championship are among the richest events on the calendar, with qualification based on the one-year ranking list.
Once a player qualifies, however, he receives ranking money even if he loses his opening match.
That’s different from the vast majority of ranking events, where a player’s first-round defeat means no ranking money is earned.
That doesn’t mean the Players Series shouldn’t exist, or that those events aren’t deserving of their lucrative status.
It does, however, add another layer to a ranking system that is already heavily influenced by the financial value attached to individual tournaments.
There is a difference between saying the ranking system is unfair and saying every player should have the same route through every tournament.
The former is increasingly difficult to dismiss. The latter is much more debatable.
Once a player qualifies, however, he receives ranking money even if he loses his opening match.
That’s different from the vast majority of ranking events, where a player’s first-round defeat means no ranking money is earned.
That doesn’t mean the Players Series shouldn’t exist, or that those events aren’t deserving of their lucrative status.
It does, however, add another layer to a ranking system that is already heavily influenced by the financial value attached to individual tournaments.
There is a difference between saying the ranking system is unfair and saying every player should have the same route through every tournament.
The former is increasingly difficult to dismiss. The latter is much more debatable.
That seems an extraordinary trade-off for a sport that is supposed to be expanding globally.
In recent years, snooker has been developing in markets beyond its traditional strongholds, with more players from emerging countries like Poland, Latvia, Ukraine, and Austria attempting to break onto the professional circuit.
Reducing the size of the tour would inevitably make that pathway narrower.
There are genuine questions around the amount of time lower-ranked players spend in qualifying venues, the development opportunities available to younger professionals, and whether the current balance between the top end and the rest of the tour is right.
Those issues could be addressed without abandoning the benefits of having a tiered system.
Ali Carter’s response to the debate was typically straightforward: “As a pro for 30 years, whatever the format – if you are good enough, you will get there.”
Professional sport is built around a hierarchy, and players who establish themselves at the top should receive some benefit from doing so.
The bigger question is why snooker is using prize money as its main way of measuring achievement when the amount of money attached to an event and the difficulty of winning it are not always the same thing.
A points-based ranking system, with properly defined values for different tournaments, could give the biggest events the weight they deserve while also giving players lower down the rankings a clearer opportunity to climb.
That would leave room to look at the qualifying system and find better ways of giving young professionals experience at major venues, without requiring every player to start every tournament at the same point.
Snooker doesn’t need to flatten everything or shrink the tour.
It needs a ranking system that better reflects what actually happens on the table.
I totally agree with David’s analysis and I believe that the answer to those issues exist: an ELO type point system. Basically in this system, the result of a match is a transfer of points from the loser to the winner, and how many points are transferred depends on the ELO rating of both players ahead of the match and the actual outcome of the match, not just who won and who lost, but what the score actually is. At the core of such system is a mathematical probabilistic model. The more “unlikely” a result is ahead of the match1, the bigger the transfer of points. I have already touched the subject on this blog and the biggest objection presented to me was always that it would be difficult to understand by the average fan, and those who bet on matches. Frankly, I couldn’t care less about the latter objection. You don’t want risk to lose money? Don’t bet. It’s that simple. As for the first objection, programs could be developed2 that could present the fans with the various possible “monetary outcome” associated with every possible result.
