FEATURED: Should Snooker Shoot-Out ever be a ranking event?

Oh, this is going to be a good one. Since starting this blog back in October, this was the second title I wrote down.

HOW HAS IT BECOME A RANKING EVENT?

On 11th May 2016, Barry Hearn announced that the Shoot-Out will be a ranking event for the first time after the success of recent victor Robin Hull. In addition, the event will be expanded to 128 players instead of the usual 64. According to the World Snooker website, Hearn justified this decision as thus:

“The Shoot Out is all about who can handle the pressure and think fast when the clock is ticking. And that pressure will be intensified now that every pound earned counts towards the ranking list. For the players, competition will be fierce, and that’s the way sport should be…give everyone a chance to experience this unique event with an opportunity to go all the way to the top prize.”

This decision came completely out of the blue to many players, as some were angry they weren’t consulted before. This then created a debacle, a lot of outrage and swearing on Twitter from both sides (as if Twitter has ever been different!) involving players, ex-players, fans and Barry Hearn sticking to his guns.

COULD IT BE A GREAT RANKING EVENT?

Yes. Yes, it definitely can. I can actually understand the appeal of it being a ranking event.

I want a variety of tournaments that provides different challenges rather than the increasing number of best-of-7 competitions and at least this is a change of pace. It does encourage consistency from the player and demands a lot of bottle and quick decision-making under a different kind of pressure of being watched by a loud audience. They are essential qualities of a snooker player. The event is very unforgiving and does fit Barry the Saviour/Barry the Dictator’s (depending on which side you fell out of bed) demands of the circuit being BRUTAL (with a little bit of money on the side! And being BRUTAL). After all, Barry describes this as “snooker at full throttle.”

It gives younger players a much easier chance for younger and lesser-known players to shine to move further into bigger tournaments. This is fair enough. Barry Hawkins, Martin Gould and Hull won their first trophy in the Shoot-Out. The crowds may stay the same and be buoyant and lively. A number of trophies in darts were won under a lot of shouting and distractions and this is just a complete change in front of a crowd who are unable to stay silent for more than five minutes. A surprising number of fans support this, as well as other pros, such as Alfie Burden, Mark King and Ali Carter.

Commercially, this is brilliant since this event is intended to appeal to new, younger audiences from the very start. Barry knows the ‘purists’ won’t like this format, but this is Barry Hearn we are talking about, a person who can sell sand to the Arabs. He wants to generate a new and wonderful era of snooker. Putting his own idea like this one in the pipeline and making it more prestigious by making it a ranking event seems to be the best way to introduce ‘fast snooker’ for those who complain that the sport is drawn out and tedious. He says that TV requires quicker matches nowadays and wants to sell this new market to a new audience – so yay money.

Indeed, the shoot-out is a fantastic event. It brings the character out of people, gives less famous players a chance (even propelling the successes of Hawkins and Gould, who went on to win ranking events) and shows that snooker can be fun – having Dechawat Poomjaeng and Tony Drago entertain the crowds in a light-hearted, less serious tournament is brilliant that shows that snooker players aren’t all boring and stony-faced. So why the uproar from the other side? Why are some people infuriated by this modernisation of the game? It is just one ranking event, so why is this so controversial?

WHY SHOULDN’T IT BE A RANKING EVENT?

It could be a fantastic ranking event, but there are more holes in this idea than a block of Emmental cheese. Being a ranking event would make this a more serious event, removing the fun for me and preventing players from showing a bit of character. The fans and players realise how much of a difference each match makes to the player’s ranking, so may either feel awkward about making noise at all or some moron will distract them, especially those that yell out “whhhheeeeeeyyyyyy!!!!!” very loudly like they would when a waiter drops a plate. It also goes against the flexibility of the circuit Barry says the calendar provides – now there is a tournament forcing players to participate in, as there is so much at stake.

Following on why the likes of Carter, King and Burden want this – this is only to earn some money and move up the rankings. If that is the only reason you are in favour of the change rather than prestige, then it shouldn’t be a ranking event at all.

Now for the massive flaw in the Shoot-Out being a ranking event and this is the main reason for me. Because it is far easier for lower ranking players to gain so many points, they can overtake players who may have earned £6,000 playing 4 matches in the Shanghai Masters qualifying by winning fives frames with little effort, earning £8,000. In other words, the ranking points are hugely disproportionate to the hard work a snooker player put in, going against the football saying “the table doesn’t lie.”

Put it this way:

Winner of the Snooker Shoot-Out 2017 = £32,000

32,000 points for winning a maximum of 7 frames in seven matches

Finalist of a Home Nations Event = £30,000

30,000 points for participating in between 36-65 frames in seven matches.

Quarter-Finalist of the World Championship 2016 = £33,000

33,000 points for participating in between 36-69 frames in three matches (for Top 16 players already qualified for the event) OR 33,000 points for participating in between 66-126 frames in six matches (for everyone else qualifying for the event).

This just makes a mockery of what defines a ranking event – the winner of a Shoot-Out earns more than the winner of the Paul Hunter Classic (£18,750) and more than a quarter-finalist of the most famous and ball-aching tournament of the calendar. If last year’s Shoot-Out was a ranking event, Hull (currently 60^th) would be up to 39th and Joe Swail would be 8,000 vital points further away from relegation from the tour for being a semi-finalist. Yes, this is just one tournament out of twenty ranking ones, but it’s amazing how much difference it makes. If someone gained 10,000 points for winning the Shoot-Out, I wouldn’t mind, but that sum of money is too little to be a ranking event, so by that logic, it shouldn’t be one at all, since there are no minor-ranking events now.

Why are the likes of the Robertson, Holt, Allen and Mark Williams against this too? Their positions are threatened, they hate seeing the decline in longer matches, especially the change in the UK Championship from best-of-17s to best-of-11 matches – they see this particular change damaging to the traditions as well as the game they love. They went through a lot of frames and matches keep their position. They would hate to be overtaken on the list or even resigned to World Championship qualifying because someone won just one single frame in the Shoot-Out and leapfrogged them to automatically take their place to qualify for the Crucible.

To me, that is literary serving so many ranking points on a silver platter for the hell of it. If you support a competition being a ranking event, simply giving you an easier way to the top rather than the prestige, location, effort – then it doesn’t to be it, especially since the draw is a complete lottery or a coin flip.

HAS ANYTHING BEEN DONE ABOUT IT?

Barry, of course, responded by gleefully dancing with the controversy – he gets the publicity, the attention, the advertising. He mentioned he will not back down from  “snobbish” clique of traditional pros of the game and emphasised the benefits of a level-playing field and a chance to other players trying to break into the circuit. After all, players have complained of not having enough financial support and with no player in the Top 16 ever winning the event, this helps them tremendously. That is true. But Barry completely missed the point on the many fans and bloggers that also disagree with the change, who are also crying out for longer matches, pointing out that yes, there is more money involved and more events to be played, but they want the traditions to be kept intact too.

This isn’t the first time he made a haphazard decision without consulting players in advance, with several draw structures and how the seeds are drawn earlier this season being an example. How much consultation was there before the decision was made? Barry criticised players for not going to his WPBSA meetings in favour of moaning on Twitter (by moaning on Twitter I know, but that is not the point), which is very worrying indeed that players do not take action to protect their own sport. Thank god for the Players Committee. On the other hand, this also begs the idea whether players feel they get listened to at all, thus the reason being to not attend.

Ebdon very quickly protested by boycotting the event and according to the recently released draw, he has kept that promise.

But then again, half of the Top 16 won’t attend either, including Selby, Trump, Carter and O’Sullivan. Since 128 participate this time, this meant that amateurs have to make up the numbers, 13 of them to be precise. So technically, you could win a ranking event by defeating 7 amateurs (in a very unlikely scenario I know).Which begs the question – how prestigious and highly-regarded is a ranking event supposed to be, especially without the big names? Before winning the 2016 Shanghai Masters, Ding Junhui would’ve qualified ahead of Shoot-Out champion Hull for the Champion of Champions by being the runner-up of the 2016 World Championship and no ranking title at that time and year to his name Will this be the case next year?

Plenty of things have been said here and I’m sure some may point out why stuff to me. Go for it! This is supposed to spark debate anyway! However. What will the reception be for this year’s Shoot-Out? Suppose there is one way to find out…..

Link to the draw: http://www.worldsnooker.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Click-here-for-the-draw.pdf.