I would probably on behalf of all of us say that this is one of the most eclectic few months of snooker there has been in a long time. There are already ten winners out of twelve ranking events and there is a lot of to and fro-ing from the youngsters and the old generation. The emergence of the under-26s have been a long time coming and some say a little overdue. Then there is Ronnie O’Sullivan to spice things up a little while throwing in an exciting Masters race for good measure. We hadn’t even mentioned Bingham’s ban!

Essentially, this is a half-season round-up: who’s doing well; who’s come out of nowhere; and who needs to really get their act together before they drop down the rankings or worse, get booted out of the tour. It’s nice to give an overview of this season rather than of 2017, which we can agree on is sometimes a confusing cesspool filled with a lot of-

THE HOT SHOTS

If you won three ranking events, reached the final of two non-ranking events and losing only six matches in half a season, you know you have done well. Ronnie O’Sullivan has been on fire this season by hammering in 46 centuries this season and showed off his ruthlessness in the finals of the English Open and the Shanghai Masters against potting machines Kyren Wilson and Judd Trump respectively.  He even won the UK Championships on his C-game and was oh so close to not reaching even the quarter-finals if Sunny Akani hadn’t been so unlucky to knock the blue in as well as the green. The tournament he is most dominant in is coming up in Alexandra Palace next month and it won’t surprise me if he will be the favourite to win it for the third time in a row.

There are many title winners this season so I had to narrow it down to the most impressive. Luca Brecel is finally reaching the potential we all knew he could muster and it was worth the wait. After winning the China Championship by beating the likes of Marco Fu, O’Sullivan and finally Shaun Murphy, he also reached two further semi-finals and a quarter-final. Most importantly, he will make his debut in next year’s Masters. Shaun Murphy has had a fantastic season despite a lack of silverware. He made four finals and won one of them, beating O’Sullivan 10-8 in the Champion of Champions and has been cueing wonderfully too – be very surprised if he doesn’t win another title!

Judd Trump is an odd case. He is third in the one-year ranking list by defending his title in the European Masters, reaching a final, a semi-final and a quarter-final and yet he said it’s the worst he’s played in the last 5 years and that he’s worried about his game. Results-wise he’s been adequate but performance-wise however, he needs improving. Meanwhile, Mark Williams finally bagged his first ranking title since the 2011 German Masters to win the Northern Ireland Open. Something about that event that has so much magic already, especially since Mark King’s win last year.

Nominations: Mark Selby, Ding Junhui, John Higgins

THE HIGH-FLYERS

Ryan Day is one of my favourite players because he is one of the best long potters in the modern game and for his consistency. But he always had the trouble of choking after having a good lead. This lead to him being unanimously being called the best player never to win a ranking event after Anthony Hamilton won the German Masters. Finally, his persistence paid off as he won his first ranking title in Riga, made his first Triple Crown semi-final in the UK Championship (amazing really!) by fighting through three deciders in a row and reaching the Masters for the first time since 2010. Not bad really!

Yan Bingtao has had a boring and uninspiring season, moving o-don’t be ridiculous. First ranking semi-final, then the first ranking final and has now stormed into the Top 32 by jumping more than 30 places up the rankings and is now remarkably China’s No. 3 in the world. Not forgetting that he is 17 years of age, which is an incredible feat considering the strong depth of the current snooker circuit. Even John Higgins touted him to win the title this season. This has confused some people too…..

John Higgins said that Yan Bingtao will win a tournament this season.

Do you agree with him? #snooker #UKChampionship

— Cluster of Reds (@clusterofreds1) December 5, 2017

Li Hang is another Chinaman who made quite an impression, though unlike Yan, Li took four seasons on his second stint to prove his worth. The 27 year-old reached the semi-finals of the China Championship only to be defeated by Brecel and the quarters of the World Open – this helped him stampede through the rankings up 22 places to No. 36. Jack Lisowski looked to be one of the big players to be in danger of dropping out of the tour. But his spirited quarter-final appearance in the English Open and his semi-final run in the Shanghai Masters by claiming the scalps of Cao Yupeng, Mark Allen and Kurt Maflin surely put those fears in doubt. Hossein Vafaei is also doing well in his non-rookie year. Taking advantage of his visa-laden first season, he hasn’t lost as many places compared to other players. He has won every single opening match of every event of the season until the Scottish Open and his consistency paid off since he is No. 44 in the table.

Nominations: Stephen Maguire, Xiao Goudong, Mark Joyce

THE SURPRISE PACKAGES

Because almost every event takes on a flat structure where low-ranking players can take advantage against the big boys to see what they are capable of. We never really saw so much of this in the past few seasons but this season, this notion has completely exploded where you see the likes of Lukas Kleckers and Chris Totten beating Neil Robertson within a few months. It’s like watching Havant & Waterlooville smashing Manchester City or Jacob Rees-Mogg beating Tyson Fury to a pulp. There’s an odd image in your head.

Cao Yupeng is the biggest surprise of the season for me. He showed promise after his 2012 World Championship appearance as an unknown until he dropped out of the tour in 2016. After qualifying straight away through Q School, he won only two matches in his rookie season, earning £6,525. Right now, he’s earning greater than thirteen times more than that year. His brilliant run in the European Masters to the semi-finals certainly helped fill his pockets, but let’s not forget his run to the final of the Scottish Open while making his first maximum in the process. Because of this as well as his consistency, he is almost guaranteed two extra years in and rose up from No. 89 into the Top 64 to No. 56.

We saw little of Akani Songsermsawad or as we now know him Sunny Akani, because many people fail to attempt to pronounce his name. We knew he was good when his quarter-final appearance in the 2016 Indian Open earned him another two-year card but not many had an idea of what impact he will his this season and whether he could carry on his decent form from last season. He took a number of big scalps such as Marco Fu, Stephen Maguire and DEAR GOD he almost took Ronnie’s in arguably the most exciting match of the season. So damn close. Elliot Slessor is another player who became one of the shock giant-killers. He has beaten Joe Perry, Shaun Murphy and is one of the few players to have beaten Ronnie O’Sullivan this season. He is definitely a bolt from the blue, considering he never any of these qualities of upsetting the big boys before.

However, there is also a trend where you see in modern snooker involving most low-ranked players. They make one brilliant run in one tournament and suddenly there’s a hype overload. Then it turns into a poisoned chalice because they never seem to repeat that run again soon after. This is something that has happened to Ken Doherty and Alexander Ursenbacher. Both started their seasons brilliantly by making the semi-finals of the Riga Masters and the English Open respectively but never seem to make the same impact. The Swiss ace hasn’t even won a match since the English Open.

Nominations: Sam Craigie, Xu Si, John Astley

THE STRUGGLERS

Two players who did superbly well and each won a ranking event last season but suffered a huge dip in form depending on injury or loss of confidence are Barry Hawkins and Anthony Hamilton. For Hamilton, it is tragic because of a recurrence of a long-term back injury problem, which has constantly hampered his resurgence since dropping out of the circuit just a season ago but is helped by the fact that he has no points to drop so he could afford a poor run at the moment. Hawkins is a massive surprise for me. One of the best all-rounders and someone not to suffer a loss against a lower-ranked player, he has been beaten by Chris Wakelin, Doherty, Chen Zifan and whitewashed by Akani, which he described as among the worst performances in a match of his career. Thankfully for him, his recent record at the Masters of a semi-final and a final appearance in the past two edition should give him a deserved kick up the backside.

I’m being quite harsh with Scott Donaldson. Sure he has won three matches in the last five, including defeating the World Champion Mark Selby in the UK Championship, but it has been well-documented that he had lost every single match before the UK Championship. That’s 10 matches in a row, which he blames on his cue. He’s been unlucky to lose some but unfortunately, in such a new, competitive, brutal world of snooker, there’s no room for leniency. At one point John Astley caught up with him by earning over £24,000 without Scott moving a budge. The reason why he’s stayed put is that he’s had such a solid run of form, especially in the 2017 Welsh Open.

Thankfully, he is still in his second season on tour, giving him a significant advantage over other strugglers Daniel Wells, Oliver Lines, Tian Pengfei and more shockingly, David Grace.

Thanks very much. I've had a lot of cue trouble, but recently I've had that sorted & started playing normally again.

— Scott Donaldson (@ScottD147) November 30, 2017

Remember two seasons ago when David Grace made his almost-heroic run to the semi-finals of the 2015 UK Championship and earned £30,000? Well, because the ranking system operates over a two-year rolling period, those rankings points are now gone, meaning he went from No. 51 to No. 65, immediately thrusting him in the dogfight. He still has some points to lose which puts him at a disadvantage over the rookies. He has already lost eight first-round matches, which certainly don’t help his cause.

Sam Baird has always been a steady eddy in the past couple of years. However, he is one of the strugglers last season. He finds himself at No. 59, having dropped 8 places and losing in the decider of the opening UK Championship match against Aditya Mehta certainly didn’t help. What’s worse, he has most points to drop from two seasons ago out of any of those fighting for survival. He will lose £22,000 of points he won by beating Michael White in the 2016 World Championship and will likely need to repeat the run again if he is to survive.

Nominations: Rory McLeod, Thepchaiya Un-Nooh, Stuart Carrington