Well, we all thought Barry Hearn has run out of any tricks up his sleeve.
For those who don’t know, a deal has been struck between World Snooker and joint promoters Star Xing Pai and Beijing Fuhua Culture Tourism Development Ltd. Co. to make the China Open the second tournament after the World Championship to have at least £1 million in the tournament kitty. This means the winner will pocket £225,000 (or 375,000 packets of Maltesers from Tesco, take your pick) and the runners up will take £90,000, more than winners of the European Masters, English Open and Scottish Open, for example. In fact, last year’s winner and runners-up got £85,000 and £35,000 respectively, so Mark Selby got less than what the new runners up will get. Unless it is Selby. Again. This has opened another can of worms of how skewed the ranking system could be, where a player could potentially win this year’s China Open and do nothing and still be in the Top 16. Of course Barry wasn’t being completely quiet about it………….
Exactly the opposite as you should know. Rankings based on prizemoney in Events open only to the full tour give the opportunity to soar up the rankings if your good enough. This system destroys protection for top players providing the others are good enough.
— Barry Hearn (@BarryHearn) January 24, 2018
Not only prize money has changed, so has the format. The final of the tourney will be the best of 21 frames or first to 11 frames (I know, what a weird number) and apparently most of the tournament will be filled with best-of-11 matches too, far away from the typical best-of-7 matches that dominated the PTC and Home Nations circuit. The full link is here: http://www.worldsnooker.com/snookers-china-open-hits-1-million-prize-money/
Which means many, many players has rushed to the Chinese town of Barnsley to compete in the capital city called Beijing, including Masters champion Mark Allen and Neil Robertson who missed the event last year. Even Stuart Bingham will play his first professional match since October due to his ban. In fact, only four professional players weren’t tempted to play, the most notable absentee being Marco Fu. This could be a mistake from him, as the greater the prize fund, the more vulnerable their automatic places to reach the Crucible will become. We could even see the likes of Mark Williams, Kyren Wilson and even Ali Carter miss out, while on the other end of the scale, a great opportunity for other players to stay on tour for another year. The pressure will become so intense.
That’s an article for another day! Meanwhile, here’s the draw for the qualifiers!
Mark Selby vs. Wang Yuchen
Scott Donaldson vs. Zhang Anda
Ben Woollaston vs. Rod Lawler
Robert Milkins vs. Lee Walker
Ryan Day vs. Lyu Haotian
Rory McLeod vs. Liam Highfield
Stephen Maguire vs. James Wattana
Fergal O’Brien vs. Hammad Miah
Mark Davis vs. Alexander Ursenbacher
Michael Holt vs. Akani Songsermsawad
Thepchaiya Un-Nooh vs. Ian Burns
Mark Williams vs. Ian Preece
Kurt Maflin vs. Ashley Hugill
Yan Bingtao vs. John Astley
Noppon Saengkham vs. Ken Doherty
Mark Allen vs. Allan Taylor
John Higgins vs. Adam Duffy
Alfie Burden vs. Martin O’Donnell
Anthony Hamilton vs. David John
Jack Lisowski vs. Gerard Greene
Ali Carter vs. Chen Zifan
Gary Wilson vs. Niu Zhuang
Joe Perry vs. Joe Swail
Matthew Selt vs. Chris Totten
Peter Ebdon vs. Zhang Yong/Wildcard
Mark King vs. Leo Fernandez
Andrew Higginson vs. Wildcard/Wildcard
Kyren Wilson vs. Li Yuan
Jimmy Robertson vs. Christopher Keogan
Xiao Guodong vs. Alex Borg
Tian Pengfei vs. Craig Steadman
Ding Junhui vs. Michael Georgiou
Judd Trump vs. Jak Jones
Oliver Lines vs. Nigel Bond
Zhou Yuelong vs. Sean O’Sullivan
Li Hang vs. Chen Zhe
Neil Robertson vs. Robin Hull
Robbie Williams vs. Sanderson Lam
Martin Gould vs. Fang Xiongman
Jamie Jones vs. Sam Craigie
Hossein Vafaei vs. Hamza Akbar
Ricky Walden vs. Aditya Mehta
Matthew Stevens vs. Eden Sharav
Stuart Bingham vs. Jimmy White
Mark Joyce vs. Peter Lines
Graeme Dott vs. Mei Xiwen
Chris Wakelin vs. Lukas Kleckers
Shaun Murphy vs. David Grace
Barry Hawkins vs. Josh Boileau
Sam Baird vs. Soheil Vahedi
Michael White vs. Xu Si
Dominic Dale vs. Paul Davison
Luca Brecel vs. Zhao Xintong
Cao Yupeng vs. Kurt Dunham
David Gilbert vs. Billy Joe Castle
Mike Dunn vs. Mitchell Mann
Yu Delu vs. Duane Jones
Liang Wenbo vs. Rhys Clark
Stuart Carrington vs. Basem Eltahhan/Wildcard
Anthony McGill vs. Thor Chuan Leong
Tom Ford vs. Jamie Curtis-Barrett
Alan McManus vs. Yuan Sijun
Daniel Wells vs. Elliot Slessor
Ronnie O’Sullivan vs. Ross Muir
The qualifiers will take place between Saturday 27th – Tuesday 30th January.
