FEATURED: Which Players Get the Hardest First Round Draws in the Crucible?

If you came across the FEATURED: Which Crucible Seeds Get The Hardest First Round Draws? article, you noticed that I am trying to do some slightly nerdier and number-crunching articles. That article is about finding out which Crucible seeds, whereby No. 1 or No. 16, get more difficult opponents.

This time I am looking at which specific players get harder draws. As specified previously, the draw is completely random. These draws are something that you cannot fix whatsoever. I found out the opposition’s seedings according to Snooker.org and only counted appearances of when the player is a seeded player. For example, Judd Trump wasn’t a seeded player in 2011 and is therefore listed as “n/a”.

It would be interesting to find out whether lady luck favours some particular players more than others in the World Championship draws. Back in 2007, Ronnie O’Sullivan once claimed that the World Championship draw was fixed after being drawn against Ding Junhui, especially when he was drawn against first-round opponents Marco Fu and Stephen Maguire (twice) in previous years. World Snooker maintained that the draw is genuine and O’Sullivan withdrew the accusation. It would be interesting to see what’s true between 2011-2019!

The Table

Here is what I found relating to players who made five and more appearances at the Crucible as a seeded player. Please scroll left to right to see the entire table.

The Results

The numbers highlighted in red. represent the seeds who have beaten the relevant players in their opening matches. This shows that three of the Top 16 seeds have suffered three opening losses within the past five years.

It shows that strangely, Ronnie O’Sullivan tends to get the easiest draws. He has the greatest range as well, from Stephen Maguire (No. 18) and James Cahill (No. 129). It is worth bearing in mind that O’Sullivan’s average is heavily skewed due to Cahill, Robin Hull (No. 116) and Craig Steadman (No. 89). This is closely followed by Shaun Murphy, who faced two players outside of the Top 64 in the ranking and Maguire, who faced three.

Let’s look at those who happen to have faced more trickier opponents. As a seeded player.

Ali Carter made seven appearances between 2011-2019. His lowest-ranked opponent was No. 45 Dave Harold and the average seed he faced is 28. Also, in the past nine appearances, John Higgins hasn’t faced any player outside the Top 64. Other top players who seem to get tough draws are Mark Williams, Ding Junhui and Mark Selby.

What The Data Doesn’t Say

The obvious point to put out is that these seeds don’t tell us the quality of these snooker players, similar to the previous article. Arguably, the quality has increased massively over the past number of years because of the increased number of tournaments and greater opportunities across the entire world.

It is cliché to say that a player is better than his ranking. But one could say the same with many opponents as shown above. Robin Hull was seeded No. 116 in the world and was ranked so low because of he couldn’t attend the majority of tournaments due to financial reasons.

Also, it doesn’t take into account that players outside of the Top 16 change seeds as well. For example, Graeme Dott was No. 29 (2017) and No. 21 (2018) when he faced Ali Carter twice. I already mentioned Hull being No. 116 in 2014 against O’Sullivan but he was No. 68 when he faced Shaun Murphy in 2015. It is worth mentioning that Barry Hawkins hasn’t lost to a first round opponent as a seeded player between 2011-2019.